De Vulgari Eloquentia quotes

Since we find that no one before us has written anything at all on the art of eloquence in the vernacular…

We call vernacular speech the speech we take in without any rule, by imitating our nurses.

Of these two, the nobler is the vernacular.

But we, whose homeland is the world as the sea is for fish, though we drank from the Arno before we had teeth, and love Florence so much that for loving her we suffer exile unjustly, rest the shoulders of our judgement on reason rather than on feeling.

The vernacular we were hunting, which gives off its scent in every city and makes its home in none.