Looking back at history, I’m often reminded of that famous Mark Twain quote: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” I see proof of this in the words and phrases we still use today—many of which have roots centuries deep.

Take Shakespeare, for example. Expressions like “break the ice,” “wild goose chase,” or “wear your heart on your sleeve” are part of our everyday language, yet they were coined long ago. These are not just relics—they’re evidence that words carry forward across generations.

What fascinates me is how certain authors—Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare—manage to freeze language in time. Their works become touchstones for professors, students, and readers, who keep centuries-old vocabulary and grammar alive simply by revisiting these texts. This preserves not just stories, but the very shape and sound of language itself.

You can see this in the way Dante’s Divine Comedy helped make the Tuscan dialect the standard for all Italian writing that followed. In Spanish, Cervantes did something similar; Don Quixote is still readable in the original, and Spanish hasn’t changed so much that modern readers can’t follow it.

In short, literature doesn’t just reflect culture—it shapes and reinforces it, generation after generation.