I don't recall who said it but it has been remarked that English has pursued other languages down dark alleys to beat them unconcious and steal their words.
I say that other languages are content to merely pickpocket.
There are two common formulations of the quote you're thinking of; I'll go hunt down the attribution for the first one later (the second is a result of the folk process being applied to the first). The context was "linguistic purity" and the speaker compared English to, IIRC, "a cribhouse whore" for purity.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
And the version I heard first, which appears to have derived from Nicoll's via folk process:
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
Google pointed me here (http://scribo.blogs.com/scribo/2004/06/language_thugs.html).
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I say that other languages are content to merely pickpocket.
-m
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