English Quotes
-
English is weak in describing emotional states or intensities of interpersonal relationships.
-
When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
-
The traveler to the United States will do well, however, to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.
-
The 'bus is English. When that is said, all is said. As a rule, any English thing is nineteen times as strong and twenty-three times as heavy as it needs to be. The 'bus fills these requirements.
-
I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.
-
Even though I loved to write, I never liked English lit. class very much. I think it ruins books when you dissect them too much. I liked my art classes best.
-
I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side.
-
I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.
-
In the 17th century, Barbados was regarded in London as 'the brightest jewel in the English crown'.
-
There is nothing odder than to apply an analytical device to a synthetic phenomenon: for instance, to write in English about a Russian poet.
-
In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif's novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that's being spoken by Egyptians. It's a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, "broken" English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules.
-
For all we know that English people are/ Fed upon beef - I won't say much of beer/ Because 'tis liquor only, and being far/ From this my subject, has no business here;/ We know too, they are very fond of war,/ A pleasure - like all pleasures - rather dear;/ So were the Cretans - from which I infer/ That beef and battle both were owing her.
-
We have the character of an island nation: independent, forthright, passionate in defence of our sovereignty. We can no more change this British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel. And because of this sensibility, we come to the European Union with a frame of mind that is more practical than emotional.
-
I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Laramie', with Robert Fuller and John Smith. I used to watch 'The Lone Ranger', which had been famous in Japan as well. I idolized these cowboys.
-
My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.
-
There is no word in English for chic. Why should there be? Everything chic is by legend French. Perhaps everything chic is in reality French.
-
Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form—like maybe a watch or necklace.)
-
I always sang in English. It's just that nobody heard me.
-
My dad looked like Errol Flynn, and I think my mom thought she was moving into a hacienda, but they lived on a dirt street in Tijuana, a house jammed with relatives, nobody speaking English. She didn't know a word of Spanish. She grew up well and was appalled and humiliated, terrified of anyone ethnic.
-
I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.
-
My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.
-
English is a forgiving language. It's not like Classical Arabic and it's not like French. You can speak broken English and be expressive and no one will hold it against you.
-
My parents were both Spanish-speakers and they used to speak to me and my siblings in Spanish and we'd answer them in English.
-
My breakfast consists of two cappuccinos and maybe a toasted English muffin, and that's pretty much it for me unless I decide to go a little more upscale, and then I'll have scrambled eggs.
