English Quotes

Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntle...

If Canada had a soul (a doubtful proposition, Moses thought) then it wasn't to be found in Batoche o...

I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someon...

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be t...

One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - ...

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

Excuse me, I must go and putt

The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were ...

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, eng...

He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six ...

I don’t know why—it’s just that—I don’t know—they’re not kin."—Surprising word, I think to myself ne...

We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.

lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you w...

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, v...

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking ...

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking ...

Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the sa...

The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry ...

As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. T...

I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongu...

First time my master’s in English literature ever proved useful.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

He had a voice you couldn't miss: strong and penetrating with strange vowels that sounded different ...

Father Hobbe, his cassock skirts hitched up to his waist, was fighting with a quarterstaff, ramming ...

Because of social strictures against even the mildest swearing, America developed a particularly ric...

Susie: Hi Calvin! Aren't you excited about going to school? Look at all these great school supplies ...

Once upon a time You dressed so fine

...I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in...

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The...

When in doubt about who's to blame. Blame the English.

Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them?

You Englishmen,’ said Herr Wurter. ‘You are all the same. Wherever you are you behave as if you were...

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrativ...

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown ...

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's wi...

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In pro...

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinar...

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise...

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and mo...

As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after another, from the word-box you carry...

When I was 12 years old, I got interested in learning English.

Remember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd you walked smilingFlushed enraptured streamin...

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years afte...

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose ...

The sound of an English accent distracted her and lifted her spirits. She associated English accents...

The sound of an English accent distracted her and lifted her spirits. She associated English accents...

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past...

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child -...

There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would ...

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delig...

She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a d...

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

I'm all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went ...

...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among ot...

English is so past,’ she said. ‘Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don’t ...

Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full...

But the English are different, and they don’t know how to be other than different.

Speak English!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's mor...

Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. Engli...

But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully ri...

Writing poetry is a state of free float

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.