English Quotes

Carlyle's genius was many-sided. He touched and ennobled the national life at all points. He lifted a whole generation of young men out of the stagnating atmosphere of materialism and dead orthodoxy into the region of the ideal. With the Master of Balliol, we believe that 'no English writer has done more to elevate and purify our ideas of life and to make us conscious that the things of the spirit are real, and that in the last resort there is no other reality.

~ Hector Carsewell Macpherson

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

~ Jeffrey Eugenides

His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband.

~ Chew Kok Chang

Sir, — Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated; whether they have souls has been a moot point; but can it be too much to ask [for a definitive acknowledgement that at least they are animals?… Many hon. members may object to the proposed Bill enacting that, in statutes respecting the suffrage, 'wherever words occur which import the masculine gender they shall be held to include women;' but could any object to the insertion of a clause in another Act that 'whenever the word animal occur it shall be held to include women?' Suffer me, thorough your columns, to appeal to our 650 [parliamentary] representatives, and ask — Is there not one among you then who will introduce such a motion? There would then be at least an equal interdict on wanton barbarity to cat, dog, or woman… Yours respectfully, AN EARNEST ENGLISHWOMAN

~ Joanna Bourke

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual human beings. It is to reaffirm the sheer truth: No one is better or worse, superior or inferior than any other; and, 'Ich bin du, wenn Ich Ich bin' [I am you, when Iam I.]

~ Namsoon Kang

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.

~ Jonathan Stroud

We were supposed to be an English literature class, but Miss Nesbitt used literature to teach real life. She said she didn't have time to teach us like a regular English teacher--we were too far behind. Instead, she taught us the world through literature.

~ Phillip M. Hoose

If Bengali is my mother, then English is my father and friend.

~ Abhijit Naskar

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

~ Anne Rice

Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that, well spent, returns ever greater riches.

~ Tim Radford

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself.

~ Peter Ackroyd

But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too.

~ Madeleine L'engle

English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

~ Anonymous.

Like so many colours, like so many flavours, like so many fragrance, English grammar should be a personal choice.

~ Megha Khare

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

~ Dean Koontz

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life.

~ Charles Lambert

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

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

॥दोहा॥श्रीगुरु चरन सरोज रज, निज मनु मुकुरु सुधारि।बरनउँ रघुबर बिमल जसु, जो दायकु फल चारि॥DohaWith the dust of guru’s lotus feet having,I cleanse the mirror of my soul sparkling,Raghuvar’s spotless glory I be singing,The four fruits of life it ever is giving.- 303 -

~ Munindra Misra

Shani Chalisa॥दोहा॥ Dohaजय-जय श्री शनिदेव प्रभु, सुनहु विनय महराज।करहुं कृपा हे रवि तनय, राखहु जन की लाज॥Shani Maharaj, glory to you with sincerity,Listen to my prayers I request humbly,Bestow your grace and protect me fully,Keep respect and honour of your devotees.- 341 -

~ Munindra Misra

संकट मोचन हनुमानाष्टकमत्तगयन्द छन्दबाल समय रबि भक्षि लियो तब तीनहुँ लोक भयो अँधियारो।ताहि सों त्रास भयो जग को यह संकट काहु सों जात न टारो।देवन आनि करी बिनती तब छाँड़ि दियो रबि कष्ट निवारो।को नहिं जानत है जग में कपि संकटमोचन नाम तिहारो॥१॥When as a child you lapped the sun, darkness on triple world fell,The worlds so got into trouble and a crisis that none could dispel,Gods then prayed to you to spare the sun and you did so quell,Who doesn’t know in this world your name `Problem Solver’ bells?- 294 -

~ Munindra Misra

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like ʌ(OO)ʌ, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to 'ʌoo'.

~ Jakub Marian

Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.

~ Jakub Marian

Remember that lettuce doesn’t grow on a spruce, and it also doesn’t rhyme with it.

~ Jakub Marian

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words “village” and “age” whatsoever.

~ Jakub Marian

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

~ Jodi Picoult

People speak broken Swahili on purpose. Business people for instance will speak Sheng – a mixture of Swahili and English – because that’s what people want to hear. And what is the government doing? They speak broken Swahili most of the time. Swahili is getting lost and I am really sorry for the future generations.

~ Enock Maregesi

Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate understanding of death.

~ Kingsley Amis

And so we went. And so it went. And, slowly, I began to learn: speaking in the same language does not equal communication, especially when there is a cultural divide.

~ Gerry Abbey

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.

~ John Fowles

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed.

~ Dannika Dark

The sound of an English accent distracted her and lifted her spirits. She associated English accents with singing teapots, schools for witchcraft, and the science of deduction. This wasn't, she knew, terribly sophisticated of her, but she had no real guilt about it. She felt the English were themselves to blame for her feelings. They had spent a century relentlessly marketing their detectives and wizards and nannies, and they had to live with the results.

~ Joe Hill

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.

~ Katherine Rundell

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

~ Chinua Achebe

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

~ Aravind Adiga

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

~ Stephen Fry

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

~ Ian Mcewan

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.

~ George Bernard Shaw

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.

~ J.m. Coetzee

Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him Stumpy or the maimed one. It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish.

~ Gwen Cooper

Because of social strictures against even the mildest swearing, America developed a particularly rich crop of euphemistic expletives - darn, durn, goldurn, goshdad, goshdang, goshawful, blast, consarn, confound, by Jove, by jingo, great guns, by the great horn spoon (a nonce term first cited in the Biglow Papers), jo-fired, jumping Jehoshaphat, and others almost without number - but even this cautious epithets could land people in trouble as late as the 1940s.

~ Bill Bryson