Quotes About English

In the 19th century, the English were loathed. Every memoir that you read of that period, indicates the loathing that everybody felt for the English, the only difference between the English and Americans, in this respect, is the English rather liked being loathed and the Americans apparently dislike it intensely.

The English, the English, The English are best: So Up with the English and Down with the Rest!

My parents have always had a very limited command of English. Of course, when we first arrived in the UK, none of us spoke English, but it's much easier for a child to pick up languages. But the problem was not a lack of English; the problem was poor communication in any language. Remember, my parents came from rural Bangladesh with little education. It was alarming for them, I'm sure, to watch their boy very quickly exhaust whatever ability they had to teach the child something.

I changed my major to English literature, which was on the advice of my father. I finally said, "You know, Dad, to heck with it: I'm just going to be an actor. But I'm going to go to school." And he said, "Well, if you're going to go to school, then major in English literature. Those are the tools you are going to be working with as a man who's going to be acting in English, one would assume."

You know what's crazy about Yao? He speaks perfect English. A lot of people don't know that. Perfect English. When I was over there, I called him. He's like, 'Whassup big fella?' Perfect English!

- L, did you know we’re reenacting the Salem witch trials in English tomorrow? - Haven’t been memorizing your case file? Do you even look in your backpack anymore? - Did you know my dad is videotaping it? I do. Because I walked in on his lunch date with Mrs. English. - Ewww. - What should we do? - I guess we should start calling her Ms. English? - Not funny, L.

For whatever reason, we relate to anything godlike with an English accent. The English are very proud of that. And with anything Roman or gladiators, they have an English accent. For an audience, it is an easy trick to hook people in.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind - men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh - who founded the English colonies in America.

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.

You have people who are good at English but don't have the training in Buddhism or Shambhala, or they have the training but are not good in English. Getting that mixture is really rare.

We, the English educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India.

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

I want to say unequivocally that while I cherish every person who comes from anywhere, who comes here legally and seeks to pursue happiness, and I hope all of them decide to stay and become American citizens, but I want them to become American. And part of becoming American involved English. It is vital historically to assert and establish that English is the common language at the heart of our civilization.

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

More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.

When I came to Hollywood, I spoke no English - except nobody bullied me. Every day, I had nothing to do except training in English, to keep talking.

I shall last a year, and but little longer: we must think to do good work in that year. Four things are laid upon me: to drive out the English; to bring you to be crowned and anointed at Reims; to rescue the Duke of Orléans from the hands of the English; and to raise the siege of Orléans.

I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.

Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English.

I think that if you are sticking to the text, essentially, you're not trying to write your own version of it. I mean, of course, it is your own version of it. And every translator would probably have a different version. But I think that that's what keeps the writers from being individual in English. They may be my English, but I don't think that Ferrante sounds like Levi.

It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

Particularly for English people, Shakespeare is always at the forefront of both drama and the English language. He's always been there. I can't remember starting school and not learning about him.

I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English.

Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.

I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one.

It is always a taut moment in a foreign country waiting to see if your English-speaking guide speaks English.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.

Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.

When I came here, I couldn't speak a word of English, but my sex life was perfect. Now my English is perfect but my sex life is rubbish

I was born in North London, migrated to Australia when I was four. So when I first came to Australia people saw me as a little English boy. Over the years that feeling of being a little English boy diminished and I felt much more Australian.

I could never muster the courage to speak to girls in my college in Pune. Most of them were Parsis and spoke English. I came from a village and could barely converse in English.

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.

No' is the second shortest word in the English language, but one of the hardest to say.

In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.

I wanted to give my actor a break. I wanted to live and to learn English. I wanted to be anything, a cabdriver, a busboy, anything to keep me away from acting for a while.

I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.

Much of the rest of the world has already learned some English. They pretty much understand the American way of doing things, because our culture has been ubiquitous and has been the 500-pound gorilla in the global economy. But the world is far more interrelated than ever before, and no one culture can thrive without the knowledge of how to function in other cultures.

I was a halfway-decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by a piano.

I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

TALLAHASSEE LASSIE was a record I wrote with my mom. A number of other famous groups have also recorded it such as Led Zeppelin (I understand they are currently touring) and several other English bands and also some various "Punk Bands".

It was during the eighteenth century - a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution - that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny.

Foreigners have souls; the English haven't.

If you go to France, you have to speakFrench. If you speak in English, no one looks at you. On the one hand we sayEnglish is a global language.

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.