Top 1200 English Grammar Quotes & Sayings - Page 12

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you “sir” and “madam,” and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of “what is done” and “what is not done,” and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

The way that I approached numbers, think about them, the same as for language as well-acquiring vocabulary, understanding the grammar, the structures of languages, the rhythm, the music and so-on - these things obviously evolved.

You never know what little idea or joke, what flame flickering really quickly, will become a song. That first idea, it can come any time. If it's in Spanish, you go on in Spanish. If it's in French, French. If it's in English, English. Or Portuguese. I'll try to do my best. I like Italian, though I don't speak it much.

Being a typical Briton, I love my home comforts and always try and find an English pub where I can tuck into some traditional English food, accompanied by a nice pint. Fortunately, I haven't been ill with food poisoning or anything like that, which is quite surprising considering how many different types of food I eat when I'm travelling.

In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.

Those who think that metaphysics is just misunderstood grammar will react to my giving metaphysics some place or another in the system of knowledge.

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind.

Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.

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.

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.

I think the prospect of bringing back grammar schools has always been wrong and I've never supported it. And I don't think any Conservative government would have done it.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

I have no idea what that is, but yawn, anyway, just on principle. Eat up. Pancakes is brain food. Apparently not grammar food. Wow.You college girls are mean.

I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

And I take this opportunity to declare, that... I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, - the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.

From my early training days, I am an avid listener of heavy music which is laced with proper diction and effective use of grammar of music.

Gore speaks to America as if English is its second language; George W. speaks as if English is his second language.

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.

Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.

In fact, many of the quotes in my books are quotes which were translated from English and that I read already translated into Spanish. I'm not really concerned with what the original version in English was, because the important thing for me is that I received them already translated, and they've influenced my original worldview as translations, not as original quotations.

These things which are made of light and grammar and sound that come chirping and squealing and tumbling toward you. 'Hooray! Welcome! You're here!', and in my case, 'You send so many and you come so rarely!'

Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

There's this whole new grammar Twitter skill set that I do not possess. I'm not a very good person to follow. I never tweet, and when I do, it's about some sort of sporting event that I'm watching.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

You see how Spanish, Italians, Portuguese play football. I don't say they are perfect, I say English football has a few things to learn from them in the same way they have a lot of things to learn from English football.

And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.

A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.

Use correct grammar and punctuation. Do not use net speak, like WOT, W-O-T or U. Those messages get a lot lower reply rate.

I taught myself algebra and a little grammar, and somehow I scraped a high enough score on the ACT to be admitted to Brigham Young University, even though I had no formal education.

If you go in Spain, you have to play with another style. The English culture is the English culture. If you come here, you have to play in this style.

If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.

In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.

Maybe because English is my second language, maybe I just translate mundane clichés from the Welsh language and they sound original in English. I am going through a bit of an obsession with bad puns. I am hoping I'll grow out of it. Maybe it's just a phase.

Shakespeare is absolutely big in Africa. I guess he's big everywhere. Growing up, Shakespeare was the thing. You'd learn monologues and you'd recite them. And just like hip-hop, it made you feel like you knew how to speak English really well. You had a mastery of the English language to some extent.

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.

I guess coming after 'Country Grammar' and everybody thinking, 'Well maybe, that was it.' To come back with something like 'Nellyville' and to have people accept it and appreciate it the way they did, that was a great move.

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.

What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.

My French definitely improves the more I drink, as I worry less and less about absolutely perfect grammar. I do speak and understand the language, just not particularly well.

I have wanted to run my own business since my time at Clitheroe grammar school. I remember thinking if I could get a penny from everyone in Britain, I would earn £208,000 a year.

This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited; I mean, in Narnia--in our world they usually don't talk at all. - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

I'm always going to be working on my English, and I'm always going to work on my English so that I can do different characters from different nationalities.

I can't spell or do grammar, but I'm smarter and more serious than people think. I'm no featherweight when it comes to digging deep and being involved. So many stars I know do so much. It's our duty to give back.

We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.

The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.

Well, as a visual artist working with the phenomenon of cinema, the grammar of cinema, [making a feature] was bound to happen. Everything I do is like sculpting with image and sound.

[The director's idea for the film was:] A young American or English girl goes to Tuscany to visit English expatriates. She is on a mission to lose her virginity. That's a mission easily accomplished, if that's the only mission. The story had to be more complicated than that. Because there is so little happening dramatically, there had to be something to keep you curious.

What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak?

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!

My mom said to me: 'Sonny, you need to study English.' And I replied to her: 'Mom, I do not need it. I'm going to be horse-boy, would I speak English with horses?' Mom said: 'Darling, you need to.' But I did not listen to my mother.

Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different-- in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

Encourage children to write their own stories, and then don't rain on their parade. Don't say, 'That's not true.' Applaud flights of fantasy. Help with spelling and grammar, but stand up and cheer the use of imagination.

In 2014, I knew my English was not so bad, but I had no confidence in talking directly to an English-speaking reporter. I had to do a short interview with, I think, Reuters from France. I was so nervous. I practiced memorizing three sentences for two hours. But, I think that these kinds of interviews make me develop a lot, and that helps me.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.