Top 1200 English History Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won't go away.

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

Asa Briggs was a historian of class history, so he felt obligated to bring in his driver. That's the English class thing that is much weaker now.

I love the musicality of English. French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.

English football's history is so rich and the size of the clubs around, the so-called big six, are so big that it is difficult to break into that for a club like Leicester.

I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

It is the glory of English Law, that its roots are sunk deep into the soil of national history; that it is the slow product of the age long growth of the national life.

I learned English from American pros. That's why I speak so bad. I call it PGA English.

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.

I've often been asked, 'aren't you going to sing in English?' So I'm very glad to have a song in English.

If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching kids that they are divided into tribes. And we're failing to teach them that we also, as human beings, share problems that we need to work together with.

When the medium of the film is English, even the illiterates also should speak in proper English.

The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.

If I can't find a project that I'm really interested in, I'll just go back to college where I've been studying art history and French. I'm also going to study English and philosophy - the whole curriculum!

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

The English press, are so nosy, and the English seem to love that eavesdropping

This is what Hollywood tends to do. It tends to disregard tradition, history and anything factual, twisting it and turning it and making it all okay regardless of what the English may think of it.

I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

English football has an enormous following across the world, not just because of the players but because of its history, its tradition, the excitement, the capacity crowds.

The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy.

History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.

I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.

The English press, are so nosy, and the English seem to love that eavesdropping.

It's unimaginable to meet a Pole or a German who does not know about the history of their country. But lots of English people don't know the difference between Britain and England.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

I'm in fact Australian but my mother's English so I've got no problem playing a domineering English woman.

I often think that eventually I'd love to do some papers... my correspondence if life calms down a bit, but I think I'd do history or English literature... I've had enough of journos.

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.

I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term.

That typically English characteristic for which there is no English name -esprit de corps.

Well, I couldn't speak English before I went to Belfast. So I learned English with a Northern Irish accent.

I loved English and I tell kids that without English I wouldn't be able to rap.

Because English is the universal language. No matter where you come from, if you sing in English, you can cross over to the world.

An English man does not travel to see English men.

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Few people know anything of the English history but what they learn from Shakespear; for our story is rather a tissue of personal adventures and catastrophes than a series of political events.

It is said that the history of peoples who have a history is the history of class struggle. It might be said with at least as much truthfulness, that the history of peoples without history is a history of their struggle against the state.

Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.

Do not feel trapped by the facts of your history. Your history is not some set of sacred facts. History is an interpretation, and your history is yours to interpret. To know the history and then reinterpret it gives you additional depth.

A butler in an English household should, however, be English, and as much like an archbishop as possible.

A lot of country making films in English, but in Japan we are very shy to speak English.

I think where you're born brings a history with it - a cultural history, a mythical history, an ancestral history, a religious context - and certainly influences your perception of the world and how you interpret everyday reality.

You can't be an American if you don't speak English. Our public schools should be mandated to teach all children in English.

Don't forget I'm not English. English people maybe don't behave like we Europeans do.

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

Historical grammar is a study of how, say, modern English developed from Middle English, and how that developed from Early and Old English, and how that developed from Germanic, and that developed from what's called Proto-Indo-European, a source system that nobody speaks, so you have to try to reconstruct it.

It (Arsenal) is an English club but not an English success. It's probably a greater reflection of youngsters from France and elsewhere in Europe.

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn't feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic. The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn't one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not.

I chose English-speaking and English-thinking people to take decisions for Hindi programmes. It was a mistake.

I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

I have always felt most comfortable singing in English, perhaps because I think in English.