Top 1200 English People Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.

I speak English. I dream in it. I cannot separate my English from my Shona; I see the world with those two languages.

I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech.

English is like music. The English language is really fit for singing. The notes match the feelings, and it makes sense.

I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.

I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general.

I have a handicap in that English is not my first language. So even though I'm a writer, I don't write anymore because it's just harder in English.

You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.

English civilization the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society that is what interests me.

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

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

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

My children are English, and both of their mothers were English.

So many of the bands that influenced me growing up were English, even if I didn't realise it. English pop ruled the world in the '80s!

I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad.

I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I think it was within three years of coming to the US that I started writing in English, although purely for myself, not trying to get it published. Living in America, I was constantly in touch with English, and Ukrainian was for me a private language.

I'm not a native English speaker but do post tweets in English.

There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years! Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?

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.

An English man does not travel to see English men.

It's important that top clubs don't lose sight of the fact that it's the English Premier League and English players should be involved.

I think the English are bipolar. 'We're the greatest, no we're terrible' - that's a constant English struggle. Crime is down, there's little poverty - yet it's always the worst time to have lived here.

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

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

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

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

The English, in their ignorance, still have the romantic notion that Scottish schools are superior to English ones; they are at least a generation out of date.

One of my favorite tricks was taking a page and having the first student translate it from English into whatever language he or she was working on, and the next one would translate it back into English and then into the foreign language, and we'd go around the room and compare the two English versions at the end, and it would be amazing how much survived.

You may be right in believing that if you study hard, one day you might become fluent in English. But you will still look Chinese, and when people meet you, they’ll see a Chinese girl no matter how well you speak English. You’ll always be expected to know Chinese, and if you don’t, I’m afraid they will not respect you as much.

[from The One and Only Official Mr. Gum Official Glossary That Tells You What Words Mean by Explaining Them Using Other Words] : Cups of tea: People in England are always drinking cups of tea. "Oh let's have a cup of tea " they say. "That will prove we are English and not American." Sometimes American people try to have cups of tea to pretend they are English but forget it We can always tell you are faking it

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

American English is the greatest influence of English everywhere.

A lot of linguists in the market, especially interpreters of foreign languages, do not have a great command over the English language, especially if they are translating into English.

However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

Joss Whedon writes beautiful drama. His sensitivity and his sense of drama and scenes are pretty exceptional. There's no one else writing like him, really, in sci-fi and TV. That's not to say there are no astonishing writers on TV. I was nervous about coming to America and playing an English person who speaks very English when all the writers are American, because it's a very particular thing to imitate, and if it's badly imitated, it sounds painfully contorted and silly. And he writes very well for English people. It was Joss Whedon who persuaded me.

Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.

A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means.

Everything has changed. When I was at school and was told I had better learn English, I said: What for? The English are a hell of a long way away!

I was a Barcelona fan. My favorite player was Ronaldinho. But I watched a lot of English football and admired lots of English teams.

Some may argue that countries like Japan and China improved economically without English, but they, too, are learning English fast.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.

Icelanders love to speak English. Their English is a joy to hear because of how colloquial and idiomatic it is, but they appreciate your efforts with Icelandic.

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.

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

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

When I was in high school, I started learning English as my second foreign language, but my level of English at that time was very average.

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.

The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. 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. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.

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

I wouldn't have any fears about coming to England because I have played against English sides in the Champions League and studied the English game.

What is translated from English and into English - and in what quantities - is a question of power.

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.

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.

Having managed in Holland, Spain, and Germany, I had always hoped for the opportunity to manage in English football and be part of English culture.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

I always thought of the English landscape as being English gardens.

I always wanted to do my solo album in English, because I grew up listening to a lot of pop artists and English-based songs.

I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years.

English literature is a kind of training in social ethics. English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action.