Top 1200 Plain English Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

My English is actually getting worse. We talk Spanish at home and switch to English only when we need it. Like when we go to the bank to get some money.

English is English, no matter what accent you speak it in.

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.

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.

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.

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!

Gandhi, brought out of his semirural setting and given a Western-style education, initially attempted to become more English than the English.

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

I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence.

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

Is it my fault if I do not look like an English girl and I do not talk like a Nigerian? Well, who says an English girl must have skin as pale as the clouds that float across her summers? Who says a Nigerian girl must speak in fallen English...?

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 have a wonderful English-language dialogue coach. All the time I have to speak English, he is with me. It is a double effort, because you have to say the words correctly and then act them.

And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think.

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.

I grew up speaking Korean, but my dad spoke English very well. I learned a lot of how to speak English by watching television.

My father and mother emigrated to Canada in 1958, but there's nobody more English than an Englishman who no longer lives in England, and our home was a shrine to all things English.

Whatever the rest of the world thinks of the English gentleman, the English lady regards him apprehensively as something between God and a goat and equally formidable on both scores.

As Governor of my country, I have been an enemy to its enemies; I have slain the English; I have mortally opposed the English King; I have stormed and taken the towns and castles which he unjustly claimed as his own.

I've never seen an 'English' books section in, well, an English bookshop, but in Scotland, most bookshops have a set of shelves dedicated to Scottish authors.

England and Greece are friends. English blood was shed on Greek soil in the war against fascism, and Greeks gave their lives to protect English pilots.

Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.

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.

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?

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.

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?

English is much drier. You can get away with a lot less. Pathos, lyricism, these are things you have to tone down if you want the English version of the book to work.

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.

I grew up speaking Vietnamese - that was my first language because my parents didn't speak any English, and I didn't learn English until I started school.

One of the reasons we require immigrants to learn English before they naturalize is that a person who cannot understand English will not be able to participate in the political community in any but the most limited capacity.

I understood that without English I would never get far, so my dream was to become a receptionist, and so I started to learn English from watching 'Sesame Street.'

English people are always surprised I'm English.

I believe it is essential to have English as the official language of our National Government, for the English language is the tie that binds the millions of immigrants who come to America from divergent backgrounds. We should, and do, encourage immigrants to maintain and share their traditions, customs and religions, but the use of English is essential for immigrants and their children to participate fully in American society and achieve the American dream.

I am sure that the two main forms of English, American English and British English, separated geographically from the beginning and severed politically since 1776, are continuing to move apart, and that existing elements of linguistic dissimilarity between them will intensify as time goes on, notwithstanding the power of the cinema, TV, Time Magazine, and other two-way gluing and fuelling devices.

So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.

As far as getting work, no one thought I spoke English. It was absolutely ridiculous. I'd show up at a meeting and they'd be like, 'Oh my God, you speak English! That's so cool.' They didn't really know what to do with me.

People learn English from 'Full House.' Candace's husband, Valeri Bure, he learned to speak English watching it... 'Aw, nuts.' 'You got it, dude.'

The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

I have some English words on the first album, but any time I try to do it, you miss something. You think it's just a simple translation from French to English, but it's so different as far as the understanding.

- 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.

The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly.

Everyone tells me I have a funny accent. It's because I copy people. I learned English at school but have best friends who are French, Australian, English and American; a very weird mix.

For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.

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.

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

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.

I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power.

Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been through an extra filter, another consciousness, in the guise of the translator. Some of my favorite writers who have written in English were doing so without English being their first language, so there's a sense of distance or of distortion there, too. Conrad. Nabokov. These writers were employing English in interesting ways.

I learned English kind of late. I remember when I got my first opportunity to work in America, I didn't speak a lot of English, so I only really knew my lines for the movie I was doing.

English humor is hard to appreciate, though, unless you are trained to it. The English papers, in reporting my speeches, always put 'laughter' in the wrong place.

The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word - let alone your learning to write English - is, in short, impossible.

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?" -Pablo Picasso.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of, let's say, a tramp vomiting in the sewere. You know, and next door to the picture Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. C. W. Jones on the subway going to work. You know, any kind of picture. Just make a collage of pictures.

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

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.

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!

This is some fellow, Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he! An honest mind and plain,--he must speak truth! And they will take it so; if not he's plain. These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends, Than twenty silly, ducking observants, That stretch their duty nicely.

English fans and the English atmospheres are special.

In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.