Quotes About English

Le romantisme anglais fut un mélange heureux de laudanum, d'exil et de phtisie; le romantisme allemand, d'alcool, de province et de suicide.

Toate aceste popoare fericite, ghiftuite: francezi, englezi...O, eu nu sunt de aici, am în spate veacuri de nefericire. M-am n?scut într-un popor f?r? noroc. Fericirea se sfârÈ™eÈ™te la Viena; mai departe, Blestemul!

The English people do not easily change their rooted notions, but they have many unrooted notions.

The supreme court of the English people ought to be a great conspicuous tribunal, ought to rule all other courts, ought to have no competitor, ought to bring our law into unity, ought not to be hidden beneath the robes of a legislative assembly.

But a good Government is well worth a great deal of social dullness. The dignified torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to the cleverest classes, but to the oldest classes, and we have seen how useful that is.

The English not only possess better machines for moving nature, but are themselves better machines.

A state between the mind and the body, something intermediate half-way from the newspaper to a nap—this is what we may call the middle-life theory of the influential English gentleman—the true aspiration of the ruler of the world.

Now that free government is in Europe so rare and in America so distant, the opinion, even the incomplete, erroneous, rapid opinion of the free English people is invaluable. It may be very wrong, but it is sure to be unique; and if it is right it is sure to contain matter of great magnitude, for it is only a first-class matter in distant things which a free people ever sees or learns.

Irish English is a very different beast from English English or American English. Very different. The way in which Irish writers are only too happy to infuse their language with ambiguity is very different. An English writer will try to be clear. Orwell said that good prose should be like a pane of glass. The Irish writer would say: 'No no, it's a lens, it distorts everything.'

There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.

Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. 'The evening stretches before us,' Viola said gloomily.

Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,' I agreed, 'but I'm afraid I'm one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea.

The lines on Rugby Chapel…I wish I could remember some of them now, but English Literature stopped at Wordsworth when I was up at Oxford, and somehow one doesn't remember things so well that one read since.

No one dared tell the outcome of the battle to Philip VI until his jester was thrust forward and said, "Oh, the cowardly English, the cowardly English!" and on being asked why, replied, "They did not jump overboard like our brave Frenchmen." The King evidently got the point. The fish drank so much French blood, it was said afterward, that if God had given them the power of speech they would have spoken in French.

Adams, not yet replaced, repeated that "the arrogant English were treating Amsterdam exactly as they had Boston." With that fatal gift for the unlearned lesson, the produced the same result - unity against the oppressor, which in America had brought the fractious colonies into their first federation.

The author says one patrician English leader saw his relationship with the populace thusly: He wasn't responsible TO them. He was responsible FOR them. He was responsible for their care.

The English were increasingly resentful of the papal appointment of foreigners to English benefices, with its accompanying drain of English money outside the country. In their growing spirit of independence, they were already moving toward a Church of England without being aware of it.

I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence. But if you try that line in Europe, especially in France, they say, Oh, no! You're so English! I think I'm probably anchored somewhere in the Channel.

As users of English we often need a grammatical device to make reference to the way a particular event unfolds in time. This is called aspect.

One day, I was just thinking about something, and then - you know when you think, and you have that inner voice in your head? I realized it was in English.

It was a little bit strange as an English woman cast in 'Rebellion.' I read up about the events and, honestly, I knew very little about it to begin with it. It wasn't something that they cover in English schools at all.

I've received some English-speaking scripts, but I was not interested in them.