Quotes About English

It is often written that a kind of medieval footstool was called a tuffet—a presumption based entirely on the venerable line "Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet." In fact, the only place the word appears in historic English is in the nursery rhyme itself. If tuffets ever actually existed, they are not otherwise recorded.

Dr. Tarnya Cooper, curator of sixteenth-century portraits at the gallery, told me one day when I set off to find out what we could know and reasonably assume about the most venerated figure of the English language.

But perhaps nothing speaks more clearly for the absurdities of English pronunciation than that the word for the study of pronunciation in English, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways.

Could you imagine a busload from Milan parading around Trafalgar Square showing off their tattoos? "Why do you English behave like this?" one Italian asked me, believing that I was of the same nationality. "Is it something to do with being an island race? Is it because you don't feel European?

Susie: Hi Calvin! Aren't you excited about going to school? Look at all these great school supplies I got! I love having new notebooks and stuff! Calvin:All I've got to say is they're not making me learn any foreign languages. If English is good enough for me, then by golly, it's good enough for the rest of the world! Everyone should just speak English or shut up, that's what I say! Susie: You should maybe check the chemical content of your breakfast cereal.

She had curly brown hair and there was something about her striking features that flickered a lightbulb in Ivar's memory but didn't turn it on. "Do you speak English?" she asked. Ivar felt a surge of relief. "Yes!" The woman smiled. "American?" "Yes!" "Excellent." The woman extended her hand. "Welcome to the Space Between. I'm Amelia Earhart.

There was something disagreeable, even English, about him, Colette thought

Seeing from his violent demeanor that he was English, they gave him a ticket for the furthest station on the way thither that the train reached.

Chaston wrote that a great many fairies harboured a vague sense of having been treated badly by the English. Though it was a mystery to Chaston — as it is to me — why they should have thought so. In the houses of the great English magicians fairies were the first among the servants and sat in the best places after the magician and his lady.

But according to the Essay on the Extraordinary Revival of English Magic we have no business even to wonder about such things. According to Mr NORRELL and Lord PORTISHEAD the Modern Magician ought not to meddle with things only half-understood. But I say that it is precisely because these things are only half-understood that we must study them.

It is January and I am arriving at an English country house in Yorkshire. Fog and rain shroud the park. The interior is a dim labyrinth of splendid but desolate rooms, full of winter shadows and echoing footsteps.

If Hell is where nothing connects, then being in the field of English must be the key to heaven's door! We are in the business of finding connections--within texts, between texts and contexts, between texts and ourselves, between our readings and the readings of other interpreters.

In the next revolution of taste it is possible that poets may turn to the study of Dryden. He remains one of those who have set standards for English verse which it is desperate to ignore.

Do you still believe i public opinion? Well let me tell you public opinion is a gimmick thought up by the English and Americans, it's them who are shitting us up with this public opinion rot, of you'll excuse my language, we've never had their political system, we don't have their traditions, we don't even know what trade unions are, we're a southern people and we obey whoever shouts the loudest and gives the orders.

To be useful, learning must have a worthy purpose and become a habit. A trip down this road starts with the questions "Why?" "How?" and "What?"—the major interrogatives in the English language. A wise person asks these questions virtually without thinking; a wise teacher guides his students to acquire the habit of asking them.

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

You have many flaws, he announced... "But there was one flaw that made all the other imperfections pale in comparison." "Was?" she asked. "I don't have this flaw any longer?" "No, you don't." "Pray tell," she muttered in exasperation, "what was this terrible flaw?" He grinned. "You used to be English.

Where to start, Fitger thought. The department was a funhouse of dysfunctional characters. Academia was, traditionally, a refuge for the poorly socialized and the obsessive; but English, at Payne, had a higher percentage of crackpots than most.

The fourteenth century saw a transformation in the diet of the English lower classes from one composed mainly of cheap cereals, beans and pulses, with coarse black bread (made from rye or barley) and the occasional flitch of bacon to one with a high proportion of meat, particularly beef and mutton, and bread made from wheat.

Subordinating conjunctions are a much larger set. They include after, although, as, because, before, if, since, than, though, unless, until, when, and while.

ADELAIDE (English) Nobel and quiet.

I'm teaching English in Japan next year," she said matter-of-factly, "It's going to be amazing." Not "I'm thinking about..." or "I've applied but..." I AM.

Most English houses, grand or small, nestle in an intimate pastoral setting.

It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?