Quotes About English

Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us.

Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next?

The English don't like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It's alright if they come from an 'intellectual,', but from a pop star you're getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn't rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you're in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn't it?

I don't believe in amnesty... What I have proposed is that we would come forth with a program that allows individuals to come forward and to plead guilty... They would have to pay a fine; they would have to go through a background check - some say learn English - and they would get learned legal status.

I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially.

On December 13, 1931, a fifty-seven-year-old English politician, still a member of Parliament but quite unwelcome in his own party's government, stepped out of a taxi on New York's Fifth Avenue.

In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

There is no question of the government or myself attaching less importance to the use of English.

We detested folk music because it was cerebral and sedate and we had no time for that. But the Byrds were OK because they electrified it and they had English hairstyles.

People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.'

I've loved 'Vanity Fair' since I was 16 years old. You know, we're all colonial hangovers in India, steeped in English literature. It is one of these novels that I read under the covers at my convent boarding school in Simla.

I majored in English in college, so I read the classic dystopian novels like '1984' and 'Brave New World.'

I love the English language, the colors of it, the many, many nuances, the different influences. I find German stilted, in a way, by comparison.

I grew up listening to Oasis and The Verve; English music was huge in my house.

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.

I'm obsessed with historical English royalty.

It's a lucky kink for comedy writers that particular English obsession and interest with class and social difference. It maybe is not good for society but it's good for the comic writer.

I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.

But why, he said with animation, do the English not read their own great literature? Victor laughed triumphantly, and said, Because at school they are made to hate it.

He may be dead; or he may be teaching English.

Nevertheless, there was one civil custom used in (and in few but) the English nation, which this gentleman did endeavour to abolish in this country: and that was, the usage of drinking to one another.

When in doubt about who's to blame. Blame the English.

I was thinking,' said Crusher dreamily [...] 'about LANGUAGE and how in English two negatives make a positive, but in spriteish, a double negative is still a negative. However there is NO language in which two positives make a negative ...' 'Yeah right, like THAT'S the problem,' said Xar, sarcastically. 'I hadn't thought of that!' said Crusher in gentle surprise [...]. 'You're correct, Car. Yeah, right IS a statement in English where two positives make a negative...

With the English, nothing could save him from being the eternal outsider, not even love.