Quotes About English

The inconsistent spelling of words in the English language also vexed Dad to no end. Digraphs such as "sh" and "ph" infuriated him, and silent letters made him grieve. If words were simply spelled the way they were pronounced, he argued, pretty much anyone who learned the alphabet could read, and that would virtually wipe out illiteracy

I think in some parts of our English history we've had huge amounts of almost too much great comedy. You kind of wonder how so much great work could come out of one country.

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

Catch-22 is the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon...remarkable... This is a book that I could wish everyone to read. It is a book which should help us feel more clearly

Also, I have found that I really like to work in English. It's very strange because it's exactly the opposite of what I thought it would be like.

I have a bad time between jobs because I'm always convinced I'll never work again. I think it may be an English thing, this fear of unemployment.

When you deal with a film that takes place in Europe, and you're going to work in English, you'd better work with European actors.

I've done quite a few adverts. I've also done some presenting and acting work in Spain. I did a lot of Spanish education videos for people wanting to learn English.

I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money. They talk about interesting things at dinner parties.

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

O'Casey was writing about people in the streets and his mother and dying babies and poverty. So that astounded me because I thought you could only write about English matters.

It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.

The paradox, though, was already evident: that the more solidly the foundations of an English state were cemented together, so the harder did it become to present the island as a single realm. Seen in this light, Athelstan's conquest of York, the feat which had first served to project the power of the West Saxon monarchy deep into the north of Britain, can be seen as the decisive event in the making of Scotland as well as of England. There

I think English film is very embarrassed by patriotism, generally.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

Tarzan hungry, dijo el Mumintroll trepando una liana. Tarzan eat now! ¿Qué dice?, preguntó Snif Dice que ahora va a comer, dijo la señorita Snork. Verás, es lo único que sabe hacer. Habla en inglés como todos los que viven en la selva.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

Few had much room to cast stones, but hypocrisy has never failed the English middle class in any latitude, and they flung them in plenty with delighted, shocked abandon – rocks, boulders, limited in size only by fear for their husband's advancement. Conciliating discretion had never been among Mrs Villiers's qualities, and if subjects for malignant gossip had been wanting she would have provided them by the elephant-load.

What pleasant days they were – an English summer at its best, and English countryside at its best, enough night-rain in the hills to keep the trout-streams fine and brisk, and there were reports of a hoopoe seen three times at Chiddingfold parsonage.

Stephen had no great love of the English government in its dealing with Ireland; in fact he had actively conspired against it. But he was deeply attached to individual English men and women, and in any case he did not like anyone to abuse the country but himself.

After all, the English are really too much. One can't live in that constipated fashion forever.

the people in this country who feel most like foreigners to each other are English people who've just arrived and the ones who have been here for several years.

her father's generation must be the last generation of English people who would have such a choice. War or no war, it was all coming to an end, and the end could not come neatly. There would be people who had to be victims of the fact that it could not. She herself was surely one of them

Insularity, like empire-building, requires superb self-confidence, a conviction of one's moral superiority. An English caricature of an Indian - possessive towards people with power, arrogant to those with none. Through a narrow Moghul arch into a dark stone corridor - the kind in which you feel the weight of India: a heavy darkness which is a protection from glare and heat but reminiscent of tombs and dungeons.