Quotes About English

medieval English literature reached its height after the plague in the writings of William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer

And then, this she offered to me, my one truth: "Our language," she said, "is not spoken, but sung.... Not simply words... and grammar... but melody. It was hard... thus... to learn English... this language of wood. For the people of your nation, Octavian, all speech is song.

The other diners studied him with the polite frozen smiles the English use for threatening behaviour.

London is often confused with England. The English also live in London but they are only one of the communities which inhabit a true world city.

No, if you wanted to change the world, you had to do it like a man. Pay off the politicians, get militant like the English, push and not be pushed.

I say that the warp of colonial cookery was English, but in the Southern colonies, a funny thing happened on the way to the hearth. In households of any importance whatsoever, African women slaves did nearly all the cooking. It's as simple as that

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.

Ne considera, pe mine si pe fete, imaturi si naivi, dar noi ne puteam dovedi de zece ori mai perfizi decat el, tocmai pentru ca eram englezi - nascuti pentru a purta masca si educati de mici sa mintim.

There was not much real harm in English people except their teeth and their taste, which was certainly deplorable.

Mary's claim to the English throne as the great-granddaughter of Henry VII

liberty" and "freedom" here meant merely the dislodgement of the Guises by the English:

for Scotland and Normandy, which he knew to be linked and designed to win control of the English Channel

Only two weeks before, on November 24, her father's forces had been routed by the English at the battle of Solway Moss.

The language of the lowlanders was in fact much closer to northern English

Forced to retreat by a smaller but better-disciplined English battalion, the Scots were snared.

cut to pieces at Flodden Field by the father of the very same English commander.

The snowshoer had written about Reagan—just one sentence, after seeing her friends who were dying of AIDS. "If or when there's another plague, I hope America has a better plague president than Ronald Reagan," the little English teacher wrote.

And Juan Diego had selected this particular book because it was in English; he'd wanted more practice reading English, though his less-than-rapt audience (Lupe and Rivera and the disagreeable dog Dirty White) might have understood him better en español.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE—TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS

This is a mere matter of the moment. I think I shall be among the English poets after my death.

Soccer' is not an Americanism. It's short for 'Association Football' and was popularised by Charles Wreford-Brown, captain of the English national team 1894–5.

My favorite subject was either English or History. I had a really awesome high school education.

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

My English teacher, he's like, he's like Mr. Bu-fu.