Top 100 English Good Quotes
#1. To read makes our speaking English good.
Joss Whedon
#2. The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.
William Hazlitt
#3. English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it's good enough for the children of Texas.
Miriam A. Ferguson
#4. You're very good. Are you a professional artist?"
"I dabble," she said.
Shadow had spent enough time talking to the English to know that this meant either that she dabbled, or that her work was regularly hung in the National gallery or the Tate Modern.
Neil Gaiman
#5. Until House came along I don't think the English made very good dance records, you know, there were very few really good English Rap records, whereas once House came along all of a sudden we started and now I think we probably lead the world, and have overtaken America in dance music.
Fatboy Slim
#6. I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.
Golda Meir
#7. We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
P.D. James
#8. We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.
Stephen Fry
#9. I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.
Conrad Black
#10. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of "having a good personality" was not widespread until the twentieth.
Susan Cain
#11. 'Good English' is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.
C.S. Lewis
#12. Good shoes are important. I wear English brogues in a wide fitting. They last me years.
David Bailey
#13. TEN [exploding]. Bright! He's a common ignorant slob. He don't even speak good English!
ELEVEN [slowly]. He doesn't even speak good English.
Sherman L. Sergel
#14. Every writer dreams of having a backyard cottage, similar to Dahl's 'writing hut.' English cottages and charming huts might seem out of reach, but a good carpenter could build a modest cottage on the cheap.
Kate Klise
#15. There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job,
J.K. Simmons
#16. I do not speak the English so good, but then I speak the driving very well.
Emerson Fittipaldi
#17. Ang Lee was educated in the West and his English is good.
Zhang Yimou
#18. I have no idea why one of our most original filmmakers would want to spend two years of his life translating someone else's movie from Spanish into English. And it wasn't such a good film in Spanish, either.
Joel Siegel
#19. English football is in a bad way because the foreign players here are so good, so dominant.
Kevin Keegan
#20. We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
William Kingdon Clifford
#21. He smelt of English sweat and English beer, and it was a good cure for dead faces.
Robert Westall
#22. I don't know if he was English but he spoke like it. He said good afternoon when everybody else said hardy weather or she looks like rain.
Patrick McCabe
#23. Charlie cursed in English as there are no really good Navajo curse words.
R. Allen Chappell
#24. When I go to photograph somebody, they say, "What do you want me to do?" Those are the most frightening words in the English language. I want to say, "Please, go over into good light and do something unusual.
John Loengard
#25. I believe you're speaking English, Turner, but I'm not sure you're doing a good job of it. It makes a girl wonder what you meant by, 'Here, let me take you to gaol.'" "I always mean precisely what I say, even if I don't say precisely what I
Courtney Milan
#26. I move my lips when I read
I'm painfully slow
so I like really good English.
John Le Carre
#27. To this day, good English usually means the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.
Jack Lynch
#28. There wasn't a single good character in 'Titanic' who was English and this is typical.
David Warner
#29. He couldn't, as a respectable master in an English public school, have taken us to a brothel. Yet how I wish he had! His introduction to sexual experience would, I feel sure, have been a masterpiece of tact; it might well have speeded up our development by a good five years.
Christopher Isherwood
#30. Very bad indeed. Defoe never acquired a really good style, and can in no true sense be called a "master of the English tongue." Nature had gifted Defoe with untiring energy, a keen taste for public affairs,
Daniel Defoe
#31. My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
Margaret Atwood
#32. Maria looked at the TARDIS ... 'Is that really your carriage?' She asked. 'It is not very good, monsieur. It has no wheels.'
'It doesn't need them,' laughed Amy. 'It's an English carriage. They don't have wheels.
'Does Monsieur Rory push it?'
'When necessary,' laughed Amy.
James Goss
#33. English language is the most universal language in history, way more than the Latin of Julius Caesar. It's the most punderful language because its vocabulary has a certain critical mass that makes a lingo good for punning.
Richard Lederer
#34. Its a perfectly good face, Sparhawk."
"It covers the front of my head. What else can you expect from a face?
David Eddings
#35. The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.
Idris Elba
#36. The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme.
James Fenton
#37. Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate understanding of death.
Kingsley Amis
#39. No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very 'aimable,' have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people: nothing really amiable about him.
Jane Austen
#40. When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.
David Dewhurst
#41. King Henry wants lands an'titles, like all the English."
"What do Scots want?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder. Darrow was far more sure footed than she was.
"A good woman, a warm bed, and food in their bellies." He grinned at her and she couldn't help but laugh.
Selena Kitt
#42. Excuse me, Mr Tall-and-Good-looking Wolfman, but can you help the English midget reach the sauce?' I think not.
Joss Stirling
#43. Curiouser and curiouser! Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).
Lewis Carroll
#44. My favorite subject was English or creative writing. We did poems and making a magazine, and I did one on celebrities. I called it 'Celebrity Life Magazine.' I interviewed my good friend Kaley Cuoco.
Ashley Tisdale
#45. It does seem to me that some one might write stories that should be lively, natural and helpful tales in which the English should be good, the morals pure, and the characters such as we can love in spite of the faults that all may have.
Louisa May Alcott
#46. The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad.
Wilkie Collins
#47. Noel [Charles, husband] and I love cooking. He does his cooking and I do mine. I'm the traditional English cook, with a twist now and then. Because I was married to an Italian, I'm also pretty good at Italian food. Noel, he can cook anything, so can Julian.
Cynthia Lennon
#48. I'd always been the confident guy in school. I was good in math and English, but I was still shy. I couldn't get up and speak in front of people. I was asked to do it when I was 10 years old and I burst out crying.
Chris Vance
#49. I think it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have not painted better.
William Hogarth
#50. I had no idea when I went to college what I'd be doing. I took organic chemistry and did terribly, but I was good in English and art. I took many courses and participated in as many activities as I could. I learned a lot about every single thing.
Martha Stewart
#51. My English is not very good-looking.
Celia Cruz
#52. Damn, she's good."
"Of course she bloody is," Pearl murmured, her ace still stuffed against Jack's neck, even though she sounded like the prim English woman she was, her tone turning curt. "She's my mother.
Scarlett Dawn
#53. They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It's so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#54. We have made a conscious effort to blend in with U.S. society and have done our best to develop good English skills. Today, both Johanna and I communicate in English with ease, and our children speak English at native fluency levels, but we continue to speak Icelandic at home.
Gudjon Bergmann
#55. When Jerry Lewis and I were big, we used to go to parties, and everybody thought I was big-headed and stuck up, and I wasn't. It was because I didn't know how to speak good English, so I used to keep my mouth shut.
Dean Martin
#56. A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#57. All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work.
Deborah Smith
#58. One of the maxims which the devil, in a late visit upon earth, left to his disciples, is, when once you are got up, to kick the stool from under you. In plain English, when you have made your fortune by the good offices of a friend, you are advised to discard him as soon as you can.
Henry Fielding
#60. I think it's part of being English, particularly if you are middle-class - you're always looking to be reminded that you are no good and you are always actually embarrassed about being successful.
Chris Martin
#61. Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree ... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist.
William Raspberry
#62. I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
Joshua Foer
#63. I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do.
Sebastian Arcelus
#64. When I was six or seven, we went to the nearest English primary school, St Weonards, about seven miles away. The teaching was good, and this was the start of my beginning to shine as a student.
Saul David
#65. I didn't know the English were good at swimming. I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool.
Arsene Wenger
#66. I wasn't that bothered with school; I was too mad into horses. But I liked reading and was good enough at English and always liked music.
Kate Thompson
#67. School was rough for me. I was a good student in middle school, but high school wasn't so fun. I still pulled through, though! I excelled in art, fashion, history and English literature - anything creative. Math and science I struggled a bit more in.
India De Beaufort
#68. in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men.
Theodore Roosevelt
#69. The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.
Samuel Richardson
#70. That's how it is with the English: if you score against them you're a good player; if you don't, you're not.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
#71. From what I've read, everyone has a claim on Merlin. Was he Scottish, Welsh, English or even French? All these countries have got a big claim on him and Camelot. That's why the Arthurian legends are so popular - because they are such good stories.
Colin Morgan
#72. One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.
Daniel Day-Lewis
#73. Henry James said there isn't any difference between "the English novel" and "the American novel" since there are only two kinds of novels at all, the good and the bad.
Eudora Welty
#74. Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.
Barack Obama
#75. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
John Steinbeck
#76. [T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants
neither alcohol nor meat
are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood.
Angela Carter
#77. The French are a logical people, which is one reason the English dislike them so intensely. The other is that they own France, a country which we have always judged to be much too good for them.
Robert Morley
#78. In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me 'Jackie Who?'.
Jackie Chan
#79. The English king's power was curbed by Parliament, though that wasn't always a good thing, as politicians often behave no better than monarchs - there are just more of them.
Karen Maitland
#80. It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.
William Shakespeare
#81. The very sight of a teapot puts a smile on the face of most people. One cannot help but think of more serene and genteel times. From a whimsical child's teapot to an elegant English Teapot, to collectible teapots that adorn some homes, they are a subtle reminder of all that is good in this world.
Barbara Roberts
#83. Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who'd been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons.
Hunter S. Thompson
#84. I was excellent at English and Drama. Maths and Science I was terrible at. I didn't have any interest in them. I was happiest at lunchtime, playing with my friends. But I love science now, that's the funny thing. And I'd be so good at geography, as I've been fortunate enough to travel the world.
Peter Andre
#85. What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither.
K. Hari Kumar
#86. My favorite pudding is good old English apple pie.
Jeremy Bulloch
#87. Because, as any English-speaking tourist will tell you, if you speak slow enough, loud enough, and maintain good eye contact, eventually they'll understand.
Poppy Inkwell
#88. I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
#89. Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all, of the quietness and purity of English domestic life.
Isabella Bird
#90. But-but ... " Timmie's eyes couldn't get any wider.
"Why did you tell her I'm your boyfriend? Why doesn't she know about your real one?"
That was a good question. I cast around for an answer. Any answer.
"He's English!" I settled on desperately. "And Mom ... Mom hates foreigners!
Jeaniene Frost
#91. English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.
Vivien Leigh
#92. I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.
Robert Barry
#93. The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.
Henry Steele Commager
#94. Do not suppose, dearest Sir, that I am so short-sighted as to destroy my life by English preaching, or any other preaching. St. Paul did much good by his preaching, but how much more by his writings.
Henry Martyn
#95. I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful.
Anthony Bourdain
#96. We have many obligations to this good lady, who is a kind neighbour, an obliging friend, and a most agreeable companion: she speaks English prettily, and is greatly attached to the people and the customs of our nation. They
Tobias Smollett
#97. My freshman English professor at Kent State University in 1984 told me I was a good writer, and she loved all the silly pictures I drew in my notebook. She said I should try writing children's books, and so I did.
Dav Pilkey
#98. The only prerequisites are past experience, a suitable personality and good communication skills: you need to be able to communicate adequately in English.
Paul Clitheroe
#99. I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.
Bernadette Devlin
#100. Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.
Nick Nolte
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
