English It Quotes

#1. Seriously, you don't have to know English. It'd be nice, a nice little plus. We don't want miracles. You don't have to know the country's language. But just some shapes, that's all. A square. A little geometry.

David Spade

#2. [Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique.

Sandra Cisneros

#3. Pride! In English it is a Deadly Sin. But in Urdu it is fakhr and nazish - both names that you can find more than once on our family tree.

Kamila Shamsie

#4. 'Shabiha' is a difficult word to translate into English. It comes from the word Syrians used to describe the luxury Mercedes favored by the Assad family's operatives that the enforcers of the regime used to move money, smuggle weapons and intimidate opponents.

Richard Engel

#5. Until the early middle years of the sixteenth century, when King Henry VIII began to quarrel with Rome about the dialectics of divorce and decapitation, a short and swift route to torture and death was the attempt to print the Bible in English. It's

Christopher Hitchens

#6. I'm seeing so much of America today, Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him - whenever things were not to his liking, he'd say that - I'm seeing so much of America today.

Karen Joy Fowler

#7. I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.

Miyavi

#8. You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean.

Cyndi Lauper

#9. Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

Sophie Marceau

#10. Do you know what 'meteorologist' means in English? It means liar.

Lewis Black

#11. My uncle is so funny - Don Vito. He was always fat with the craziest voice. Dude, he barely speaks English; it's just full-blown jibber-jabber. It's so funny to watch on TV because you really need subtitles because you can't understand him.

Bam Margera

#12. If your film is in English, it makes it that much easier to get a wide release.

Patricia Riggen

#13. It's easier for me to act in Spanish, but as soon as I get the lines in English and I know them by heart, it becomes really easy. You don't have to worry about the language anymore. It just takes more time. In Spanish, I can learn lines in 10 minutes. In English, it's going to take an hour.

Ana De La Reguera

#14. Pelapi. It is an old word. There is no single word like it in English. It means 'librarian,' but also 'apprentice,' or perhaps 'student.

Scott Hawkins

#15. Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

#16. German can take a lot more pathos than English can. When you say "pathetic" in English it's a disparaging term, but when you say "pathetisch" in German it's just a description, not necessarily negative. That says a lot already.

Daniel Kehlmann

#17. 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.

Olivier Martinez

#18. The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive.

Edgar Allan Poe

#19. There's this thing, they have in french: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English. It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out.

Neil Gaiman

#20. Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

Aravind Adiga

#21. In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.

Psy

#22. If we should be worrying about anything to do with the future of English, it should not be that the various strands will drift apart but that they will grow indistinguishable. And what a sad, sad loss that would be.

Bill Bryson

#23. Trinidadians love speaking their own English; it's full of poetic forms and can be playful and lyrical and comical. Trinidadians are verbal acrobats, and I love being on the island just to hear the people speak.

Monique Roffey

#24. I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.

Kristin Scott Thomas

#25. Prayer was not a sacred or holy thing. It was not spoken plainly, in Twi or English. It need not be performed on the knees or with folded palms. For Akua, prayer was a frenzied chant, a language for those desires of the heart that even the mind did not recognize were there.

Yaa Gyasi

#26. If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

Alan Perlis

#27. the Japanese ministry of Education acted with inappropriate haste and unforgivable cavalierness, implementing drastic change before anyone realized what was happening. . . . In English it would be almost ad bad as enforcing a new spelling of philosophy as filosofee.

Minae Mizumura

#28. you go back and back and back and it's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It's a fairy-tale!

Zadie Smith

#29. It sometimes happens to me while writing, that I seek a word; mischievous as it is it appears in English, it appears in Arabic, but refuses to come in Hebrew. To some extent I made up my Hebrew. Unquestionably, the influence of Arabic is dominant, my syntax is almost Arabic.

Sami Michael

#30. It was very liberating to be able to sing in English. It had a different resonance, different images. It was like being a stranger in a foreign land, which was helpful.

Charlotte Gainsbourg

#31. The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

William Hazlitt

#32. Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'It's like . . . Birmingham.

Natasha Pulley

#33. Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't.

J.R. Ward

#34. I learned Spanish at home and, since half my family doesn't speak English, it's my first language.

Odette Annable

#35. Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature.

Nathaniel Branden

#36. I always sang in English. It's just that nobody heard me.

Prince Royce

#37. In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb VACILAR ... It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.

John Steinbeck

#38. It's an important social duty to spread the word of English to people whose livelihoods depend on knowing the language.

Billy Collins

#39. It's very strange to be completely naked in public," said Jacob. "It isn't something Americans ordinarily do."
"I can't say it's very English, either," replied Henry.
"It's a Scottish thing, though, isn't it? With all the kilts and all that.

Caleb Crain

#40. My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

Kevin Brownlow

#41. I wasn't saying you were heartbroken." I sound like English is a new language for me, the way I stutter out the words. "I just meant it was hard for me to ... to watch."
He neither confirms nor denies that he might or might not have been even a teeny bit heartbroken.

Susan Ee

#42. If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business.

Eminem

#43. I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

James Joyce

#44. On the basis of this information, it would be possible to argue that if everybody spoke English (or Chinese or Esperanto for that matter) everybody would be at war even more often.

Andrew Dalby

#45. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Dean Wesley Smith

#46. My love of reading and the English language is something given to me by my parents, and I've passed it on to my children.

Corin Tucker

#47. Sitting here now today, I can forgive a lot of the English people because it only takes a hand full of bad people to do something stupid like that and it can make the whole country look bad.

Marvin Hagler

#48. And it occurred to me, standing there, just breathing with her, quiet settling around us, that those might be the three most beautiful words in the English language. We have time.

Ransom Riggs

#49. You English are like mad bulls ... you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, to heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation. I regard this as a personal insult ... You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England.

Wilhelm II

#50. Baseball. If there's a more beautiful word in the English language. I have yet to hear it ... baseball has served as such a powerful link between Dad and me, and later between me and my son.

Tim Russert

#51. In high school, I once sang 'Let's Get It On' and 'Brown Sugar' with a band that included my English teacher and my math teacher.

Chris Pine

#52. Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system?

Edward Jenks

#53. If we do run, you'll need four legs to keep up with me today, Edwards. Oh that's right, you've been holding back because you're English, and it's not sporting to run down a girl. Well, this girl's been kicking your butt.

April White

#54. The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

Colin Firth

#55. It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of government.

Margaret Thatcher

#56. I'm working on a film called 'Bonnie.' Bonnie means water. It's in English, and it's dealing with a future world in a megacity - which is what the U.N. says we're going to be - but in this megacity, a city that runs out of water.

Shekhar Kapur

#57. A whore, we've established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.

Elizabeth Wein

#58. If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Margaret Fuller

#59. I was in the fashion shows in Milan; I was seventeen, I was doing like 100 shows. People were asking, 'How does it feel to be the model of the moment?' It was hard for me to answer as myself. I barely spoke English.

Gisele Bundchen

#60. I feel very English. I'm proud of it. I wanted there to be a thread connecting everything, the songs, clothes, artwork, even the string arrangements. It all creates a certain atmosphere.

Gabrielle Aplin

#61. The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#62. John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

Bertrand Russell

#63. It's okay to be proud of your good English. But don't be proud of being poor at your Mother tongue. Only the scum of the earth do that.

Manasa Rao

#64. I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.

Stephanie Perkins

#65. I'll buy it right now, Jack," said an English voice, somehow familiar, "if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is.

Neal Stephenson

#66. In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd.

Julian Fellowes

#67. Is it my fault if I do not look like an English girl and I do not talk like a Nigerian? Well, who says an English girl must have skin as pale as the clouds that float across her summers? Who says a Nigerian girl must speak in fallen English ... ?

Chris Cleave

#68. I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.

William Golding

#69. During the settling of the American colonies, it was said that the Spaniards would first build a church, the Dutch would first build a fort and the English a tavern. Welcome to Charleston, an English colony founded in 1670.

Mark R. Jones

#70. Remember: If you go for a walk with a friend in England, don't say a single word for hours; if you go for a walk with your dog, talk to it all the time.

George Mikes

#71. The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

Oscar Wilde

#72. Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture.

John Robert Colombo

#73. The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed.
..

Virginia Woolf

#74. The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football.

Hesketh Pearson

#75. 'Jane Eyre,' when I think of that book, it conjures up the best moments of college English courses. Literature is extraordinary, especially when you have a good professor.

Edward P. Jones

#76. But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail.

Aporva Kala

#77. When I was a kid, it was thought I would do something in the visual arts because I was always drawing, but when we emigrated to Australia from Holland when I was seven, I learnt the English language, and I fell in love with it.

Michel Faber

#78. I loved English literature - if didn't it would have been hard - but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.

Benjamin Clementine

#79. Slave holding is very unusual among the English-speaking peoples. Canadians didn't do it. Australians didn't do it. The Democratic Party and the states they controlled did it!

Sean Hannity

#80. Homework's hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, 'Okay.' And then I sit down and they say, 'It's math.' 'No! Not math! English, history, anything!'

Angelina Jolie

#81. I can't even talk the way these people talk. 'Why you ain't?' 'Where you is?' Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

Bill Cosby

#82. It doesn't matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#83. God gets it. When you reach out to him, he's not looking for fancy words that would impress your English teacher. He sees your heart. A groan, a look, a sigh - he speaks every language. He understands.

Max Lucado

#84. God bless whoever invented football. It was the English, I think. And what a fantastic idea it was

Paolo Rossi

#85. The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

Robert Fitzgerald

#86. Films about the English monarchy, they tend to have a lavishness, sumptuous imagery, it's all very posh and rich.

Tom Hooper

#87. Has the casual use of profanity in English reached a high tide? That's a rhetorical question, but I'm going to answer it anyway: Fuck yeah.

Mary Norris

#88. Where's our teacher?"
"Probably getting it on with the English teacher."
- Alex Gold and Mike Wilson

R.J. Morse, R.J. Brookes

#89. It is not always easy for a young player to come through at the club level, because all the clubs are able to buy for 20 million or 30 million and it is hard for young English talent to come through and to get recognition and be able to be part of the squad or start playing.

Edwin Van Der Sar

#90. People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.

John McWhorter

#91. The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

Wilfred Owen

#92. I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

Christopher Hitchens

#93. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

P.D. James

#94. Better not I tell you. You want to know what I do? I say doudou, if you have trouble you are right to come to me. And I kiss her. It's when I kiss her she cry - not before.

Jean Rhys

#95. Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.

Juan Pablo Galavis

#96. You don't want to lose the foreign feel of a book entirely, but for me the prime requisite is to get it sounding good in English. If it sounds clumsy, readers will pounce on it of course.

Anthea Bell

#97. I believe in eating smaller meals more often throughout the day to keep the metabolism going. Don't deprive yourself, just make better choices. At 50 years old it is definitely a lot harder to stay in shape then it was when I was in my 20's.

Todd English

#98. I'd been trying for a while to get parts that weren't just the English bad guy, so it was quite refreshing to be playing someone who was a compassionate, decent guy.

Sean Bean

#99. The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.

Sara Sheridan

#100. 'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.

Tom Paulin