Top 100 First English Quotes

#1. The first English settlers of North America knew they were making history. New Englanders in particular were so sure of it that they started writing their own accounts of themselves as soon as they got here.

Edmund Morgan

First English Quotes #259165
#2. Memorable among the Saxon warriors were Hengist and his wife (? or horse), Horsa. Hengist made himself King in the South. Thus Hengist was the first English King and his wife (or horse), Horsa, the first English Queen (or horse).

W.C. Sellar

First English Quotes #427100
#3. In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada.

Harry Johnston

First English Quotes #876400
#4. His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.

Peter Ackroyd

First English Quotes #1690403
#5. The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.

Florence Nightingale

First English Quotes #21897
#6. I came to Los Angeles for the first time in 1994. I spoke no English. I only knew how to say two sentences: 'How are you?' and 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.'

Penelope Cruz

First English Quotes #28416
#7. Jessica swallowed. "I think you had better stick to English."
"But Italian is so moving," Dain said.
"To ho voluto dal primo che ti vedi." I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you.
"Mi tormenti ancora." You've tormented me ever since.

Loretta Chase

First English Quotes #28783
#8. 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

First English Quotes #36042
#9. You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.

Emily Rios

First English Quotes #37567
#10. 'Othello' was my first Shakespearean discovery. I was obsessed with drama at school, and I studied the play for my English GCSE. Desdemona is the part that everyone wants, but Iago's wife Emilia is the one I've always been drawn to.

Michelle Dockery

First English Quotes #86693
#11. I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time; to say 'high Anglo-Catholic' would be a real English understatement.

John Hurt

First English Quotes #132875
#12. The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640's, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688.

Bernard Bailyn

First English Quotes #138809
#13. The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event.

Gloria Swanson

First English Quotes #165833
#14. Whenever I write a paragraph in English, I first check it with the Google Translator, and most often it says no language detected.

M.F. Moonzajer

First English Quotes #199968
#15. China's cinema has been rising for some time; it has more exposure, so my chances of becoming internationally known are better. But the first thing I have to do is learn English. If I can grasp the language, then perhaps I can think about the U.S.

Ziyi Zhang

First English Quotes #200222
#16. Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

Terry Pratchett

First English Quotes #201003
#17. I did everything in my power not to be an actress. I went off and did a teacher-training course first, so I could teach English and Drama - because I'm not thick, surprisingly enough.

Sarah Douglas

First English Quotes #213072
#18. In my first season I was learning about English football in a new team. I scored 13 which isn't bad, but I think I can do better.

Luis Garcia

First English Quotes #217156
#19. You'll hear people say it's racist to test. Folks, it's racist not to test. Because guess who gets shuffled through the system oftentimes? Children whose parents don't speak English as a first language, inner-city kids. It's so much easier to quit on somebody than to remediate.

George W. Bush

First English Quotes #225420
#20. Many people are intimidated by doctors ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.

Erma Bombeck

First English Quotes #231779
#21. The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mean Master Geoffrey Chaucer.

William Caxton

First English Quotes #259176
#22. I'm older than my sister so I started writing first. I started writing at school. I was always top of my class in composition, essays, English Lit and all of that.

Joan Collins

First English Quotes #276322
#23. My dad is a minister, and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English.

John Boyega

First English Quotes #276923
#24. 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

First English Quotes #279243
#25. Italian was my first foreign language. I speak it better than English.

Iman

First English Quotes #315029
#26. The first country that I went to outside of America was Japan and I was completely shocked - especially since I was 16 and over there by myself. I was like: "I don't get it; there's nothing in English!"

Cameron Diaz

First English Quotes #319001
#27. On our American tour bus, the bunks are a bit taller so that we don't bash our heads. On the English bus, we bash our heads every morning. It's not the best thing to do first thing when you wake up.

Liam Payne

First English Quotes #319394
#28. I am all for the inclusion of foreign cultures, not their omission in our media. Foreign names, brands, and inventions must be allowed to show and to compete in US publications. Today, most foreign words are still banned. And almost 7 billion people whose first language is not English are silenced.

Thorsten J. Pattberg

First English Quotes #325355
#29. My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.

Jencarlos Canela

First English Quotes #346507
#30. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language - it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Brene Brown

First English Quotes #366102
#31. When I first came over to the States, I started writing, I think, as a way to help myself learn English. I would start stapling together little booklets for myself.

Marie Lu

First English Quotes #378747
#32. To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.

Cecil Rhodes

First English Quotes #402357
#33. I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

First English Quotes #422409
#34. Joe was so tired that he had slept through first hour Spanish, second hour history, and most of third hour English. The English teacher, Mrs. Lane, hadn't taken a liking to that. She decided to send Joe to the principal to discuss why he was so sleepy, which Joe hadn't taken a liking to.

Belart Wright

First English Quotes #451655
#35. When I first met him (Michael) at the beginning of the year and found out that I would have to be his lab partner in bio and the year-long series of projects in AP English, I seriously considered taking night school classes and getting a GED just to avoid him.

Stephanie Wardrop

First English Quotes #457530
#36. My father is Cuban. Spanish was my first language, but I don't speak it that much anymore because I had dyslexia, and in school they work with you only in English. But I'm proud to be Latina, and most people don't know I am.

Bella Thorne

First English Quotes #472508
#37. In the first half of the 20th century, fashion was simply not a very English thing to do.

Mary Quant

First English Quotes #488994
#38. I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.

Colm Toibin

First English Quotes #492378
#39. I found that I was just hopeless at school. It was just a total bore. First, I passed in art and English, and then just art. Then I passed out.

Joe Strummer

First English Quotes #513725
#40. I always serve the writer first because I'm English trained, even though I'm American.

Robert Englund

First English Quotes #564279
#41. When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

Wilmer Valderrama

First English Quotes #577955
#42. First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.

Juan Felipe Herrera

First English Quotes #578183
#43. I write in English. My first album came out in Italy, and I toured and did gigs.

Violante Placido

First English Quotes #609090
#44. People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career.

Helena Bonham Carter

First English Quotes #666194
#45. I couldn't speak English. I'm in kindergarten, and the only reason I got through to first grade is because I cheated.

Louis Zamperini

First English Quotes #681527
#46. When the Killers first came out, a lot of people thought we were English, and it touched a chord in me, because my roots are very American.

Brandon Flowers

First English Quotes #700264
#47. The first article carrying Vonnegut's byline, 'This Business of Whistle Purchasing,' a lighthearted criticism of a school fund-raiser, was submitted at the urging of his sophomore English teacher.

Charles J. Shields

First English Quotes #726067
#48. English should have a word for that feeling you get when you first wake up in a strange room and have no freaking idea where you are.
Hotezzlement?

David Wong

First English Quotes #728258
#49. 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.

John Fowles

First English Quotes #742941
#50. Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.

Jack Jason

First English Quotes #775007
#51. Because Spanish is a feeling-based language that comes first from the heart, just as English is a thinking-based language that comes first from the head.

Victor Villasenor

First English Quotes #778127
#52. Now, I know I'm going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it ... "Bob swore!" - as the Englishman said for "Good night", when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English. "Bob swore," my ducks!" (Chapter XXII)

Charles Dickens

First English Quotes #792999
#53. All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere.
The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

Robert Winder

First English Quotes #799950
#54. English football has just had a transfer window imposed for the first time, so it will be interesting to see how managers cope with the squads they have until it re-opens.

David Ginola

First English Quotes #807804
#55. The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

First English Quotes #892334
#56. Even on the first day we invaded Plover's house we sensed the conundrum that Americans are faced with in England: they're too frightened of English people to behave rudely to them, and too ignorant to know how to behave politely.

Lev Grossman

First English Quotes #894154
#57. The First Amendment ... begins with the five loveliest words in the English language: 'Congress shall make no law'.

George Will

First English Quotes #995264
#58. At first I thought I would have to put on an English accent and try a sort of affected Shakespeare thing.

Leonardo DiCaprio

First English Quotes #1015686
#59. All theorems have three names: a French name, a German name, and a Russian name, each nationality having claimed to discover it first. Once in a while there's an English name, too, but it's always Newton.

Arthur Mattuck

First English Quotes #1020390
#60. In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English.

Pankaj Mishra

First English Quotes #1046435
#61. The original Jethro Tull was a 19th century English agriculturist who invented a seed drill you see ... the first automatic process where by small holes were made in Mother Earth and even smaller seeds were deposited one at a time and neetly covered over as a cat does after having being naughty.

Ian Anderson

First English Quotes #1104325
#62. Why in the world anyone in America is allowing another language (other than English) to be his first ... I don't know

Margaret Thatcher

First English Quotes #1133297
#63. I lived in England to learn English. When I went to England for the first time, it was like being on the Moon. I had no friends, I couldn't speak the language. I was very isolated.

Jean Alesi

First English Quotes #1144117
#64. Expressing emotion is not so easy. He has to remind himself that English is not her first language. Expressing emotion can be difficult even when the words are familiar.

Elise Valmorbida

First English Quotes #1145981
#65. Today 350 million people speak English as their first language and around 450 million have it as a second language. That is roughly one in every seven people on the planet.

Niall Ferguson

First English Quotes #1166650
#66. A case could be made, in fact, that the English were the first victims of the British empire: without their conquest, that empire could not have been built.

Paul Kingsnorth

First English Quotes #1192123
#67. President Bush gave his first-ever presidential radio address in both English and Spanish. Reaction was mixed, however, as people were trying to figure out which one was which.

Dennis Miller

First English Quotes #1195078
#68. We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.
I have no native tongue.

Chuck Palahniuk

First English Quotes #1238322
#69. Radcliffe is the first important English novelist to use poetic epigraphs, interpolated poems, and poetic fragments decoratively, as it were, for their suggestive or mood-enhancing effects. (Matthew

Ann Radcliffe

First English Quotes #1266828
#70. We had at our disposal the first operational jet, which superseded by at least 150 knots the fastest American and English fighters. This was a unique situation.

Adolf Galland

First English Quotes #1274665
#71. I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.

Lupita Nyong'o

First English Quotes #1286333
#72. It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?' It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it.

Steve Winwood

First English Quotes #1306978
#73. English is my second language. Laughter is my first.

Paul Krassner

First English Quotes #1316384
#74. I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.

Kenneth Branagh

First English Quotes #1324426
#75. For me, when I did 'Thor,' they changed my lines at the last minute, and then I had to speak with an English accent - and it was horrifying. I was in front of a crew of 250 people on my first day - never happened to me before.

Rene Russo

First English Quotes #1344712
#76. I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy.

Constance Markievicz

First English Quotes #1345006
#77. God Child is a free and inspirational translation of Adam. Adam means 'human', not 'man'. The Hebrew for 'man' is 'aish'. In English man can mean both man and human, which may have caused the confusion in the first place. If Adam isn't the first male Homo sapiens, who or what is he?

Stefan Emunds

First English Quotes #1379643
#78. Books provide a handy shorthand when Rory's mostly MIA father, Christopher, is first introduced to viewers. Christopher's offer to buy Rory the Compact Oxford English Dictionary she covets is sincere; his lack of ability to follow through on his good intentions is Christopher in a nutshell.

Jennifer Crusie

First English Quotes #1386963
#79. Elizabeth Lutyens was the first professional composer that I ever knew. I sent someextremely infantile pieces that I I'd written and got marvellous encouragement andinterest from her ... she's certainly the English composer who's influenced me themost.

Richard Rodney Bennett

First English Quotes #1401720
#80. I sang in English my whole life; I just happened to decide that I had a passion for Latin music, and I wanted to jump into Latin music first.

Prince Royce

First English Quotes #1403691
#81. Our parents taught us to love God, love our family and love our country. Their own grandparents were immigrants. Their first language may not have been English, but the hopes and dreams they had for their children were purely American.

Martin O'Malley

First English Quotes #1423305
#82. Even though many Indians can read or speak English, for most, it is not their first language. At the office, we speak in English, but we consume our culture in our own language.

Amish Tripathi

First English Quotes #1431770
#83. This is the first time I will tell my story in English, a language still new to me. The journey to this moment has been a long one.

Hyeonseo Lee

First English Quotes #1480557
#84. Never, and by this I mean never, criticise the English weather. Especially if you're an alien. For an English woman, it's as though you are scolding her first born child. For an Englishman, it's as if you are criticising the size of his penis. Or even worse: his football team.

Angela Kiss

First English Quotes #1489074
#85. Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print - writing in English, interviewing Americans - validated my presence here.

Jose Antonio Vargas

First English Quotes #1496799
#86. I studied in American school, so yes, I grew up speaking English and Spanish. Obviously, Spanish is my first language.

Eiza Gonzalez

First English Quotes #1508123
#87. At first the English were very surprised by our disregarding the Hague Convention. But from 1916 onward they used at least as much poison as we did.

Otto Hahn

First English Quotes #1511465
#88. How do you tell a valuable French book?'
'First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.

Ernest Hemingway,

First English Quotes #1525070
#89. I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

George Bernard Shaw

First English Quotes #1605055
#90. I have a handicap in that English is not my first language. So even though I'm a writer, I don't write anymore because it's just harder in English.

Patricia Riggen

First English Quotes #1612403
#91. And in busy London there now grew up one of the greatest gifts that the English genius was to leave the world. For in the reign of Elizabeth I began the first and greatest flowering of the glorious English theatre.

Edward Rutherfurd

First English Quotes #1615992
#92. Bass Ale's triangle logo was the first registered trademark in the English-speaking world, and today that sturdy oldness is a big part of the brand's appeal.

Christian Rudder

First English Quotes #1641218
#93. Lyrics are important, but it's hard, because English isn't my first language - although it feels like it is these days! I grew up with amazing melodies, so getting that right on a song has always been the key thing for me, but there's no reason why a great melody doesn't deserve great lyrics.

Avicii

First English Quotes #1666679
#94. London was a spice mecca. The first recipe for curry in English was actually published in 1747.

Tom Parker Bowles

First English Quotes #1690270
#95. I think I am less self-assured when I write English than I would be if I were writing in my first language. I have to test each sentence over and over to be sure that it's right, that I haven't introduced some element that isn't English.

Louis Begley

First English Quotes #1692330
#96. The English criminal code, later known as the "Bloody Code," was brutal in the late 18th century. By the time the first legal reforms were enacted in 1826, 220 crimes - many of them relatively petty crimes against property as Dickens describes in the rest of the paragraph - were punishable by death.

Susanne Alleyn

First English Quotes #1750618
#97. I told my nephew that if he wanted to get on in motor racing, the first thing he should do was master English. Thank goodness he now speaks it.

Juan Manuel Fangio

First English Quotes #1756739
#98. In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

First English Quotes #1809036
#99. I was 23 years old, a freshman at university, and there I was, on the first day, sitting in a remedial English class. I was so ashamed I almost got up and left, but somehow I knew inside that if I ran away from this, I would hate myself forever.

Bill Cosby

First English Quotes #1813691
#100. But for the first time, I don't feel like the English language has developed enough letters in the alphabet to adequately express the words I want to say to you.

Colleen Hoover

First English Quotes #1817505

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