Top 100 Good English Quotes
#1. 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
#2. On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.
Phil Collins
#3. [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
#4. 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
#5. I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.
Mark Twain
#6. '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
#7. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.
Julia Glass
#8. I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.
Northrop Frye
#9. And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well:
And yet words are no deeds.
King Henry VIII. Act 3, Scene 2
William Shakespeare
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. I was an educated girl. I'd done very well in school. I had a good point average and graduated from USC as an English teacher. My dad didn't even finish high school.
Marlo Thomas
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. Americans were most likely good people ... the only thing wrong with them, David thought, was that they spoke English very badly.
Anne Holm
#18. My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time.
Herschel Walker
#19. 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
#20. I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish.
George Crumb
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. The English scene got more media attention with their emphasis on fashion, with the safety pins and all. There were some really good bands over there. The Sex Pistols were great.
Greg Ginn
#24. 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
#25. About Grade 9 and Grade 10, I had a fantastic drama teacher, and it was one of the first subjects I actually felt that I was good at. I wasn't a mathematician. Didn't like science, any of those subjects. English and Drama were the two subjects that I loved and felt that I was good at.
Deborah Mailman
#26. 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
#27. You have people who are good at English but don't have the training in Buddhism or Shambhala, or they have the training but are not good in English. Getting that mixture is really rare.
Sakyong Mipham
#28. 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
#29. You speak very good English for an American.
Nico
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing. And once, when I got an assignment back, she'd written: 'This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!' That made a big impression on me.
Andrew Clements
#33. I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who, during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin, said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was plenty good enough for her.
Christopher Hitchens
#34. I wasn't particularly good at school so always found essay writing hard, so I didn't do that well at English or history, even though I enjoyed it.
Ruby Bentall
#35. I've been told I have an Irish temper, I know I have Scottish thrift, and, like the English, I love a good show.
Jeanette MacDonald
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. Goodbye Darcy, goodbye Jean, goodbye stone cottage, scratchy towels, fields of wildflowers; good bye gorgeous Peak District ... OK English People, for your own good, get off the roads, here we come!
Susan Branch
#40. I'm skipping, but Cam doesn't have a class until this afternoon, so he's a good boy."
"And your a bad boy?"
"Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy."
"Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#42. They are coming to teach us good manners!" I replied in English. "But they won't succeed, because we are gods.
Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.
Vikram Seth
#46. 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
#47. Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language.
Ruth Rendell
#48. A fellowship to Oxford acquainted me with the depths of English cooking. By the twenty-first century, London's best restaurants are as good as Paris's, but not in the 1950s.
Donald Hall
#49. To read makes our speaking English good.
Joss Whedon
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.
Khaled Hosseini
#53. Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.
James Thurber
#54. Where's your sketch pad?" I asked.
... "I gave that up," Kay said. "I wasn't very good, so I changed my major."
"To what?"
"To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history."
"I like a woman who knows what she wants."
Kay smiled. "So do I, but I don't know any.
James Ellroy
#55. We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.
James Purefoy
#56. Italian is the language of song. German is good for philosophy and English for poetry. French is best at precision; it has a rigour to it.
Maurice Druon
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
Bill Bryson
#60. I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together.
A.S. Byatt
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. I love to write, and I love to read too, but that doesn't mean I like to write about reading - 'cause nothing ruins the fun of reading a good story like the evil English army of Discuss, Analyze, and that hideous duo Compare and Contrast.
Kevin Emerson
#65. 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
#66. I have a good memory for words, and when I come upon a word I don't know, I remember it, or try to - it's almost like a tic. I also just have a good feeling for how words are made and formed in English and the etymologies that give you prefixes and suffixes.
Michael Chabon
#67. I feel I have a lot to learn from English football and I am completely open to good influences in my way of thinking football. But I also have things to give them.
Jose Mourinho
#68. I'm singing 'English Tea' from my new album 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.' I have a cup of tea in the morning, so it's something good to wake up to.
Paul McCartney
#69. Well, I'm trilingual myself. I am, I know how to speak Spanish, English, obviously, and I speak pretty good Ebonics.
Cam Newton
#70. 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
#71. The English are very proud of their Parliament, and week in, week out, century after century, they have pretty good cause to be.
Martha Gellhorn
#72. 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
#73. London has this culture of the theatre that is so big, it was a like a dream - but I never had a thought to be able to play here because my English was not very good. So being given the opportunity to come work here was like a gift.
Elena Roger
#74. 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
#75. They don't talk the same language as us. I don't mean that they don't speak English, but that their minds are different. They're like animals, and because I hate the sight and sound of them, and because you're a Britisher, I'm telling you to get out now while the going's good.
Eric Ambler
#76. 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
#77. I'd love to be able to do a really good English movie.
Mitch Hewer
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.
Natalie Goldberg
#82. Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
#83. 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
#84. I learned my job from English dramatists. Tennessee Williams was no good for me, New York stuff was no good to me.
William Monahan
#85. 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
#86. For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.
Anne Holm
#87. I had a very good English teacher who said to me that she thought I ought to do it. She - I don't know, she saw something thank goodness because I think if it hadn't been encouraged by somebody that serious, I'm not sure what would've happened to me.
Maggie Smith
#88. I would have thought you'd import an English staff?"
"Good heavens, no! I would not wish a British chef on anyone except the French tax collectors.
Dan Brown
#89. The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me'.
Christopher Hitchens
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. If we had a starting XI that no one could argue about it wouldn't say a lot for English football. We'd probably be on a downward spiral. It's good that people have different ideas about who should play.
Rio Ferdinand
#93. The situation right after the fight wasn't too good; I believe I'm still the only champion in the world who never received the belt inside the ring once you've won the title. I held that against the English fans for a long time but I felt that also motivated me.
Marvin Hagler
#94. My favorite pudding is good old English apple pie.
Jeremy Bulloch
#95. What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither.
K. Hari Kumar
#96. 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
#97. Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.
John Banville
#98. 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
#100. Americans understand better than the Europeans and the English that any publicity is good.
Carl Andre
