Top 100 Good English Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.
Mark Twain
#4. 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
#5. You speak very good English for an American.
Nico
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. I'd love to be able to do a really good English movie.
Mitch Hewer
#14. 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
#15. I move my lips when I read
I'm painfully slow
so I like really good English.
John Le Carre
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. '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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. In Buenos Aires, I have a very close friend who speaks very good English, and she taught me. It was quite difficult because the muscles of your mouth are used to your language, and then when you want to speak another language, they don't go to the place they need to go to make the sound.
Elena Roger
#22. I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.
Carol Berg
#23. Curiouser and curiouser! Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).
Lewis Carroll
#24. I don't think the elite class is only speaking the good English.
Mamata Banerjee
#25. To this day, good English usually means the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.
Jack Lynch
#26. 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
#27. [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
#28. '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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. Americans were most likely good people ... the only thing wrong with them, David thought, was that they spoke English very badly.
Anne Holm
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. To read makes our speaking English good.
Joss Whedon
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. Well, I'm trilingual myself. I am, I know how to speak Spanish, English, obviously, and I speak pretty good Ebonics.
Cam Newton
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#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. 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
#93. 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
#94. Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
#95. 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
#96. I learned my job from English dramatists. Tennessee Williams was no good for me, New York stuff was no good to me.
William Monahan
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
