Quotes on English

I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their resume they can speak fluent English. In reality, they can't even count up to three.

Author: Greg Akcelrod

The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!

Author: John Astin

It was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.

Author: Kenneth Baker

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.

Author: Christian Bale

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.

Author: Sean Bean

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

Author: Robert Benchley

I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very much part of Europe both in my upbringing and outlook.

Author: Bruce Bennett

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.

Author: Edward Bond

Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.

Author: Jimmy Breslin

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

Author: Jackson Browne

My favorite pudding is good old English apple pie.

Author: Jeremy Bulloch

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

Author: Michael Caine

"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?

Author: George Carlin

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

Author: Raymond Chandler

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben', 'Hello Rodney', 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'.

Author: Cher

Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.

Author: Sandra Cisneros

The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door.

Author: Julian Clary

Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone.

Author: John Clayton

The English contribution to world cuisine - the chip.

Author: John Cleese

In Hollywood through the 50s, there were black, English, and Middle European housekeepers and maids.

Author: Bill Condon

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.

Author: George Crumb

Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.

Author: Cyril Cusack

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

Author: Clarence Darrow

One of my favorite poets, Neruda, writes close to the bone. Though I know only a little Spanish, I like to compare the Spanish and English lines and see how the translator worked.

Author: Anita Diament

I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.

Author: Kate DiCamillo

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.

Author: Steve Earle

Everything has changed. When I was at school and was told I had better learn English, I said: What for? The English are a hell of a long way away!

Author: Juan Fangio

Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.

Author: Robert Fitzgerald

Myspace alone has just over 80 million users and ranks as the sixth most popular English language website and the eighth most popular site in the world.

Author: Mike Fitzpatrick

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.

Author: Cornelia Funke

Every German child learns to speak English in school.

Author: Cornelia Funke

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

Author: Edward Gibbon

French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

Author: Alma Gluck

The most beautiful words in the English language are 'not guilty'.

Author: Maxim Gorky

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

Author: Stephen Greenblatt

Me fail english? Thats unpossible.

Author: Matt Groening

Someone's just told me the English are still trying to take over the United States - is that true?

Author: Steve Guttenberg

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.

Author: Otto Hahn

The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.

Author: Margaret Halsey

It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.

Author: Townsend Harris

In 1763 the English were the most powerful nation in the world.

Author: Albert Hart

I didn't know what kind of jobs, because how was I prepared? At best, I would be an AB in English.

Author: John Hawkes

At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

Author: Lafcadio Hearn

The English race is the best at weeping and the worst at laughing.

Author: Thomas Hearne

Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically - while simulating a triumphant march forward - than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?

Author: Alexander Herzen

The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody.

Author: Utada Hikaru

For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.

Author: Utada Hikaru

I learned English, my sixth language at this point, quite quickly.

Author: Roald Hoffmann

By the by, if the English race had done nothing else, yet if they left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind.

Author: Gerard Hopkins

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.

Author: Gordie Howe

If the word 'No' was removed from the English language, Ian Paisley would be speechless.

Author: John Hume

There is abundant proof that the opening of our ports always tends to raise the price of foreign corn to the price in the English market, and not to sink the price of British corn to the price in the continental market.

Author: Joseph Hume

The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration.

Author: Samuel Huntington

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

Author: Tony Iommi

English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.

Author: Ernest Istook

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Author: Henry James

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

Author: James Joyce

We are Bayern Munich and English teams always have trouble as soon as they leave the island.

Author: Oliver Kahn

The funniest line in English is "Get it?" When you say that, everyone chortles.

Author: Garrison Keillor

I studied voice for three months to get rid of my English accent. I changed my hair to blonde. I knew I could be sexy if I had to.

Author: Deborah Kerr

A movie of mine is going to be released in Japan next year. I play a waitress who's a really regular girl in this movie. The English title isn't decided yet, but in Japanese it's I'll Get on the A Train Sometime.

Author: Chiaki Kuriyama

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

Author: Karl Lagerfeld

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.

Author: Doug Larson

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.

Author: Cyndi Lauper

He is ready, if the occasion presents itself, to throw the whole English population in the St. Lawrence.

Author: Wilfrid Laurier

We shall never be understood or respected by the English until we carry our individuality to extremes, and by asserting our independence, become of sufficient consequence in their eyes to merit a closer study than they have hitherto accorded us.

Author: Henry Lawson

My heritage is English, so I'm proud to be back here.

Author: Nicholas Lea

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

Author: Mario Lemieux

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

Author: Jonathan Lethem

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.

Author: Gyorgy Ligeti

I haven't spoken English with native speakers in several months. I've been speaking Arabic.

Author: John Lindh

If you see the Sopranos, you're not going to be speaking in the Shakespearean English.

Author: Lucy Liu

There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate.

Author: Neville Marriner

If you want to be happy, live discreetly. Does that make sense in English?

Author: Olivier Martinez

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

Author: Karl Marx

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.

Author: Roddy McDowall

Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.

Author: John McGahern

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.

Author: Scott McNealy

Well, I am from India and I wanted to make films in English for the international market in India. So that was really the main thing, and then of course economically it was cheaper to make films in India.

Author: Ismail Merchant

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.

Author: Jose Mourinho

You see how Spanish, Italians, Portuguese play football. I don't say they are perfect, I say English football has a few things to learn from them in the same way they have a lot of things to learn from English football.

Author: Jose Mourinho

Find a priest who understands English and doesn't look like Rasputin.

Author: Aristotle Onassis

Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.

Author: James Otis

Come English Settlement, I had it in my head that I didn't want to tour.

Author: Andy Partridge

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

Author: Alan Perlis

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

Author: Terry Prachett

I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

Author: Alain Prost

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

Author: Ludwig Quidde

'Ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.

Author: Willard Quine

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.

Author: Samuel Richardson

The English had hit upon a splendid joke. They intended to catch me or to bring me down.

Author: Manfred Richthofen

Everything depends on whether we have for opponents those French tricksters or those daring rascals, the English. I prefer the English. Frequently their daring can only be described as stupidity. In their eyes it may be pluck and daring.

Author: Manfred Richthofen

I read the greens in Spanish, but putt in English.

Author: Chi Rodriguez

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

Author: Jean Rousseau

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

Author: Jean Rousseau

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

Author: Geoffrey Rush

I had one companion. He was a teacher from the Ukraine who spoke English so we could communicate a bit. I learnt a few Russian words, but it was hard to concentrate.

Author: Mathias Rust

These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.

Author: Edward Sapir

I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.

Author: Fred Savage

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.

Author: Marilyn Savant

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.

Author: Dorothy Sayers

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

Author: Dorothy Sayers

I'd forgotten I'd done the anime called Spirited Away, the English version of a Japanese film.

Author: David Stiers

When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.

Author: Billy Sunday

The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event.

Author: Gloria Swanson

Intended to serve as an introduction to both the linguistic and also the practical study of spoken English.

Author: Henry Sweet

Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.

Author: Al Talal

Those were the days, you know. It's an English thing; as soon as it's gets to 6 pm, you have to go and have a drink. We used to stick to that religiously.

Author: Andy Taylor

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.

Author: Julie Taymor

We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real state of things in Mexico.

Author: Edward Tylor

I was a terrible English student.

Author: Leon Uris

More has been screwed up on the battlefield and misunderstood in the Pentagon because of a lack of understanding of the English language than any other single factor.

Author: John Vessey, Jr.

It's difficult for me to feel that a solid page without the breakups of paragraphs can be interesting. I break mine up perhaps sooner than I should in terms of the usage of the English language.

Author: A. Vogt

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

Author: Derek Walcott

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

Author: Alice Walker

Others may use the ocean as their road; Only the English make it their abode.

Author: Edmund Waller

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Author: Booker Washington

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

Author: James Whistler

In spite of holidays when I was free to visit London theatres and explore the countryside, I spent four very miserable years as a colonial at an English school.

Author: Patrick White

It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.

Author: William Wiley

It even has the same phraseology as the English orders of knighthood, companions and this sort of thing.

Author: George Woodcock

Ang Lee was educated in the West and his English is good.

Author: Zhang Yimou

For over ten years I always had, but I don't speak English.

Author: Zhang Yimou

I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.

Author: Michael York