300 Quotes on English

• After I learn more English, I'll work hard and make more films.

  Author: Zhang Ziyi

• 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.

  Author: Ziyi Zhang

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

  Author: Zhang Yimou

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

  Author: Zhang Yimou

• We lived on a farm in the English countryside, where we wrote a lot of our music. You really were treated like an artist during those days-not like product, which is now the mode.

  Author: Gary Wright

• The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.

  Author: Alexander Woollcott

• My early wounds were the English school system among other things. It wasn't merely the discipline, it was the ways in which boys got what was called the school spirit.

  Author: George Woodcock

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

  Author: George Woodcock

• We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.

  Author: Robin Williams

• 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

• If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

  Author: Oscar Wilde

• Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

  Author: Walt Whitman

• 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

• English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

  Author: E. White

• The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.

  Author: Rebecca West

• I speak two languages, Body and English.

  Author: Mae West

• In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.

  Author: Wim Wenders

• Dreams do come true, even for someone who couldn't speak English and never had a music lesson or much of an education.

  Author: Lawrence Welk

• 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

• English girls' schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century.

  Author: Mary Ward

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

  Author: Edmund Waller

• 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.

  Author: Herschel Walker

• Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

  Author: Alice Walker

• 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

• I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

  Author: Diane Wakoski

• Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

  Author: Andrzej Wajda

• 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

• Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.

  Author: Tony Visconti

• 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.

• I don't want to play only Latin women. I want to have roles in English.

  Author: Paz Vega

• English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.

  Author: Leon Uris

• I was a terrible English student.

  Author: Leon Uris

• 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

• The American Revolution was, in fact, a battle against the philosophy of Locke and the English utilitarians.

  Author: Robert Trout

• Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

  Author: Pete Townshend

• The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

  Author: Alexis Tocqueville

• My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

  Author: James Thurber

• Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

  Author: Kristin Thomas

• People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

  Author: Kristin Thomas

• 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

• 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

• I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

  Author: Amy Tan

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

  Author: Al Talal

• I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor.

  Author: Max Sydow

• It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.

  Author: Max Sydow

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

  Author: Henry Sweet

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

  Author: Gloria Swanson

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

  Author: Billy Sunday

• A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

  Author: Gustav Stresemann

• Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

  Author: Mark Strand

• English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

  Author: Lytton Strachey

• With the requests of some he complied, and has published a discourse, delivered before the Society for recovering drowned persons, which may be justly pronounced one of the most beautiful and interesting sermons in the English language.

  Author: John Strachan

• There are reasons for believing that the English increase will far surpass others, and that the diffusion of the United States will ultimately produce the general population of America.

  Author: Ezra Stiles

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

  Author: David Stiers

• Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

  Author: Wallace Stevens

• An English man does not travel to see English men.

  Author: Laurence Sterne

• English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

  Author: Norman Spinrad

• I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

  Author: Norman Spinrad

• I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal the English, but I do not believe they can be surpassed in that respect.

  Author: John Sousa

• I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.

  Author: Martin Smith

• The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.

  Author: Goldwin Smith

• Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

  Author: Goldwin Smith

• This is what Hollywood tends to do. It tends to disregard tradition, history and anything factual, twisting it and turning it and making it all okay regardless of what the English may think of it.

  Author: Christian Slater

• Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

  Author: Irwin Shaw

• Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

  Author: George Shaw

• The promise of America is one immigration policy for all who seek to enter our shores, whether they come from Mexico, Haiti or Canada, there must be one set of rules for everybody. We cannot welcome those to come and then try and act as though any culture will not be respected or treated inferior. We cannot look at the Latino community and preach "one language." No one gave them an English test before they sent them to Iraq to fight for America.

  Author: Al Sharpton

• Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

  Author: Shakira

• Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

  Author: John Shadegg

• From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.

  Author: Harry Seidler

• So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.

  Author: Jon Secada

• In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. It doesn't make any difference if, like me, you couldn't even speak English until you were in your twenties.

  Author: Arnold Schwarzenegger

• I played English football - soccer - instead of American football, because we couldn't afford the equipment.

  Author: Wally Schirra

• I was also in love with the English language.

  Author: Dick Schaap

• I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

  Author: Dick Schaap

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Sometimes I'll go by and there are a couple of swans, the next day it's a few ducks. I'd like to stop there every day for a year and capture how it changes, then put it all together to create an incredible image of a traditional English scene.

  Author: Graeme Saux

• One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb.

  Author: Edward Sapir

• 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

• English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

  Author: Edward Sapir

• I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.

  Author: Carl Sandburg

• But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

  Author: George Saintsbury

• 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

• You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

  Author: John Ruskin

• 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

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

  Author: Jean Rousseau

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

  Author: Jean Rousseau

• If the English want a king, it is their business. If the Russians want communism, it is their business. If the Americans want our form of government, it is our business.

  Author: Julius Rosenberg

• Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

  Author: Theodore Roosevelt

• I was born in Texas and I lived there 'till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom, lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew.

  Author: Michelle Rodriguez

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

  Author: Chi Rodriguez

• The English countryside is the most staggeringly beautiful place. I can't spend as much time there as I like, but I like everything about it. I like fishing, I like clay- pigeon shooting.

  Author: Guy Ritchie

• 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

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

  Author: Manfred Richthofen

• There were sometimes from forty to sixty English machines, but unfortunately the Germans were often in the minority. With them quality was more important than quantity.

  Author: Manfred Richthofen

• 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

• Fraud, robbery, and murder have characterized the English usurpation of the government of our country. Why, for the last fifty years we have been robbed in the matter of taxes of hundreds of millions.

  Author: John Redmond

• It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

  Author: Helen Reddy

• The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

  Author: Ronald Reagan

• I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

  Author: Stephen Rea

• I was more excited than scared, at the opportunity to work in an English movie.

  Author: Aishwarya Rai

• The Social-Democratic Federation took part in all the political and economic struggles of the English working class; it took pains to bring Socialist views home to them, not only through agitation and propaganda, but also by actions.

  Author: Karl Radek

• '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

• 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

• I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

  Author: Philip Pullman

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

  Author: Alain Prost

• I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

  Author: Jack Prelutsky

• 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

• My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

  Author: Frederik Pohl

• It is a culture voice, but it is a very American culture voice, and I am very used to English culture voice. So I had to work like hell to flatten those R's.

  Author: Christopher Plummer

• The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.

  Author: Bernard Pivot

• All the English speakers, or almost all, have difficulties with the gender of words.

  Author: Bernard Pivot

• Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag.

  Author: Zebulon Pike

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

  Author: Alan Perlis

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

  Author: Alan Perlis

• The English approach to ideas is not to kill them, but to let them die of neglect.

  Author: Jeremy Paxman

• Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

  Author: Pope Paul II

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

  Author: Andy Partridge

• Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days.

  Author: Evan Parker

• I've done quite a few adverts. I've also done some presenting and acting work in Spain. I did a lot of Spanish education videos for people wanting to learn English.

  Author: Christopher Parker

• Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

  Author: Sarah Palin

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

  Author: Wilfred Owen

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

  Author: James Otis

• Oh that's very English, that's probably why. They just go "LOL" in America.

  Author: Kelly Osbourne

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

  Author: Aristotle Onassis

• We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.

  Author: Richard O'Brien

• Apparently Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.

  Author: Conan O'Brien

• My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.

  Author: Paul Nurse

• In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

  Author: Trevor Nunn

• I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

  Author: Florence Nightingale

• Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.

  Author: Mike Myers

• Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.

  Author: Alfred Musset

• Let us work toward greater cooperation with all Caribbean Countries, whether we speak English, Dutch, French or Spanish, whether we are independent or not, and whether we be island or continental territories.

  Author: Said Musa

• Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle.

  Author: Gilbert Murray

• No one's going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.

  Author: Rupert Murdoch

• At the very least we should be given a bit of credit and a little bit of space, and maybe the media should think we could help them discover why English teams do not win European competitions.

  Author: Jose Mourinho

• And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think.

  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

• 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

• The short English miles are delightful for walking. You are always pleased to find, every now and then, in how short a time you have walked a mile, though, no doubt, a mile is everywhere a mile, I walk but a moderate pace, and can accomplish four English miles in an hour.

  Author: Karl Moritz

• The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

  Author: Robert Morgan

• Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English.

  Author: Michael Moore

• I know all about you. You're the people waiting on the shoreline with the warm towels and the hot chocolate after the woman swims the English Channel.

  Author: Gwen Moore

• The true sovereign is not the American president nor the English king, but the Lord of the Second Advent.

  Author: Sun Moon

• For me, even just being English was a whole sort of experience in as much as I'm Australian.

  Author: Radha Mitchell

• When I entered college, it was to study liberal arts. At the University of Pennsylvania, I studied English literature, but I fell in love with broadcasting, with telling stories about other people's exploits.

  Author: Andrea Mitchell

• I say 20 words in English. I say money, money, money, and I say hot dog! I say yes, no and I say money, money, money and I say turkey sandwich and I say grape juice.

  Author: Carmen Miranda

• 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.

  Author: Dennis Miller

• The world still consists of two clearly divided groups: the English and the foreigners. One group consists of less than 50 million people; the other of 3,950 million. The latter group does not really count.

  Author: George Mikes

• 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

• Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

  Author: H. Mencken

• I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

  Author: Golda Meir

• 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

• Yes, for my undergrad I majored in Criminal Justice and minored in Political Science and English.

  Author: Matthew McGrory

• 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

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

  Author: Roddy McDowall

• The difference between a contemporary liberal and a socialist is that to a liberal the most beautiful word in the English language is 'forbidden', whereas to a socialist the most beautiful word is 'compulsory'.

  Author: John McCarthy

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

  Author: Karl Marx

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

  Author: Olivier Martinez

• 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.

  Author: Olivier Martinez

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

  Author: Neville Marriner

• So, sometimes, when I'm not happy with my performance and I have to think, I will think in English.

  Author: Sophie Marceau

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

  Author: Sophie Marceau

• Oh, I'm not English, I cannot talk on behalf of an English person. I'm French. I can say about French. They are quite emotional, though, and they talk about their emotions.

  Author: Sophie Marceau

• I went to a catholic public school St Helens and learned English by watching bugs bunny cartoons.

  Author: Nick Mancuso

• The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

  Author: Thomas Macaulay

• Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.

  Author: F. Lucas

• John Henry Newman was as English as roast beef, even if he lacked a passion for cricket.

  Author: Clifford Longley

• The time given to athletic contests and the injuries incurred on the playing field are part of the price which the English-speaking race has paid for being world conquerors.

  Author: Henry Lodge

• I have long been interested in landscape history, and when younger and more robust I used to do much tramping of the English landscape in search of ancient field systems, drove roads, indications of prehistoric settlement.

  Author: Penelope Lively

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

  Author: Lucy Liu

• English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different.

  Author: Bai Ling

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

  Author: John Lindh

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

  Author: Gyorgy Ligeti

• I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad.

  Author: Jet Li

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

  Author: Jonathan Lethem

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

  Author: Mario Lemieux

• 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.

  Author: Vivien Leigh

• I disliked singing in English and neither liked the story nor the character of Cressida.

  Author: Walter Legge

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

  Author: Nicholas Lea

• 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

• The Divinity could be invoked as well in the English language as in the French.

  Author: Wilfrid Laurier

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

  Author: Wilfrid Laurier

• 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

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

  Author: Doug Larson

• 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

• I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

  Author: Christian Lacroix

• However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.

  Author: William Labov

• I am now completing research supported by NSF and NEH that is mapping changes in the English language through all of North America, for both mainstream and minority communities.

  Author: William Labov

• It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.

  Author: William Labov

• This African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways, and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect spoken in continental North America.

  Author: William Labov

• I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

  Author: Chiaki Kuriyama

• 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

• My early education was in the public school system of Omaha, where, retrospectively, I realize that my high school training served me in good stead for the basic subjects of mathematics, English, foreign languages and history.

  Author: Lawrence Klein

• I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.

  Author: Sally Kirkland

• 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

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

  Author: Garrison Keillor

• If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.

  Author: John Keegan

• For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry.

  Author: Paul Kane

• English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

  Author: Abdul Kalam

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

  Author: Oliver Kahn

• Croquet is tough. People play for months because the rules are so bizarre. Those crazy English.

  Author: Jane Kaczmarek

• 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

• In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada.

  Author: Harry Johnston

• And I agreed with that, and I couldn't wait to change my name anyway, because I'm not too fond of the name of Reginald. It's a very kind of '50s English name.

  Author: Elton John

• The recent riots in France demonstrate the problem European countries face where second and third generation immigrants still do not consider themselves French, German, or English.

  Author: Bobby Jindal

• A number of Americans were used, most often unwillingly, by North Korea to arm spies with English-speaking skills so they could target American interests in South Korea and beyond.

  Author: Robert Jenkins

• To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.

  Author: Randall Jarrell

• Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

  Author: Thomas Jane

• We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

  Author: P. James

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

  Author: Henry James

• German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!

  Author: Helmut Jahn

• Yeah, Wacko Jacko, where did that come from? Some English tabloid. I have a heart and I have feelings. I feel that when you do that to me. It's not nice.

  Author: Michael Jackson

• Printing ballots in multiple languages costs millions of dollars every year. It also discourages immigrants from integrating into American society and gaining the benefits that come from speaking English.

  Author: Ernest Istook

• My father was the son of immigrants, and he grew up bilingual, but English is what my father taught me and what he spoke to me. America's strength is not our diversity; it is our ability to unite around common principles even when we come from different backgrounds.

  Author: Ernest Istook

• Instead of this confusion, we need the unifying force of an official language, English, which is the language of success in America.

  Author: Ernest Istook

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

  Author: Ernest Istook

• To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

  Author: Ernest Istook

• And of course we are familiar with the English common law rule of thumb that said a man could in fact use a stick no bigger than his thumb to discipline his wife and family.

  Author: Patricia Ireland

• 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

• Realistically, English is a universal language; it's the number one language for music and for communicating with the rest of the world.

  Author: Enrique Iglesias

• I - and there are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who felt on this subject as I do - have always liked my Celtic countrymen and disliked the English nation; it is a national trait of character, and I cannot help it.

  Author: Douglas Hyde

• The English press, are so nosy, and the English seem to love that eavesdropping.

  Author: Michael Hutchence

• Being English, I always laugh at anything to do with the lavatory or bottoms.

  Author: Elizabeth Hurley

• 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

• 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

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

  Author: John Hume

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

  Author: Gordie Howe

• American professional athletes are bilingual; they speak English and profanity.

  Author: Gordie Howe

• 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

• Well, I'm half Australian, half English and I live in London. That is the only reason I came upon this story. My Australian mother, Meredith Hooper, was invited in late 2007 by some Australian friends to make up a token Australian audience in a tiny fringe theater play reading of an unproduced, unrehearsed play called 'The King's Speech.'

  Author: Tom Hooper

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

  Author: Roald Hoffmann

• If we do not get No Child Left Behind right for Limited English Proficient students, the law will be a failure for most schools in the 15th Congressional District, and for many across the nation.

  Author: Ruben Hinojosa

• The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

  Author: Tony Hillerman

• And I'm walking along and we're laughing, kidding, joking, and see he understood the leader, the one we called the leader, had some knowledge of English, although limited.

  Author: Betty Hill

• 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

• 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

• In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning.

  Author: Utada Hikaru

• 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

• I speak English, so I am no longer cute. My tongue itches for French.

  Author: Anna Held

• I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.

  Author: Christie Hefner

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

  Author: Thomas Hearne

• I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

  Author: Lafcadio Hearn

• French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

  Author: Lafcadio Hearn

• For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.

  Author: Lafcadio Hearn

• 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

• One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index.

  Author: Lafcadio Hearn

• It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.

  Author: Lafcadio Hearn

• We English have sex on the brain. Not the best place for it, actually.

  Author: Laurence Harvey

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

  Author: Albert Hart

• From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.

  Author: Albert Hart

• Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions.

  Author: Albert Hart

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

  Author: Townsend Harris

• Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American.

  Author: Renny Harlin

• I was well warned about English food, so it did not surprise me, but I do wonder sometimes, how they ever manage to prise it up long enough to get a plate under it.

  Author: Margaret Halsey

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

  Author: Margaret Halsey

• 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

• 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.

  Author: Marvin Hagler

• 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.

  Author: Marvin Hagler

• Perhaps first and foremost is the challenge of taking what I find as a reader and making it into a poem that, primarily, has to be a plausible poem in English.

  Author: Marilyn Hacker

• I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

  Author: Maggie Gyllenhaal

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

  Author: Steve Guttenberg

• Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

  Author: David Guterson

• It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

  Author: Thom Gunn

• Me fail english? Thats unpossible.

  Author: Matt Groening

• I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.

  Author: Jonny Greenwood

• 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

• What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.

  Author: Stephen Greenblatt

• I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

  Author: Sue Grafton

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

  Author: Maxim Gorky

• This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English.

  Author: Arthur Golden

• When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!

  Author: Alma Gluck

• 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

• 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.

  Author: David Ginola

• 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.

  Author: Greg Ginn

• Your English style will no doubt put all the other gentlemen to bed. I speak figuratively, of course.

  Author: John Gielgud

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

  Author: Edward Gibbon

• I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

  Author: Gordon Getty

• The English light is so very subtle, so very soft and misty, that the architecture responded with great delicacy of detail.

  Author: Stephen Gardiner

• I'm an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.

  Author: George Galloway

• 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.

  Author: Adolf Galland

• The English was really my mother, it was never me. Being the daughter of my father, I always felt very French.

  Author: Charlotte Gainsbourg

• Every German child learns to speak English in school.

  Author: Cornelia Funke

• 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

• But the nature of my main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects.

  Author: Kenichi Fukui

• Before I joined the project most of the English people with whom I had made personal contacts were left wing and affected to some degree or other by the same kind of philosophy.

  Author: Klaus Fuchs

• I'd probably want to teach at university, because children would drive me insane. I suspect it would be English literature, Shakespeare and so forth. I've always been deeply, deeply in love with that kind of thing.

  Author: Stephen Fry

• I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.

  Author: Stephen Fry

• It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

  Author: Stephen Fry

• I've concentrated for a long time on English films because I've got two kids but my oldest son is 11 and I think I'm going to be away for about four months of year now.

  Author: Sadie Frost

• I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

  Author: Robert Frost

• I just remembered songs my grandmother taught me, and songs that I learned for the recordings. But, then I learned to speak Italian. When I was there, I hired a professor who stayed with me 24 hours a day. She wouldn't let me speak a word of English.

  Author: Connie Francis

• I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me.

  Author: John Fowles

• The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

  Author: E. Forster

• I love to laugh, it's my main thing. I love to abuse the English language.

  Author: Dan Fogelberg

• The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start trying to count them on one hand, you don't need any fingers.

  Author: Larry Flynt

• 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

• In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

  Author: Robert Fitzgerald

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