English Grammar Quotes

• Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Writing, Editing, Speech

  Richard Chenevix Trench (1867). “On the Study of Words Lectures Addressed (originally) to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training-school, Winchester by Richard Chenevix Trench”, p.22

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• Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.

  William Safire

  Perfect, Perfection, Grammar

  William Safire (2011). “Watching My Language:: Adventures in the Word Trade”, p.383, Random House

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• Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

  Joan Didion

  Music, Power, Play

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 16, 2011

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• Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar.

  Robert Breault

  Law, Grammar

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• Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

  Robert Graves

  Poet, Break, Should

  Lecture at Oxford. Time, December 15, 1961.

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• Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

  E. B. White

  Inspiring, Faith, Writing

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Cat, Fighting

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.9, 谷月社

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• My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

  A. A. Milne

  Writing, Letters, Spelling

  Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6

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• Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

  Bill Bryson

  Baseball, Football, Latin

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• I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Husband, School

  "Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. June 12, 2004.

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• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

  Bill Bryson

  Latin, Simple, Confusing

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• Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!

  Roald Dahl

  Powerful, Simple, Littles

  Roald Dahl (1987). “The Roald Dahl omnibus”, Hippocrene Books

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• For most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to?

  Bill Bryson

  Book, Writing, Men

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• Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Latin, Simple, Historical

  Robert A. Heinlein (1959). “The Door Into Summer”, Roc

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• I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period.

  Robert Burchfield

  Believe, Years, Political

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• Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory.

  John Muir

  Memories, Latin, Lessons

  John Muir, Terry Gifford (1996). “John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings”, p.29, The Mountaineers Books

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• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

  Bill Bryson

  Latin, Coffee, Writing

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