English Language Quotes - Page 14

• Words have a longer life than deeds.

  Pindar

  Deeds, Longer Life

  26 Copy quote

• The most disgusting four letter word in the English language is 'cage'.

  Philip Wollen

  Four, Letters, Cages

  20 Copy quote

• Please stop using the word "Negro."... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.

  Mary Church Terrell

  Names, Race, People

  47 Copy quote

• Put your trust in god are the most dangerous words in the English language.

  Hemant Mehta

  Religion, Trust In God, Language

  8 Copy quote

• Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

  Alex Cox

  Writing, Conservative, Language

  Interview with Maximilian Le Cain, sensesofcinema.com. January 2003.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been in New York only a few days and I have learned only two words of your language: one is Swell, and the other is Lousy. ... 'It's swell to be with you and excuse, please, my lousy English!

  Vicki Baum

  New York, Two, Language

  Vicki Baum (1964). “It was all quite different: the memoirs of Vicki Baum”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules ," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy .

  Philip K. Dick

  Philosophy, Law, Gunpowder

  "To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962". Book by Gregg Rickman, 1989.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The illuminated ones can take any form -- a man, a woman, a child, an elder, or even a dog. It is not inconsequential that the English language allows for the dyslexia of the spelling of the word dog: God spelled backward.

  Jean Houston

  Dog, Children, Men

  4 Copy quote

• When animals do something noble we say they are behaving ‘like humans’. When humans do something disgusting we say they are behaving ‘like animals’. Clumsy use of the English language perpetuates the myth that animals are inferior and disposable beings.

  Philip Wollen

  Animal, Noble, Use

  35 Copy quote

• The reaction to any word may be, in an individual, either a mob-reaction or an individual reaction. It is up to the individual to ask himself: Is my reaction individual, or am I merely reacting from my mob-self? When it comes to the so-called obscene words, I should say that hardly one person in a million escapes mob-reaction.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Self, May, Language

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2004). “D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles”, p.238, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.

  Kevin Smith

  Men, Language, Vulgarity

  21 Copy quote

• No' is the second shortest word in the English language, but one of the hardest to say.

  Raymond Arroyo

  Language, Hardest

  "The Power of 'No'” by Raymond J. Arroyo, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 9, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Wish, Language, British

  6 Copy quote

• I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

  Michael Cunningham

  Way, Firsts, Language

  4 Copy quote

• Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  War, Appreciate, Southern

  10 Copy quote

• Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.

  F. Murray Abraham

  Men, Phones, Trying

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• America is not a nation of separation. All our citizens are Americans. The common denominator is our language. Our language is English. The glue that binds generation after generation is both our Constitution and our English language.

  James Traficant

  America, Glue, Generations

  4 Copy quote

• At all periods of the [English] language it is difficult to assign a beginning date to most new words and meanings. They tend to slip into the language silently, and are placed in date order only when scholars subsequently get to work.

  Robert Burchfield

  Order, Language, Periods

  4 Copy quote

• A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.

  Paul Rusesabagina

  Lying, People, Community

  Paul Rusesabagina, Tom Zoellner (2006). “An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography”, p.206, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country.

  Robert Burchfield

  Mother, Country, America

  4 Copy quote

• The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

  Mark Twain

  Fall, Skins, Legs

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.3305, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a language is corruptible, then a constitution written in that language is corruptible.

  Robert Breault

  Constitution, Language, Written

  4 Copy quote

• It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophical, Writing, Talking

  1911 Introduction to Mathematics.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know, we have main English language parties, federalist parties, and traditionally the ones to watch would be the Conservatives, who form the government, and then the Liberals.

  Rick Mercer

  Party, Government, Watches

  "Rick Mercer, Hot On The Canadian Campaign Trail". "Weekend Edition" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. April 23, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.

  Chinua Achebe

  Home, Weight, Able

  "Chinua Achebe: A life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source