English Language Quotes - Page 8

• Like all her friends, I miss her greatly...But...I am sure there is no case for lamentation...Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts.

  E. M. Forster

  Virginia, Light, Missing

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• I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

  Salman Rushdie

  Thinking, People, Use

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• The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

  Robert Benchley

  Doctors, Long, May

  Robert Benchley (1922). “Love Conquers All”

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• The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, Giving, Common

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.

  Amos Oz

  Latin, Greek, Language

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Thinking, Language, Kind

  Source: thefloatinglibrary.com

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• When we start making distinctions between soul and spirit, we're in very, very murky waters. There is the whole issue of the English language, which has a rather limited vocabulary when it comes to psychological descriptions, not to speak of spiritual descriptions. We're good mythically - the English language is superb for myth. But we're not very good for psychology or spirituality.

  Jean Houston

  Spiritual, Issues, Vocabulary

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• I have difficulties with contemporary language. Big difficulties. I counted, you know, something like 160 words have disappeared from the English language because of the use of the word "like." "I'm like, he's like" - not "thought," not "as if ."

  Toni Morrison

  Use, Language, Bigs

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

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• Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language.

  Ilana Mercer

  Rights, Identity, Groups

  "Uber Alec, barking-mad Bashir, death-defying libertarians". www.wnd.com. November 29, 2013.

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• Our children learn the phonetic method, which is why they're very good spellers, I suppose. Because rather than ABC or just saying a word, they'll have to go a as in apple and all the other a's there are in the English language. They learn that when they're four. Children all over America can tell you that a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y are vowels. But you ask them about that "sometimes y," and they can't tell you.

  Marva Collins

  Children, Apples, America

  Source: reason.com

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• It was Ronald Reagan who used to say that the 10 most frightening words in the English language are, "I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help."

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Helping, Language

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• It took a pretty drastic moment to shift my thinking towards visual arts. I got to a moment in my writing career when I wasn't trusting the language, I was really not trusting the written language, the English language. How do you work with a material that you don't have trust in? I had to step away from it and find another way of articulating and I had to do it without words.

  Truong Tran

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Design, Different, World

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1999). “The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays”, p.97, Cooper Square Press

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• Artists are perennially implored to consider 'the limitations of the medium.' Whoever invented this expression exaggerated the limitations of the English language. We are not concerned with what effects cannot be produced with our materials.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Artist, Expression, Language

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• No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

  Sam Rayburn

  Inspirational, Book, Communication

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• You and I must realize that the English language is filled with words that, in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity. For example, if you develop a habit of saying you 'hate' things - you 'hate' your hair; you 'hate' your job; you 'hate' having to do something - do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you use a phrase like 'I prefer something else'?

  Tony Robbins

  Motivational, Jobs, Hate

  Tony Robbins (2007). “Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

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• My conception of dominion status implies present ability to severe the British connection if I wish to.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wish, Connections, Dominion

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• I worked in a bookstore in Oslo, importing the English-language books.

  Per Petterson

  Book, Oslo, Language

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• I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fighting, India, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1947). “Gandhigrams”

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• The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Language, British

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• The collectors of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India's villages know British rule.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  India, Village, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1986). “The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi: Civilization, Politics and Religion”, Clarendon Press

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• If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead?

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Why Not, Language, Kill Me

  Mahatma Gandhi (1971). “Collected Works”

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• I am just not thinking of India's deliverance. It will come, but will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany ruined and humbled?

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fall, Thinking, India

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• I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  People, Language, Claims

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Ronald Duncan (2005). “Gandhi: Selected Writings”, p.100, Courier Corporation

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• My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Attitude, Language, British

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