English Language Quotes

• My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets — no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!

  Philip Roth

  Communication, Ducks, Bombs

  "Portnoy's Complaint". Book by Philip Roth, 1969.

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• 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.

  Walt Whitman

  Communication, Race, Growth

  Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.557, Penguin

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• Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Inspiration, Learning, People

  Rita Mae Brown (2011). “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual”, p.47, Bantam

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  Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Relationship, Positive

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.18, St. Martin's Press

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• The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Simple, Language Words

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• Language is the dress of thought.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Learning, Thinking

  Lives of the English Poets "Cowley" (1779 - 1781)

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• Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

  George Orwell

  Communication, Joints, Language

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.

  James Fenton

  Language, Modern, English Poetry

  2002 An Introduction to English Poetry.

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• Most Englishmen are convinced that God is an Englishman, probably educated at Eton.

  E. M. Delafield

  Eton, Language, Educated

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• The English gentleman is a combination of silence, courtesy, dignity, sport, newspapers and honesty.

  Karel Capek

  Sports, Honesty, Silence

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• My least favorite phrase in the English language is 'I don't care.'

  James Caan

  Phrases, Care, Language

  "James Caan: What I've Learned". Interview with Ross Johnson, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.

  Samuel Johnson

  Language, Englishmen

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 15 (1780) Sir, your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods. During an exchange of coarse raillery customary among people travelling upon the Thames, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 26 (1780)

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• The gentleman is generous and treats all men as his equals, especially those whom he feels to be inferior in rank and wealth.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Men, Gentleman, Language

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• A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.

  George Mikes

  Behaviour, Crowds, Pushing

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• When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.

  Samuel Johnson

  Weather, Two, Firsts

  "The Idler" by Samuel Johnson, No. 11, June 24, 1758.

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

  Billy Sunday

  Way, Language, Walks

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• 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.

  James Thurber

  Lying, Expression, Giving

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Ignorance, Good Man, Privacy

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• Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Business, Communication, Past

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1840). “The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Prose and Verse: Complete in One Volume”, p.313

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• The English language is nobody's special property.

  Derek Walcott

  Special, Language, Property

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton, 1988.

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  Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  Fun, Mean, Broken

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• Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Communication, Inspiration

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• I speak two languages, Body and English.

  Mae West

  Two, Body, Language

  "Body Language Pocketbook". Book by Max A. Eggert (p. 17), September 1, 2012.

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• A different language is a different vision of life.

  Federico Fellini

  Life, Work, Communication

  Federico Fellini, Bert Cardullo (2006). “Federico Fellini: Interviews”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Ronald Reagan

  Funny, Business, Military

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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