English Language Quotes - Page 13

• It's [the word “sorry”] the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.

  Minette Walters

  Sorry, Responsibility, Forgiving

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• Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

  Alex Cox

  Squares, Littles, Language

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• 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.

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• 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

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

  Philip Wollen

  Four, Letters, Cages

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• 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

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• 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.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Kings, Literature, Lasts

  Lafcadio Hearn (2012). “Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn”, p.111, tredition

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

  Hemant Mehta

  Religion, Trust In God, Language

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• Words have a longer life than deeds.

  Pindar

  Deeds, Longer Life

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• Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

  Peter Adamson

  Philosophical, Errors, Islam

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• Alexander von Humboldt’s wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Person’s stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present.

  Daniel Walker Howe

  Art, Views, World

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• 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.

  William Labov

  America, Community, Minorities

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• 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

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

  Kevin Smith

  Men, Language, Vulgarity

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• 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

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

  Robert Breault

  Constitution, Language, Written

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• 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.

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• Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Past, Errors, Language

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Wish, Language, British

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• 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.

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• 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.

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