Archaic English Quotes

Pearl spent the passing days buried so deep in the musty, dusty sorcery tomes that sometimes when she emerged, she spoke in archaic english. "Hast thou a light?" she'd asked him this afternoon when her study room had grown dark with gathering clouds. ~ Gail Dayton

The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring; and am headachy. So as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy
I turned me to- what thinkest 'ou
to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither. ~ K. Hari Kumar

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it. ~ Barbara Pym

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time. ~ Garrison Keillor

The young man never seemed to know what idleness was," marveled Cutler, "and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

European languages and a Google app can now turn your words into a foreign language, either in text form or as an electronic voice. Skype, an internet-telephony service, said recently that it would offer much the same (in English and Spanish only). But claims that such technological marvels will spell the end of old-fashioned translation businesses are premature. Software can give the gist of a foreign tongue, but for business use (if executives are sensible), rough is not enough. And polyglot programs are a pinprick in a vast industry. The business of translation, interpreting and software localisation (revising websites, apps and the like for use in a foreign language) generates revenues of $37 billion a year, reckons Common Sense Advisory (CSA), a consulting firm. ~ Anonymous

Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning ~ Michael Swanwick

I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come. ~ Michael Cox

I engage with New York and America but my parents pretty much hang out in this radius of Long Island where their friends are and where their work is. That's why you have people who have lived in New York for like 20, 30 years who don't speak English. They just live in a Chinese community or an Indian community. More than anywhere you'll find that in Queens. ~ Himanshu Suri

Prior to the Reform Act, the Supreme Court had ruled that the guilt or innocence of the property's owner was irrelevant to the property's guilt - a ruling based on the archaic legal fiction that a piece of property could be "guilty" of a crime. The act remedied this insanity to some extent; it provides an "innocent owner" defense to those whose property has been seized. ~ Michelle Alexander

I went to the States with that amount of prejudice which seems the birthright of every English person, but I found that, under the knowledge of the Americans which can be attained by a traveller mixing in society in every grade, these prejudices gradually melted away. ~ Isabella Bird

Let me tell you the following words as if I were showing you the rungs of a ladder leading upward and upward: Herzl; the Zionist Congress; the English Uganda proposition; the future world war; the peace conference where with the help of England a free and Jewish Palestine will be created. ~ Max Nordau

Having the Mass in one's native language is no guarantee that a person will understand the mystery of the Mass. On the contrary, if the vesture of the ceremony is too familiar, the participants too easily thinks he has mastered what it's all about. The familiar becomes the routine, the routine becomes ignored. Our own language is a comfort zone that insulates us form the shock of the Gospel, the scandal of the Cross, the lure of the unknown. I would rather have a huge dose of foreignness, of music that is not current, words that are strange, language that is archaic, hieratic gestures that are grandly incongruous to a democratic society. A person thrown into this situation knows at least that he is dealing with something utterly different and possibly far deeper than his day-to-day occupations. ~ Peter Kwasniewski

English is not merely a language anymore; it has become a way of life for millions of non-native English speakers around the world. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

One of the special beauties of America is that it is the only country in the world where you are not advised to learn the language before entering. Before I ever set out for the United States, I asked a friend if I should study American. His answer was unequivocal. "On no account," he said. "The more English you sound, the more likely you are to be believed." ~ Quentin Crisp

Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them. ~ John McWhorter

Marmite is my little English touch, and I'm crazy for chutneys. ~ Stephen Moyer

I'm rapping in English but in an African way. I'm not trying to sound like an American. ~ Emmanuel Jal

I think Brits probably feel that Americans are more like us than vice-versa, if that makes sense. Because we get everything American over here in Britain, but yet there are things which are staunchly English that you guys don't have. ~ Hayley Atwell

It came as a belated epiphany to me when I learned that the Greeks had several different words for the disparate phenomena that in English we indiscriminately lump together under the label love. Our inability to distinguish between, say, eros (sexual love) and storgé (the love that grows out of friendship) leads to more than semantic confusion. Careening through this world with such a crude taxonomical guide to human passion is as foolhardy as piloting a plane ignorant of the difference between stratus and cumulonimbus, knowing only the word cloud. ~ Tim Kreider

It is a very great mistake to suppose, as a few English cooks still do, that spaghetti and macaroni should be soaked in water before cooking. ~ Elizabeth David

MAINTAINING DOCTRINAL PURITY IS good, but it is not the whole picture for a New Testament church. The apostles wanted to do much more than simply "hold the fort," as the old gospel song says. They asked God to empower them to move out and impact an entire culture. In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, "Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him."1 ~ Jim Cymbala

Part of what makes a language 'alive' is its constant evolution. I would hate to think Britain would ever emulate France, where they actually have a learned faculty whose job it is to attempt to prevent the incursion of foreign words into the language. I love editing Harry with Arthur Levine, my American editor-the differences between 'British English' (of which there must be at least 200 versions) and 'American English' (ditto!) are a source of constant interest and amusement to me. ~ J.K. Rowling

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong. ~ Russell Baker

Lightnin' Hopkins was something of a fixture on the Houston coffee house scene so we were witness to eccentric blues brilliance close up. Then, believe it or not, along came the wave of the English cats like John Mayall, Eric Clapton and the Stones embracing the great American art form - the blues. ~ Billy Gibbons

When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word "depression." Depression, most people know, used to be termed "melancholia," a word which appears in English as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. "Melancholia" would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a blank tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness.

It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated -- the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer -- had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control. ~ William Styron

Philistinism! - We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing. ~ Matthew Arnold

Powell belongs, in fact to the first generation of American poets who may have grown up without even a vestigial connection to the accentual-syllabic, rhyming English tradition - his inventive lines have this absence at their back. ~ Stephen Burt

Both my parents had heavy accents, and so did everybody they knew. It's a rhythm thing - people who speak English where they have to hesitate and think of the right word. And I think it rubbed off. ~ Christopher Walken

I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

In my fairy tale, another year and a half has passed. I'm graduating with my English degree. And I ask you to marry me. What would you say?"
"Would you get down on one knee?"
"Absolutely."
"I would say yes. Hell yes. ~ Kim Holden

contextualization is inevitable. As soon as you choose a language to speak in and particular words to use within that language, the culture-laden nature of words comes into play. We often think that translating words from one language to another is simple - it's just a matter of locating the synonym in the other language. But there are few true synonyms. The word God is translated into German as Gott - simple enough. But the cultural history of German speakers is such that the word Gott strikes German ears differently than the English word God strikes the ears of English speakers. It means something different to them. You may need to do more explanation if you are to give German speakers the same biblical concept of God that the word conveys to English speakers. ~ Timothy J. Keller

The expression "fee thulumaatin thalaathin," translated into English
as "a threefold darkness," indicates three dark regions involved during
the development of the embryo. These are:
a) The darkness of the abdomen
b) The darkness of the womb
c) The darkness of the placenta
As we have seen, modern biology has revealed that the embryological
development of the baby takes place in the manner revealed in
the verse, in three dark regions. Moreover, advances in the science of
embryology show that these regions consist of three layers each.
The lateral abdominal wall comprises three layers: the external
oblique, the internal oblique, and transverses abdominis muscles.91
Similarly, the wall of the womb also consists of three layers: the
epimetrium, the myometrium and the endometrium.92
Similarly again, the placenta surrounding the embryo also consists
of three layers: the amnion (the internal membrane around the foetus),
the chorion (the middle amnion layer) and the decidua (outer amnion
layer.)93
It is also pointed out in this verse that a human being is created in
the mother's womb in three distinct stages.
Indeed, modern biology has also revealed that the baby's embryological
development takes place in three distinct regions in the mother's
womb. Today, in all the embryology textbooks studied in departments
of medicine, this subject is taken as an element of basic kno ~ Harun Yahya

Do not look so surprised, my dear," he said with a grin. "I might be a useless aristocrat, but I'm not a complete simpleton. I can certainly carry on a conversation about which word is the best English translation for what I wish to do to your mouth just now. ~ Manda Collins

Your strong jaw, your perfectly mussed-up hair, the lean but somehow still muscular body, the height - you're practically Captain America."
"Except English."
"Even worse! ~ Michelle Hodkin

Every person wants to stretch himself and widen his audience. Since Hollywood has got more exposure and is shown all over the world, it's obvious that every actor would want to do an English film and explore himself. ~ Om Puri

I think that people assumed I was white because of my last name. My father is Caucasian, my mother is Hispanic. But English was my second language, believe it or not. ~ George Zimmerman

I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Racist" is not - as Richard Spencer argues - a pejorative. It is not the worst word in the English language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it - and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years. ~ Douglas Coupland

Each woman was valued at 150 pounds of tobacco, which was the same price exacted from Jane Dickenson when she eventually purchased her freedom. Not surprisingly, then, with their value calculated in tobacco, women in Virginia were treated as fertile commodities. They came with testimonials to their moral character, impressing on "industrious Planters" that they were not being sold a bad bill of goods. One particular planter wrote that an earlier shipment of females was "corrupt," and he expected a new crop that was guaranteed healthy and favorably disposed for breeding. Accompanying the female cargo were some two hundred head of cattle, a reminder that the Virginia husbandman needed both species of breeding stock to recover his English roots.37 Despite ~ Nancy Isenberg

Stop being silly, her name is Reshidatu. It is a pity that our official language is English, and a greater pity that our three major languages is the WaZoBia. ~ S.A. David

Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition. ~ George Bernard Shaw

You're an English major, aren't you?"
"Hey!" Immediately retreating, Keith swatted at him with a dishcloth. "Leave my brain alone. It's resting."
"Sorry, sorry." He leaned away, hands up to display his surrender. "I didn't mean it, I take it back."
"You'd better ~ Matthew Haldeman-Time

[L]et us imagine a mirror image of what is happening today. What if millions of white Americans were pouring across the border into Mexico, taking over parts of cities, speaking English rather than Spanish, celebrating the Fourth of July rather than Cinco de Mayo, sleeping 20 to a house, demanding bilingual instruction and welfare for immigrants, opposing border control, and demanding ballots in English? What if, besides this, they had high rates of crime, poverty, and illegitimacy? Can we imagine the Mexicans rejoicing in their newfound diversity?
And yet, that is what Americans are asked to do. For whites to celebrate diversity is to celebrate their own declining numbers and influence, and the transformation of their society. For every other group, to celebrate diversity is to celebrate increasing numbers and influence. Which is a real celebration and which is self-deception?
Whites - but only whites - must never take pride in their own people. Only whites must pretend they do not prefer to associate with people like themselves. Only whites must pretend to be happy to give up their neighborhoods, their institutions, and their country to people unlike themselves. Only whites must always act as individuals and never as members of a group that promotes shared interests.
Racial identity comes naturally to all non-white groups. It comes naturally because it is good, normal, and healthy to feel kinship for people like oneself. Despite the fashionable view that race ~ Jared Taylor