Modern English Quotes

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. ~ Terry Pratchett

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion. ~ John Ruskin

Kershaw had long ago realized, apparently, that dealing with Brits was tricky. You had to listen to what a Brit was saying - which was invariably that he thought XYZ was a terrific idea and he hoped it went very well for you - while at the same time paying heed to the greasy, nauseous suspicion you had that, although every word and phrase indicated approval, somehow the sum of the whole was that you'd have to be a mental pygmy to come up with this plan and a complete fucking idiot to pursue it. After six years working with the Brits in various theatres he'd come to the conclusion that they didn't do it on purpose. The thing was, Brits actually thought that subtext was plain text. To a Brit, the modern English language was vested with hundreds of years of unbroken history and cultural nuance, so that every single word had a host of implications depending on who said it to whom, when, and how. British soldiers, for example, gave entire reports to their commanders by the way they said 'good morning, sir' and then had to spend half an hour telling them the detail, which was why the Brits always looked bored in briefings. They could sense the trajectory of the conversation, knew the bad news was coming now and the good news now and that there was a question on the end which needed thinking about. With a bit of work they could deduce the question, too, but they always waited politely for it to be asked so that no one felt rushed. ~ Nick Harkaway

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers. ~ George Orwell

Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system? ~ Edward Jenks

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. ~ Steven Pinker

T. S. Eliot and Jean-Paul Sartre, dissimilar enough as thinkers, both tend to undervalue prose and to deny it any imaginative function. Poetry is the creation of linguistic quasi-things; prose is for explanation and exposition, it is essentially didactic, documentary, informative. Prose is ideally transparent; it is only faute de mieux written in words. The influential modern stylist is Hemingway. It would be almost inconceivable now to write like Landor. Most modern English novels indeed are not written. One feels they could slip into some other medium without much loss. It takes a foreigner like Nabokov or an Irishman like Beckett to animate prose language into an imaginative stuff in its own right. ~ Iris Murdoch

I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period. ~ Robert Burchfield

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. ~ George Orwell

We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something o the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set – or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like man indeed. But, of course, it is not a ream man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.

Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Son's of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God. ~ C.S. Lewis

Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to
avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness
to expand. ~ Mark Abley

Jean shifted his commentary from his guard to me. "Drusilla, a grievance must be made against these ruffians and thieves. They have stolen my clothing and given me only this…this…." He ran out of words.
"Ugly-ass orange jumpsuit?" I offered, always ready to help Jean with his command of modern English.
"Oui, exactement. I demand that you obtain my release, tout de suite. And you must know, a woman who allows her husband to remain in such conditions for an entire evening must face reprimand."
I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms. "And you must know that, in this day and age, should a man reprimand his wife too much, said wife might leave her husband to enjoy a longer time in his prison cell wearing his ugly-ass orange jumpsuit. ~ Suzanne Johnson

If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper. ~ Rudolf Flesch

As their notoriety spread, these lethal men became known by a single word - Hassassin - literally "the followers of hashish." The name Hassassin became synonymous with death in almost every language on earth. The word was still used today, even in modern English . . . but like the craft of killing, the word had evolved. It was now pronounced assassin. ~ Dan Brown

At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English. ~ Bill Bryson

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. ~ William Shakespeare

I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. ~ George Orwell

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. ~ C.S. Lewis

If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time. ~ Ronald Sydney Nyholm

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich. ~ G.K. Chesterton

For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing. ~ Michael Dirda

At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes. ~ Wilbur Smith

By natural means, as the Lord always operates for the accomplishment of his purposes, means so simple that the thoughtless and unbelieving do not see the manifestation of his power, he brought the Puritans from the old world to New England, the Dutch to New York, the English Cavaliers to Virginia and the French to New Orleans, a combination of races which, paradoxical as it may appear, was just calculated to give us the composite America who made the United States of America what it is, the greatest nation of the world today. ~ Anthony W. Ivins

In life, you have to take the pace that love goes. You don't force it. You just don't force love, you don't force falling in love, you don't force being in love - you just become. I don't know how to say that in English, but you just feel it. ~ Juan Pablo Galavis

It allows you to say things that sound very dramatic and get away with it. If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous! ~ Terry Goodkind

The materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature. ~ Alan Watts

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English. ~ Victor Hugo

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour. ~ Karl Marx

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die. ~ Swami Vivekananda

If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer. ~ Per Petterson

I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction. ~ Candace Camp

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free. ~ John Barrymore

If the English want a king, it is their business. If the Russians want communism, it is their business. If the Americans want our form of government, it is our business. ~ Julius And Ethel Rosenberg

If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business. ~ Eminem

Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at and gave them the impression of military discipline and precision, but as a preparation for a modern war they had no value whatsoever. ~ Orlando Figes

Cloud-flying requires practice, even if you have every modern instrument, and unless you keep calm and collected you will get into trouble after you have been inside a really thick one for a few minutes. In the very early days of aviation, 1912 to be correct, I emerged from a cloud upside down, much to my discomfort, as I didn't know how to get right way up again. I found out somehow, or I wouldn't be writing this. ~ Charles Rumney Samson

However we assess the relief of the siege of Orleans and the subsequent successes in the Loire Valley, the military proficiency of the French shocked the English to the point that French victory now seemed almost inevitable. If the English had learned that the French had new materiel or a brilliant new commander, they might have been able to devise counter procedures. But they had underestimated everything, from the loyalty evoked by Joan's leadership at Orleans to the fresh resolve of the men who knew her. In a way she also stood for something like a principle of minimal violence, for although she was always exposed to injury and indeed sustained serious wounds, she never personally harmed an enemy solider. The events of the late spring and early summer of 1929 engendered a new collective spirit among the French. ~ Donald Spoto

Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few. ~ Nick Harkaway

Most of all, he was tired of being a holdout, a sole survivor, the last coconut hanging on the last palm tree on the last little atoll in the path of the great wave of late-modern capitalism, waiting to be hammered flat. ~ Michael Chabon

My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed. ~ Colm Toibin

Becoming a walking, dancing, fire-breathing lifestyle dragon is not something you can pursue overnight! It takes years of studying, living, and understanding the modern culture! ~ Theophilus London

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written. ~ Jessica Lange

We lack rituals in this modern world. ~ Elizabeth McGovern

The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles. ~ Edward Said

After all, the Beatitudes don't tend to look a lot like modern Christianity. We choose a political team. We select a denominational preference. We hitch our cart to a branch of philosophy. Anyone that disagrees is quickly and succinctly judged, and simultaneously disregarded as worthless. Big problem with that approach. We are supposed to be loving those who don't agree with us to Jesus - and you can't love those whom you deem worthless. ~ Mark Steele

The best-dressed man is an Italian who is trying to look English, or an Englishman who is trying to look Italian. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

Pomeranz, K. (2000) The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. ~ Jane Pollard

In his novels from beginning to end, Dickens is making the same point always: that to the English governing classes the people they govern are not real. ~ Edmund Wilson

Today's milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation ~ Julia Kristeva

We spend more time gazing at luminous screens than into the eyes of our loved ones. ~ Charlie Brooker

Aristotle believed democracy could exist only because of slavery, which gave citizens the leisure for higher pursuits. (Modern versions of this argument held that American democracy was born of the slave society of rural Virginia, because slavery gave men like Washington and Jefferson the free time to better themselves and to participate in representative government.) ~ Tom Reiss

Don't let reading make you arrogant. It can happen-believe me. Maybe you've even met a person or two like this, someone who thinks that being an English literature major or particularly well read puts them above the crowd. Take my advice:even if it's true, don't go there.
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I urge you to read, knowing the words you absorb will come out in your life in ways that inspire, uplift and encourage someone else. Life is meant to be passed on. Read with a servant's heart. ~ Pat Williams