Poetries In English Quotes

The poet and poetess have always had a rough time of it in the Republic. It has ever been their endemic luck to starve, become a Harvard professor, commit suicide, lose their reading glasses before an audience of sophomores, go upon the people a la Barnum, and serve as homework in state universities, where they could in nowise get a position and where their presence usually scatters the English faculty like a truant officer among the Amish. ~ Guy Davenport

I grew up with parents who were English professors at Wichita State University, and we were more liberal-minded as a family than most of the people I hung out with in Wichita. During summers, we went off to Telluride, Colorado, where I've returned every summer since I was born. ~ Antonya Nelson

A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; ... This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Because, you see, a bad teacher, like Moses, the abusive English teacher that I had in Carlsbad, kills kids, here in the heart, and not just with their tests, but with their superior attitude and those sly smiles that they like to give to their A students, but never to the ones who are also working hard, or maybe even harder, like me, but just couldn't get it! ~ Victor Villasenor

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. How much I could do if I only tried. * (1803-1873) English dramatist, novelist, and politician. ~ Napoleon Hill

There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot. in the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark one Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so in effective in this. And that Heaven and you'll get the earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you'll get neither. ~ C.S. Lewis

English is like a poetic extension of myself. It holds my creativity and imagination in blissful and inspiring captivity. Though I consider myself not a prisoner, but rather a valued guest of honor. ~ Storm Princeholm

It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

In an ideal world, the time English speakers devote to steeling themselves against, and complaining about, things like Billy and me, singular they, and impact as a verb would be better spent attending to genuine matters of graceful oral and written expression. ~ John McWhorter

The English language is mysterious. The secret of our dog is to be found in it. 'Dog' spelt backwards is 'God'. The dog, then, is the road which, if travelled backwards, from the deepest depths, from the roots of the tree of smell, touch and taste, will turn you into a God. Thus the dog is the guide of the Blind Traveller, of the Pilgrim of Immortality. It is God backwards. ~ Miguel Serrano

Across the Atlantic, commercial therapy of all kinds provides so many more comfortable outlets for people when they are under pressure. The English tradition is to get a grip, whereas the American version is to get in touch with your feelings, to say: 'I'm a good person. Isn't it terrible when bad things happen to people like me?' ~ Peter York

As you can see, the hyphen is a nasty, tricky, evil little mark that gets its kicks igniting arguments in newsrooms and trying to make everyone in the English-speaking world look like an idiot - it's the Bill Maher of punctuation. ~ June Casagrande

London was a spice mecca. The first recipe for curry in English was actually published in 1747. ~ Tom Parker Bowles

In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms' banquet. ~ Horace Mann

They say saudade is unique to Portuguese, impossible to define in English. Nostalgia gets pretty close, but saudade is more complicated. It's the remnant of gratitude and bliss that something happened, but the simultaneous devastation that it has gone and will never happen again. It marries the feelings of happy wistfulness and poignant melancholy, anticipation, and hopelessness. it's universally understood by a cross-ocean culture with a constant feeling of absence, a yearning for the return of something now gone. ~ Mari Andrew

My coming to England in this way is, as I realize, so unusual that nobody will easily understand it. I was confronted by a very hard decision. I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice unless I had continually kept before my eyes the vision of an endless line of children's coffins with weeping mothers behind them, both English and German, and another line of coffins of mothers with mourning children. ~ Rudolf Hess

Be all the dork that I can be?" he tried.
Her turn. "Hamlet: To dork, or not to dork, that is the question." She smiled proudly, thinking of another. "The apparel 'oft proclaims the man!"
He chuckled. "Hamlet again, but this time with an English accent: Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. ~ Anne Eliot

The time is ripe for young Indian authors writing in the English language. ~ Anurag Shourie

The language I have learn'd these forty years, My native English, now I must forego: And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony: Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue, Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips; And dull unfeeling barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a pupil now: What is thy sentence then but speechless death, Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath? ~ William Shakespeare

I was excellent at English and Drama. Maths and Science I was terrible at. I didn't have any interest in them. I was happiest at lunchtime, playing with my friends. But I love science now, that's the funny thing. And I'd be so good at geography, as I've been fortunate enough to travel the world. ~ Peter Andre

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English. ~ Michael Gove

I was always an avid reader of books. My vocabulary, my English are all thanks to that reading habit. Reading keeps me grounded. I came from a very middle class family - poor, in fact. ~ Madhur Bhandarkar

I remember something Mrs. Harbor once said on one of her crazy tangents in English: that Plato believed that the whole world - everything we can see - was just like shadows on a cave wall. We can't actually see the real thing, the thing that's casting the shadow in the first place. ~ Lauren Oliver

It is a peculiarity of the English language that while most fish swim in schools, herring swim in shoals, a word of the same meaning derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root. ~ Mark Kurlansky

According to them, everyone wants to be English. Being English is the best thing in the world. (Far behind, the second best thing is being God himself.) ~ Angela Kiss

You need to get straight in your mind what you think a good society would look like, said Marianne. And if you think people should be able to go to college and get English degrees, you shouldn't feel guilty for doing that yourself, because you have every right to. ~ Sally Rooney

I saw this French woman, this English man in Italy. It was a film [Certified Copy] I knew well, but I had already seen it, and I was familiar with it, and I had no feeling of anxiety or responsibility toward it. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

In English every word can be verbed. ~ Alan Perlis

In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced English playwrights of the seventeenth century. I wonder why certain playwrights decided to set their tragedies, written in English, in Italian palaces. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

My master, is the best of all husbands in all the five quarters of the globe; and his wife bears him an amount of love, the greatness of which can only be compared with the English national debt. ~ Christian Friedrich Von Stockmar

You don't like me, do you?" she asked suddenly and pathetically, just like a small child.
Sergei did not look at her but merely said, "What makes you think that?"
"It is normal to try to make conversation while in the car with someone, isn't it?"
"Oh, well, my English is only average," he lied.
"Maybe, but I speak Russian," she persisted
Sergei grunted.
"What, your Russian is only average too?" she said, raising an eyebrow. ~ William Axtell

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming. ~ Thomas Mars

Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country. ~ John Acton

Baron, Baroness
Originally, the term baron signified a person who owned land as a direct gift from the monarchy or as a descendant of a baron. Now it is an honorary title. The wife of a baron is a baroness.

Duke, Duchess, Duchy, Dukedom
Originally, a man could become a duke in one of two ways. He could be recognized for owning a lot of land. Or he could be a victorious military commander. Now a man can become a duke simply by being appointed by a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her husband Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and her son Charles the Duke of Wales. A duchess is the wife or widow of a duke. The territory ruled by a duke is a duchy or a dukedom.

Earl, Earldom
Earl is the oldest title in the English nobility. It originally signified a chieftan or leader of a tribe. Each earl is identified with a certain area called an earldom. Today the monarchy sometimes confers an earldom on a retiring prime minister. For example, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is the Earl of Stockton.

King
A king is a ruling monarch. He inherits this position and retains it until he abdicates or dies. Formerly, a king was an absolute ruler. Today the role of King of England is largely symbolic. The wife of a king is a queen.

Knight
Originally a knight was a man who performed devoted military service. The title is not hereditary. A king or queen may award a citizen with knighthood. The criterion for the award is devoted ~ Nancy Whitelaw

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to w ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640's, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688. ~ Bernard Bailyn