Prudentes In English Quotes

She tries to maintain a nondescript exterior; she learns the sideways glance instead of looking at people directly. She speaks in practised, precise sentences so that she is not misunderstood. She chooses her words carefully, and if someone addresses her in Punjabi, she answers in Urdu, because an exchange in her mother tongue might be considered a promise of intimacy. She uses English for medical terms only, because she feels if she uses a word of English in her conversation she might be considered a bit forward. When she walks she walks with slightly hurried steps, as if she has an important but innocent appointment to keep. She avoids eye contact, she looks slightly over people's heads as if looking out for somebody who might come into view at any moment. She doesn't want anyone to think that she is alone and nobody is coming for her. She sidesteps even when she sees a boy half her age walking towards her, she walks around little puddles when she can easily leap over them; she thinks any act that involves stretching her legs might send the wrong signal. After all, this is not the kind of thing where you can leave your actions to subjective interpretations. She never eats in public. Putting something in your mouth is surely an invitation for someone to shove something horrible down your throat. If you show your hunger, you are obviously asking for something. ~ Mohammed Hanif

For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years. ~ Spencer Bachus

I was an English major in college, though I ended up getting my degree in "General Stduies" because my grades were too bad to qualify for an English degree. ~ Josh Lieb

All English stories get bogged down in whether or not the furniture is socially and aesthetically acceptable. ~ A.S. Byatt

Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word. ~ Portia De Rossi

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

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and white
bread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking English
without an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives.
The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

The book was sandwiched firmly between Analytic Keys to the Genera and Species of North American Mosses, and the Complete English-Russian Dictionary by A. Alexandrow, which had me actually speculating on just what terrible crimes I might have committed against love and peace in a former life to have earned myself this one. ~ Melissa Jensen

I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee. ~ Fred Hoyle

Spanish and English have such different music, and in my own poetry I feel much less drawn to fluid sounds than I do toward the hard sounds and rhythms that come out of the Anglo-Saxon roots of English. ~ Joan Larkin

Those last three words said it all, brought the situation into sharp focus. Yawning before him was the chasm of English social class - the very system he was taught to respect. He felt the burden of his title more at that moment than at any other. And he suddenly saw the ludicrousness of the notion that one human being was better than another, of the belief that a title - an ancient trophy granted at the whim of a king - and a subsequent accident of birth made one man more deserving respect than another. There was insanity in that concept and in the fact that it was so readily accepted by an immoral world. ~ Jill Barnett

The English Puritans were obsessed with the idea of providence, and that word is more ominous to them than it sounds to us. It means care, but it also means control. It does not just mean that God will provide. It means that God will provide whatever the hell God wants and the Puritans will thank him for it even if He provides them with nothing more than a slow death in a long winter. It means that if they're scared and small and lowly enough He just might toss a half-eaten corncob their way. It means that the world isn't fair and it's their fault. It means that God is the sovereign, the authority. It means manna from heaven, but it also means bow down. ~ Sarah Vowell

If only he weren't so infuriating and so solicitous, all at once. One or the other, she knew how to resist, but insolence and charm made a potent brew indeed. The way he'd soothed her concern with rough fingers, even as his words teased. The way he'd guided her with a light touch at the small of her back, kissed her fingers so tenderly…they could have been in an elegant ballroom, preparing to dance a quadrille.
By all evidence-his fine attire, cultured accent, proud bearing, the rare flash of politesse-Mr. Grayson was a man who could move in the highest echelons of English society, but delighted in doing just the reverse. ~ Tessa Dare

The first time I was in London, I went to an English greasy spoon to get some breakfast and realised that all the waiters were speaking Italian. That's when it hit me what an international city this is. ~ Monica Bellucci

Jane Austen wrote six of the most beloved novels in the English language, we are informed at the end of Becoming Jane, and so she did. The key word is beloved. Her admirers do not analyze her books so much as they just plain love them to pieces. ~ Roger Ebert

I was always behind in class. There was people in my class who was amazing at art, amazing at maths, amazing at English, but I wasn't clever with anything, even though I tried my hardest. ~ Amy Childs

Come on man, speak in English.

For the benefit of the colonist?

He's a decent man.

Aren't they all at some level? ~ Brian Friel

The word 'Indonesia' was first manufactured in 1850 in the form 'Indu-nesians' by the English traveler and social observer George Samuel Windsor Earl. He was searching for an ethnographic term to describe 'that branch of the Polynesian race inhabiting the Indian Archipelago', or 'the brown races of the Indian Archipelago'. ~ R.E. Elson

Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics. ~ Neal Ascherson

Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't. ~ J.R. Ward

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet. ~ J. Courtney Sullivan

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time. ~ Stephen Hawking

In England everything is liberalised. Within certain boundaries and rules everybody can do what he likes. Maybe London's society has a different tempo, a different dynamic. London is fast, productive, creative but it is not England. If you want to transfer that to football, you could say: in the four big English clubs and maybe in the one or two behind them there is a top level. Everything that comes after that rather mirrors English society. It's honest, fair and hard, sometimes also fast, but not always so perfect. ~ Jens Lehmann

The gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the moment you set foot on English soil. It is a land where bus conductors are good-tempered and policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. ~ George Orwell

In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of "Far from the Madding Crowd," as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word "Wessex" from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. ~ Thomas Hardy

...The Qur'an cannot be translated. ...The book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Qur'an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Qur'an-and peradventure something of the charm in English. It can never take the place of the Qur'an in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so... ~ Marmaduke William Pickthall

Never mind that she's been hearing this soliloquy from strangers since she was born, in the Year of the Fire Horse, twin sixes after the nineteen. Never mind the order of questions invariably changes even if the questions themselves do not: 'How long have y'all lived here? Do you even speak English? Oh, well. Your English is so good. Bless your heart, you must miss your people. You stick out like a raisin in a big bowl of oatmeal. Is it true that you worship cows? . . . Have you even heard of the Bible? Don't get all uppity on me, don't turn away. I know you think you don't have to listen. But this is my country. You do. When are y'all heading back? Y'all best be getting back to where you came from, you hear? No need to overstay your welcome. ~ Devi S. Laskar

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

The complexities of the English language are such that even native speakers cannot always communicate effectively, as almost every American learns on his first day in Britain. ~ Bill Bryson

When The Journal of Words compiled its list of the one hundred best novels written in English, do you know that Pride and Prejudice was number twelve?" She stopped pacing and glared at Jane. "And do you know where Jane Eyre was?" she asked. She looked at the four of them in turn, but nobody answered her. "Number fifty-two!" she shrieked. "Fifty-two! Below that pornographic travesty Lolita!" She spat the title as if it were poison. "Below Huckleberry Finn! Below Ulysses. Have you ever tried to read Ulysses? Have you ever finished it? No, you haven't. No one has. They just carry it around and lie about having read it. ~ Michael Thomas Ford

Like the monks chanting their Pali mantras, learning by rote was the accepted method of education just as in English schools of the time. 'In geography,' Sokheang recalled, 'we would have to learn the size of a country, the population, the agricultural produce, etcetera. And we would get called up to recite it to the rest of the class.' The accuracy of this recitation was the measure of a successful student. 'Knowledge,' said Sokheang, 'was the storage of facts. ~ Nic Dunlop

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of ~ Charles Dickens

Although all new talkers say names, use similar sounds, and prefer nouns more
than other parts of speech, the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies
from place to place (Waxman et al., 2013). For example, by 18 months, Englishspeaking infants speak far more nouns than verbs compared to Chinese or Korean
infants. Why?
One explanation goes back to the language itself. The Chinese and Korean
languages are "verb-friendly" in that verbs are placed at the beginning or end of
sentences. That facilitates learning. By contrast, English verbs occur anywhere in
a sentence, and their forms change in illogical ways (e.g., go, gone, will go, went).
This irregularity may make English verbs harder to learn, although the fact that
English verbs often have distinctive suffixes (-ing, -ed) and helper words (was, did,
had) may make it easier (Waxman et al., 2013). ~ Kathleen Stassen Berger

We should have a path to legal status for the 12 million people that are here illegally. It means, come out from the shadows, pay a fine, earn legal status by working, by paying taxes, learning English. Not committing crimes and earn legal status where you're not cutting in front of the line for people that are patiently waiting outside. ~ Jeb Bush

I'll be in position. Vadim left the building, struggling with the emotion, fuck, Dan kissing him like that hat shaken him, deeply. He'd needed that touch, that oath, that everything, but coudln't have responded any other way. Not in Russian, not in English. Couldn't have just held on to him for a moment longer. He wanted to hold him, fuck him, be fucked, he wanted to rest at Dan's shoulder after sex and think nothing but that they were both alive. Fuck the war, fuck the past, fuck the money. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

Over the years, I would go to my agents, my manager, and I would say, 'Hey, there's this amazing true story about this gay English mathematician who committed suicide in the 1950s.' And they would be like, 'Please don't ever write that script. That is an unmakeable film.' ~ Graham Moore

In Old English, thou (thee, thine, etc.) was singular and you was plural. But during the thirteenth century, you started to be used as a polite form of the singular - probably because people copied the French way of talking, where vous was used in that way. English then became like French, which has tu and vous both possible for singulars; and that allowed a choice. The norm was for you to be used by inferiors to superiors - such as children to parents, or servants to masters, and thou would be used in return. But thou was also used to express special intimacy, such as when addressing God. It was also used when the lower classes talked to each other. The upper classes used you to each other, as a rule, even when they were closely related.
So, when someone changes from thou to you in a conversation, or the other way round, it conveys a different pragmatic force. It will express a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood. ~ David Crystal

But what is worse than all," observed the English traveler Isaac Weld, "these wretches in their combat endeavor to their utmost to tear out each other's testicles."31 ~ Gordon S. Wood

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of the a splendid procession; it is by them that the mob are influenced; it is they who the inspectors cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second hand carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them. ~ Walter Bagehot

You're probably thinking the same thing we were: where did Jane get the rope to tie the prisoners? We researched this very conundrum thoroughly, and after two weeks we can say, without a doubt : nobody knows. It's a question that has baffled historians and archaeologists alike. Professor Herbert Halprin explains: "Ropes have been a mystery to scholars throughout the ages. The first ropes were thought to appear as far back as 17,000 BC and made of vines. Unfortunately, being made of vines, none of those early examples survived. Later, da Vinci drew sketches for a rope-making machine, but it was never built. In medieval times, there were secret societies, called Rope Guilds, whose rope-twisting practices were protected via a complicated series of handshakes and passwords -" Okay. Your narrators are interrupting the dear professor, for reasons of boredom. Plus, his English accent sounded sketchy and forced. We asked him where Jane could've gotten the rope, but maybe he thought we asked him where anyone could've gotten any rope at any given point in history. Trust us, we are as frustrated as you must be about the lack of a definitive answer. ~ Cynthia Hand

This year my goal will be to learn new vocabulary in English and to read as much as possible books. ~ Deyth Banger

The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there's something unchancy about a left-handed race.'

'I'm right-handed,' offered Will Scott.

'Aye.'

'And six foot three in my hose.'

'Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.'

'I'm saving it,' he said austerely, 'till I've the theme for it.'

'Oh!' said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. 'Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to? ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Is the professor who insists we read Ernest Hemingway again instead of Gertrude Stein "obsessing"? Because although I did a BA in English, an MFA in Poetry, and a year's worth of a PhD, Stein was an author I had to discover on my own. She wasn't on the syllabus anywhere in all that time. ~ Laura Mullen

All of us together were of a generation born of old country people who spoke English with an accent and prayed in another language, who drank red wine and cooked their food in the old country way, and peeled apples and pears after dinner. ~ Robert Laxalt