Rodean In English Quotes

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

During the 1980s, when Japan's economy was roaring and people were writing books with titles like 'Japan is Number One,' most Japanese college students didn't make the effort to become fluent in English. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor - whereby the process of improverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" - although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at t ~ Ambrose Bierce

Les contes de fées c'est comme ça.
Un matin on se réveille.
On dit: "Ce n'était qu'un conte de fées..."
On sourit de soi.
Mais au fond on ne sourit guère.
On sait bien que les contes de fées
c'est la seule vérité de la vie.

Fairy tales are like that.
One morning, we wake up
and say, "It was only a fairy tale..."
We put a smile on our face
but deep inside, this isn't what we feel like doing.
It's because we know full well that fairy tales
are the only truth in life.

[The English translation is Lucrèce Riminiac's.] ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I think that if you are sticking to the text, essentially, you're not trying to write your own version of it. I mean, of course, it is your own version of it. And every translator would probably have a different version. But I think that that's what keeps the writers from being individual in English. They may be my English, but I don't think that Ferrante sounds like Levi. ~ Ann Goldstein

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers) ~ Samuel Johnson

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind. ~ Henry Rosovsky

Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said went far toward confirming one's belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute. ~ Shelby Foote

And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking
how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe
Pasquale Tursi said, only, Yes. ~ Jess Walter

Junior, stop being orner." It's what Mama used to say to us when we were little, and I say it to Junior out of habit. Daddy used to say it sometimes, too, until he said it to Randall one day and Randall started giggling, and then Daddy figured out Randall was laughing because it sounded like 'horny'. About a year ago I figured out what it was supposed to be after coming across its parent on the vocabulary list for my English class with Miss Dedeaux: 'ornery'. It made me wonder if there were other words Mama mashed like that. They used to pop up in my head sometime when I was doing the stupidest things: 'tetrified' when I was sweeping the kitchen and Daddy came in dripping beer and kicking chairs. 'Belove' when Manny was curling pleasure from me with his fingers in mid-swim in the pit. 'Freegid' when I was laying in bed in November, curled to the wall like I was going to burrow into another cover or I was making room for a body to lay behind me to make me warm. ~ Jesmyn Ward

It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature. ~ John Drinkwater

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

A merchant, then," Nicholas clarified.
Hasan nodded, his smile slightly crooked with the swelling on his face. "It is natural. Abbi brought me many books, taught me many languages. English, Turkish, French, Greek. So you see, I cannot travel in your way, but he has helped me to go far on my own feet. ~ Alexandra Bracken

An English major is like being in a book club that costs $40,000 a year, has only annoying people in it, offers no refreshments at the meetings, and where people actually read the books. ~ Aaron Goldfarb

[O]ur English divines are sounder in it than any in the world, generally: I think because they are more practical, and have had more wounded, tender consciences under cure, and less empty speculation and dispute (336-7). ~ Richard Baxter

It's Smith, actually.' Dr Smith smiled, bowing. 'I've remembered that my name is Smith. Almost definitely. Good old English name. Hopefully means 'noble valiant warriot' and not 'he who hits kittens with a hammer.' You'd be surprised the derivations of common surnames in the English countryside ... ~ James Goss

Charles Fillmore has observed (in conversation) that English appears to have two contradictory organizations of time. In the first, the future is in front and the past is behind: In the weeks ahead of us . . . (future) That's all behind us now. (past) In the second, the future is behind and the past is in front: In the following weeks . . . (future) In the preceding weeks . . . (past) This appears to be a contradiction in the metaphorical organization of time. Moreover, the apparently contradictory metaphors can mix with no ill effect, as in We're looking ahead to the following weeks. Here it appears that ahead organizes the future in front, while following organizes it behind. ~ George Lakoff

The conflation of the simple in style with the morally prescriptive in character, and the complex in style with the amoral or anarchic in character, seems to me one of the most persistently fallacious beliefs held by English students. ~ Zadie Smith

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. ~ J.I. Packer

This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that Cellar Door is the most beautiful. ~ Donnie Darko

Life is a River"

Life is a river
zig zag it goes on flowing
myriad memories quench thirst
in the swirling waves of life!

Life has its own colour
a mingling of blue, green, black and white
sweeping away all happiness and sadness
in the cascading bubbles of tears and delight

Life shares its own wisdom
to keep on flowing is its only zeal
whether it be summer or winter
life will keep on flowing but never still

Life is a river
it flows at its own pace
sometimes it may have no direction
and this is life's story and grace!

- Poet Manjushree Mohanty

Translated from Odiya to English by Poet Avijeet Das ~ Manjushree Mohanty

We lawyers do not write plain English. We use eight words to say what could be said in two. We use arcane phrases to express commonplace ideas. Seeking to be precise, we become redundant. Seeking to be cautious, we become verbose. Our sentences twist on, phrase within clause within clause, glazing the eyes and numbing the minds of our readers. The result is a writing style that has, according to one critic, four outstanding characteristics. It is (1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous, and (4) dull. ~ Richard C. Wydick

My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French. ~ Lorraine Bracco

Of my English friends, I should find language too poor to speak the just praise and the excellence which shines in their characters and lives. ~ Dorothea Dix

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis's comments on them, and burned them. ~ A.S. Byatt

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

I've got a really great team around me. They're the ones that are in the restaurants on a day to day basis. Anyone that's good can't be stifled in any way. I don't baby people. ~ Todd English

L. 547. The terms made use of in this line, and in 481, may appear somewhat coarse, as addressed by one Goddess to another: but I assure the English reader that in this passage ~ Homer

Yes, Fraulein,' he said to Hannah. 'How gauche of you to have been born in another county. It is almost a capital offense. Here in this house we believe that one must be severely punished for the happenstance of one's birth.' His face was a jester's mask of mockery, but there was a tightness about his eyes, a tense set to his smile. 'What a dilemma for the English, though- we agree with Germany on so many things, including the patent inferiority of anyone who is not US. Darling Mum, did it ever occur to you that to the rest of the world, WE are foreigners?'
'The very idea!' Lady Liripip said with a nervous titter. ~ Laura L. Sullivan

Ah, Houellebecq. I've only read him in English translations so I'm sure I'm not getting the full greatness of his work, but golly, he writes better sex scenes than anyone else alive. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

German philosophy was almost at the very root of the problem. The sense of neurasthenia felt in the late 19th century was in part created by a weariness of philosophy and not only because there was an awareness that there was so much to think about, but because german thought was already characterized by a weightiness that too easily transferred in weariness, and even fatalism. There are of course many reasons for this, but among them is the peculiarly german pursuit of continuously, relentlessly, pursuing ideas to their endpoint; wherever that might lead. This tendency also has an expression in german: Drang nach dem absoluten ('the drive towards the absolute'). Again it is not a phrase that the English or English philosophy would use, but it aptly sums up that habit of pushing and pushing ideas until they can then reach what can then seem to be an unavoidable and even predetermined endpoint. ~ Douglas Murray

For the next half-hour or so there was nothing to be done but sit and suffer it. We had Madame Tetrazzini trilling about the hissing and sissing of the needle, like a princess at the back of a cave with the sea monster snuffling outside it. We had Señor Caruso searching bravely for The Lost Chord in a forest of alien English vowel sounds. We had McCormack's Kathleen Mavourneen, Clara Butt longing for her Ain Folk in accents suggesting that they might be found somewhere south of Hyde Park, a tenor whose name I forgot summoning Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and everybody looking devout over their empty teacups. ~ Gillian Linscott

In the 19th century, the English were loathed. Every memoir that you read of that period, indicates the loathing that everybody felt for the English, the only difference between the English and Americans, in this respect, is the English rather liked being loathed and the Americans apparently dislike it intensely. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view. ~ Gad Elmaleh