The English Teacher Quotes

Where's our teacher?"
"Probably getting it on with the English teacher."
- Alex Gold and Mike Wilson ~ R.J. Morse, R.J. Brookes

There was shuffling and rustling around me, then Henry Reed was giving his valedictory address, "To Be or Not to Be." Hadn't he heard the whitefolks? We couldn't be, so the question was a waste of time. Henry's voice came out clear and strong. I feared to look at him. Hadn't he got the message? There was no "nobler in the mind" for Negroes because the world didn't think we had minds, and they let us know it. "Outrageous fortune"? Now, that was a joke. When the ceremony was over I had to tell Henry Reed some things. That is, if I still cared. Not "rub," Henry, "erase." "Ah, there's the erase." Us. Henry had been a good student in elocution. His voice rose on tides of promise and fell on waves of warnings. The English teacher had helped him to create a sermon winging through Hamlet's soliloquy. To be a man, a doer, a builder, a leader, or to be a tool, an unfunny joke, a crusher of funky toadstools. I marveled that Henry could go through with the speech as if we had a choice. I had been listening and silently rebutting each sentence with my eyes closed; then there was a hush, which in an audience warns that something unplanned is happening. ~ Maya Angelou

At 16, when I was at Henry M. Gunn High School, I had a crush on the English teacher, and my grades improved dramatically. This great school had only 400 students, mostly children of Stanford professors, and it was more usual to have classes under one of the oak trees dotted around the campus than in the classroom. ~ Caroline Lawrence

Joe was so tired that he had slept through first hour Spanish, second hour history, and most of third hour English. The English teacher, Mrs. Lane, hadn't taken a liking to that. She decided to send Joe to the principal to discuss why he was so sleepy, which Joe hadn't taken a liking to. ~ Belart Wright

Would you like to stand next to me and introduce yourself to the class?' Smiled Mr Zimmerman, the English teacher.
Nope, I would rather turn into bat! Leave me the heck alone. Ughh, why is it teachers ask ' Would you like to?' No teen ever wants to stand in front of strangers and be forced to talk about them.
- Lenore Lee from Whitby After Dark ~ Stella Coulson

Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness. ~ R.K. Narayan

Separately, they called our English teacher to register their horror at their offspring being taught about witches, which apparently was an insult to both Islam and Christianity. The English teacher instructed us to white-out the word witches and write in weird sisters. ~ Bill Campbell

Speaking of novels,' I said, 'you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust's rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described - by Cocteau, I think - as "a mirage of suspended gardens," and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronski's (and Lyovin's) thick neck, and a cupid's buttocks for cheeks; but - and now let me finish sweetly - we were wrong, Sybil, we were wrong in denying our little beau ténébreux the capacity of evoking "human interest": it is there, it is there - maybe a rather eighteenth-centuryish, or even seventeenth-centuryish, brand, but it is there. Please, dip or redip, spider, into this book [offering it], you will find a pretty marker in it bought in France, I want John to keep it. Au revoir, Sybil, I must go now. I think my telephone is ringing. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! ~ Terri Windling

Their renewed cheers startled her. Alec thought she might be a little intimidated. She looked overwhelmed by all the attention. "What did you say to them, Alec?" she whispered, knowing full well what he'd said. As soon as he answered her, she thought to tell him that he really should expound upon his introduction. She never got the chance to enlighten him, however. "I told them you were English," Alec lied. He threw his arm around her shoulders again and, as was his disturbing habit, literally hauled her up against his side. God's truth, he treated her just like a satchel. "And that, of course, is the reason they're cheering," Jamie countered. "Because I'm English." "Nay, wife. 'Tis the reason they're screaming. ~ Julie Garwood

[On the English climate:] People get a bad impression of it by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don't try to predict what. ~ Katharine Whitehorn

When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what's the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom. ~ M T Anderson

Why do we like being Irish? Partly because
It gives us a hold on the sentimental English
As members of a world that never was,
Baptised with fairy water;
And partly because Ireland is small enough
To be still thought of with a family feeling,
And because the waves are rough
That split her from a more commercial culture;
And because one feels that here at least one can
Do local work which is not at the world's mercy
And that on this tiny stage with luck a man
Might see the end of one particular action.
It is self-deception of course;
There is no immunity in this island either;
A cart that is drawn by somebody else's horse
And carrying goods to somebody else's market.
The bombs in the turnip sack, the sniper from the roof,
Griffith, Connolly, Collins, where have they brought us?
Ourselves alone! Let the round tower stand aloof
In a world of bursting mortar!
Let the school-children fumble their sums
In a half-dead language;
Let the censor be busy on the books; pull down the
Georgian slums;
Let the games be played in Gaelic.
Let them grow beet-sugar; let them build
A factory in every hamlet;
Let them pigeon-hole the souls of the killed
Into sheep and goats, patriots and traitors.
And the North, where I was a boy,
Is still the North, veneered with the grime of Glasgow,
Thousands of men whom nobody will employ
Standing at t ~ Louis MacNeice

Would I like sodomy?"
"That is without a doubt the best question that has ever been asked. English was invented purely so that you could ask that. ~ K.J. Charles

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 only time she's come close to being "known" was when she accidentally came out as bisexual during sophomore English class while talking about her favorite poem. ~ C.B. Lee

It was like I couldn't think of any words. Now I can think of about nine million."
"How many words are in the English language?"
"Not the point. ~ Sandy Hall

The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment. ~ Edward Bond

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

The real contribution of Rihani consists in having given us, in both Arabic and English, what may be considered the most vivid and interesting account of common-day life as it is lived at present in the hitherto little known Arabia. ~ Philip Khuri Hitti

was fascinated by a 9th-century poem by the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, whose religious poem Christ included the Old English word for the known inhabited world: middangeard, translated as "Middle-earth." The poem makes reference to a being called Earendal, who is the brightest of angels above Middle-earth and is sent to humans. ~ Wyatt North

The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [ ... ] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible. ~ T. S. Eliot

In Amsterdam there lives a maid (Mark well what I do say) In Amsterdam there lives a maid. And she is the mistress of her trade: I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid! A-roving, a-roving, since roving's been my ru-eye-in, I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid! British seaman's songearly seventeenth centuryMost seamen's songs and chanties, from the sixteenthcentury on, were highly "permissive" when read aright.They were much bowdlerised in the nineteenth century,and many lost their original honesty and delight. Thisone, innocent except to the seamen's ears, survived.("Torove," is the sailor's term for the weft in canvas. It means"to insert" - "to pass through." "Trade," in English, hasalways had a sexual connotation.) ~ Tristan Jones

Better still [than pure sugar] was the remedy known as theriac, the root of the English word 'treacle,' which was kept in ornate ceramic jars on the shelves of every self-respecting apothecary shop. The name comes from the Greek therion, meaning 'venomous animal,' for theriac was supposed in Classical times to counteract all venoms and poisons. ~ Philip Ball

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way. ~ Juan Pablo Di Pace

And as Craig Brown - he's an English humorist, not a comedian but he's just a writer and humorist - I'm quite a fan of. I heard him talking in a rather similar way on the radio. He said I'm the sort of person - I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was rather interesting - he said I'm the sort of person that can be reduced to tears in an empty church and feel like I'm the CEO of the Devil's organization in a full one, and I tend to feel like that as well. I love empty churches and going into them looking around, but I'm not a churchgoer at all. ~ Nick Lowe

When I entered college, it was to study liberal arts. At the University of Pennsylvania, I studied English literature, but I fell in love with broadcasting, with telling stories about other people's exploits. ~ Andrea Mitchell

Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. ~ George Orwell

Prose of the World is an enormously compelling and vivid study. The result is an ambitious, timely, and eloquent account of the relationship between early-twentieth-century fiction and the contemporary global novel in English. ~ Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Lia let out a low growl and moved her arrow to the base of his fat throat. "What do you think, Gabi? Would you like to see these nuptials through?"
"Not this day," I said
"How about on the morrow?" Marcello asked, smiling and lifting my hand to his lips. "If I am your groom?"
"Hold that eHarmony thought," Lia whispered in English. "We gotta get out of here. ~ Lisa Tawn Bergren

The English have only three sauces - a white one, a brown one and a yellow one, and none of them have any flavor whatever. ~ Guy De Maupassant

I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts. ~ Amy Tan

I went on to propose that our own culture and the classical tongues made a happier conjugation [...] English, I suggested, couldn't really express us. ~ Brian Friel

When nationalism first became a religion, the English looked at the map, and, noticing that their island lay very high in the Northern Hemisphere, evolved the pleasing theory that the further north you live the more virtuous you become. The histories I was given when I was a little boy started off by explaining in the naïvest way that a cold climate made people energetic while a hot one made them lazy, and hence the defeat of the Spanish Armada. ~ George Orwell

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

A German attack on Russia's ally France would, in reality, be defensive - but the English talked as if Germany was trying to dominate Europe. ~ Ken Follett

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

My mother's English, and she always was fascinated by the desert. ~ Arizona Muse

The murderers are supposed to have been Jewish revisionists, an extreme party that want to be rid of the English and set up a Jewish state. I don't know how long they think the Arabs would suffer a single Jew to exist once the English went."

Jerusalem, Palestine, 7 September 1933 ~ Robert Byron

Cure is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children? ~ Lauren DeStefano

If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means
from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath. ~ Margaret Halsey

During World War II, a few years after Norma Jeane's time in an orphanage, thousands of children were evacuated from the air raids and poor rations of London during the Blitz, and placed with volunteer families or group homes in the English countryside or even in other countries. It was only postwar studies comparing these children to others left behind that opened the eyes of many experts to the damage caused by emotional neglect. In spite of living in bombed-out ruins and constant fear of attack, the children who had been left with their mothers and families tended to fare better than those who had been evacuated to physical safety. Emotional security, continuity, a sense of being loved unconditionally for oneself - all those turn out to be as important to a child's development as all but the most basic food and shelter. ~ Gloria Steinem