British And American English Quotes & Sayings

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works. — Kate Williams

I am sure that the two main forms of English, American English and British English, separated geographically from the beginning and severed politically since 1776, are continuing to move apart, and that existing elements of linguistic dissimilarity between them will intensify as time goes on, notwithstanding the power of the cinema, TV, Time Magazine, and other two-way gluing and fuelling devices. — Robert Burchfield

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility. — Wallace Stevens

Part of what makes a language 'alive' is its constant evolution. I would hate to think Britain would ever emulate France, where they actually have a learned faculty whose job it is to attempt to prevent the incursion of foreign words into the language. I love editing Harry with Arthur Levine, my American editor-the differences between 'British English' (of which there must be at least 200 versions) and 'American English' (ditto!) are a source of constant interest and amusement to me. — J.K. Rowling

I would rather try to succeed and fail than try to do nothing and succeed. — Og Mandino

I once found myself conspiring with a British Cabinet Minister as to how we might persuade Her Majesty's Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said he, "Why does any American in his senses spend his vacation in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer." Damn right. — David Ogilvy

I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power. — Maurice Druon

Luna moths have no mouths or stomachs. They do not eat, and only live about one week.
Where to Find It
As soon as the female comes out of the cocoon in April or June, she searches for a tree with leaves her offspring can eat. Many different trees could be food for her caterpillars. So you may find her on walnut, hickory, oak, birch, alder, sweet gum or persimmon trees. — Mel Boring

A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare. — Ethan Hawke

This is a magazine-reading country. When one comes back from abroad, the two displays of American abundance that dazzle one are the supermarkets and the newsstands. There are no British equivalents of our Midcult magazines like The Atlantic and the Saturday Review, or of our mass magazines like Life and The Saturday Evening Post and Look, or of our betwixt-&-between magazines like Esquire and The New Yorker (which also encroach on the Little Magazine area). There are, however, several big-circulation women's magazines, I suppose because the women's magazine is such an ancient and essential form of journalism that even the English dig it. - 1960 — Dwight Macdonald

What do I like about Spurs? The flairness — Dwight Yorke

I felt isolated in my misery. I became lonely, so I drank a bit, and then a bit more, and then I became lonelier, because no one likes being around a drunk. I lost and I drank and I drank and I lost. — Paula Hawkins

Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire-led and the American-Republic-led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common
and enough that separated them from everyone else
that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately. — Andrew Roberts

Mr. Idris Elba is amazing! He happens to be British, but what's funny about him is that when he's speaking in his American dialect, he looks like he's a brother from the 'hood. But as soon as he brings out that English thing, I'm like, 'Woo! You look like you're from London. Oh my God!' It's like everything on him changes. He's so cool! — Tasha Smith

Chapter 4 Tyranny Is Tyranny Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command. — Howard Zinn

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry. — Diane Wakoski

I can work in London. A British journalist asked me if I had any trouble working with an English crew, as an American, and I said I might have if I was from Scotland, but I'm from Massachusetts, which is sort of Oxfordshire, but more intellectual. That's kind of unforgivable but you've got to let them have it. — William Monahan

The Canadian dialect of English ... seems roughly to be the result of applying British syntax to an American vocabulary. — Lister Sinclair

I went to the Alabama public schools at a time when my English teachers, all but one of whom was a woman, taught nothing but the classics. They revered the great British and American writers. — Thomas H. Cook

The English novelist J. B. Priestley once said that if he were an American, he would make the final test of whatever men chose to do in art, business, or politics a comparison with the Grand Canyon. He believed that whatever was false and ephemeral would be exposed for what it was when set against that mass of geology and light. Priestley was British, but he had placed his finger on an abiding American truth: the notion that the canyon stands as one of our most important touchstones - a kind of roofless tabernacle whose significance is both natural and national. It is our cathedral in the desert, and the word our is key because although the canyon belongs to the entire world, we, as Americans, belong particularly to it. — Kevin Fedarko

The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the Protestant plain style in both the U.S. and Canada, with its no-nonsense Scottish immigrants. — Camille Paglia

People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have. — John Holt

Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling. — Tanit Phoenix

Surprisingly, it was not an American but a British company that opened an amusement park in 2007 called Dickens World, located in the English county of Kent, complete with an Ebenezer Scrooge Haunted House, a Great Expectations Boat Ride and the as-advertised 'costumed Dickensian characters.' — Matthew Pearl

British vs American Crochet Terms British English US-American English dc double crochet sc single crochet htr half treble crochet hdc half double crochet tr treble dc double crochet dtr double treble tr treble trtr triple treble dtr double treble miss skip tension gauge yoh yarn over hook yo yarn over *All pattern instructions use US-American English terms* — Vicki Becker

America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English. — Lily Cole

More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is." (We should perhaps bear in mind that the House of Lords is a largely powerless, nonelective institution. It is an arresting fact of British political life that a Briton can enjoy a national platform and exalted status because he is the residue of an illicit coupling 300 years before between a monarch and an orange seller.) — Bill Bryson

If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed. — Padraig Pearse