English Theory Quotes & Sayings

Nowhere in this country should we have laws that permit drinking and driving or drinking in vehicles that are on American highways. This is not rocket science. We know how to prevent this, and 36 states do. — Byron Dorgan

JACK
That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.
ALGERNON
Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none.
JACK
That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.
ALGERNON
Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time. — Oscar Wilde

Many parts of my life are perfectly ordinary, if that's what you mean. One could even call it boring, but that's what I like about it. — J.K. Rowling

As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy. — Emil Cioran

The celebrated Parisian doctor Professor Xavier Bichat developed a fully materialist theory of the human body and mind in his lectures Physiological Researches on Life and Death, translated into English in 1816. Bichat defined life bleakly as 'the sum of the functions by which death is resisted — Richard Holmes

My work on prime gaps lead to lots of media coverage, some good, some bad, some ugly, and some merely ridiculous. For example, a reporter of our university newspaper, who admitted that he is still learning English, wrote that "Prof. Goldston solved one of the most controversial problems in the prime number theory last month with support from his Turkish partner." — Daniel Goldston

But if all maximizing models are really arguing is that "people will always seek to maximize something," then they obviously can't predict anything, which means employing them can hardly be said to make anthropology more scientific. All they really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It's called "cynicism." Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it "science. — David Graeber

It's a matter of balance between deduction and induction - between reason and empiricism - and in 1620 the English philosopher Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum, or "new instrument," which described science as a blend of sensory data and reasoned theory. Ideally, Bacon argued, one should begin with observations, then formulate a general theory from which logical predictions can be made, then check the predictions against experiment.37 If you don't give yourself a reality check you end up with half-baked (and often fully baked) ideas, — Michael Shermer

As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius. — Otto Weininger

The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand. — E.L. Doctorow

English law in the 15th and 16th centuries, despite being manipulated in favour of the king, did to some extent offer protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Death sentences could in theory only be imposed after lawful judgment. Slavery had no recognition in English law. Torture remained an extra-legal resort, at odds with legal principle. — Nicholas Vincent

Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none. Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time. Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical. Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. — Oscar Wilde

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and ... ants. I can understand ants. — A.S. Byatt

The first time I was in Stockholm, everybody was real cordial, but I started having these nightmares that I was being watched by aliens, basically all the time. My theory on it was that it was really, really unnerving to be in a place where English isn't the first language. — Mikky Ekko

But the nature of my main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects. — Kenichi Fukui

I've discovered that sometimes God wants us to live inside of the questions. Sometimes he wants us to linger in the waiting, hoping, praying. In fact, sometimes it's right in the middle of our darkness in the middle of our crisis, in the middle of our Plan B struggles that God speaks most clearly. — Pete Wilson

Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud's psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around the country as a tool for interpreting literary texts but has rarely, if ever, been discussed in science departments. — Siri Hustvedt

There's nothing about me on the jacket because I have no credentials. I majored in English at school, but I only took one creative writing class. I think I got a B. And I never really thought about getting an MFA. I'm too spiteful to take criticism constructively and I'm only comfortable being honest about people behind their backs, so workshops or group critiques were never what I was looking for. For years I just wrote in journals and didn't really worry about turning any of it into stories or stuff for other people to read, so I guess I developed my writing style by talking to myself, like some homeless people do. Only I used a pen and paper instead of just freaking out on the street. If they switched to a different medium they might be better off. It would probably help if they had someplace to live too. — Paul Neilan

Jamie said in that voice of his, "You never saw us."
"I never saw you," the driver repeated, sounding dazed.
"You drove this astonishingly hot underwear model from south Texas. You wanted to lick his abs."
"I wanted to lick his abs."
"You're such an asshole," Stella muttered as she climbed out of the cab. — Michelle Hodkin

You must have also observed the masculine bias in the English language itself, in which women - literally, 'not men' - are daily confronted with the terror, unknowable to men, of concepts which they can imagine, but which an inherently patriarchal language does not allow them to express. — Dexter Palmer

After three years of English at Cambridge, being force-fed literary theory, I was almost convinced that literature was all coded messages about Marxism and the death of the self. I crawled out of the post-structuralist desert thirsty for heroines I could cry and laugh with. I was jaded. I craved trash. — Samantha Ellis

The best teams I've had had a little bit of swagger. — John Calipari

The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines. — Michael Eric Dyson

I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed. — Brownie McGhee

There could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't-so my theory doesn't have to explain them. — Daniel Dennett

I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together. — A.S. Byatt

Innocence wears its own crown, Monsieur; it needs no added dignity; it is as sublime in rags as in royal robes. — Victor Hugo

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life. — Tony Hawks

The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. — C.S. Lewis

When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory. — Annie Dillard

A Bible reading laity is a nation's surest defence against error. — J.C. Ryle

Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out. — Megan McArdle