Familiar English Quotes & Sayings

Honeymoon, a term we are all familiar with, is a specific reference to mead. The term comes from an old English tradition that dates from the Middles Ages. Mead was drunk in great quantities at weddings, and after the ceremony nuptial couples were given a month's supply of mead--sufficient for one full cycle of the moon. — Pamela Spence

Old English poetry is characterised by a number of poetic tropes which enable a writer to describe things indirectly and which require a reader imaginatively to construct their meaning. The most widespread of these figurative descriptions are what are known as kennings. Kennings often occur in compounds: for example, hronrad (whale-road) or swanrad (swan- road) meaning 'the sea'; banhus (bone-house) meaning the 'human body'. Some kennings involve borrowing or inventing words; others appear to be chosen to meet the alliterative requirement of a poetic line, and as a result some kennings are difficult to decode, leading to disputes in critical interpretation. But kennings do allow more abstract concepts to be communicated by using more familiar words: for example, God is often described as moncynnes weard ('guardian of mankind'). — Ronald Carter

word 'dream' in the English language, or its equivalent in other languages, is probably one of the most familiar words in our vocabulary. It tends to have a variety of uses, such as, visionary, as in the above quotation, or wishful, as in hoping to win a lottery or to meet a soul mate or to have a successful career. Such dreams would fall into a category of waking or conscious experiences (mostly!), but the most common form of dreams, — Michael Sheridan

All around me I hear the pleasant chortle of Dutch. It sounds vaguely familiar, though I can't imagine why. Then it dawns on me. Dutch sounds exactly like English spoken backward! ...
I wonder if I recorded someone speaking Dutch and played that backward, it would sound like regular English! — Eric Weiner

As a student in England, I studied French and English literature. I read L'Etranger and the rhythm of the novel felt familiar to me - very African. — Sefi Atta

Daniel!" She waved the letter. "I have news," she called in the English she always used with him.
Her son straightened up from the horse. "What, Mama?"
Eager expectancy glowed in his blue eyes, and for a moment he looked so much like his father that a familiar pain pierced her heart and tempered her excitement. From long practice, she shoved her sadness aside. "I've inherited Uncle Ezra's ranch in Montana. — Debra Holland

The traveler to the United States will do wellto prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.
Now, I can't look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter.
Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips.
A name I won't throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought.
And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form ... .. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart. — Coco J. Ginger

My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English. — J.M.G. Le Clezio

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word - you. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person. — Cristina Henriquez

At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse. — James Fenton

My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed. — Colm Toibin

Expressing emotion is not so easy. He has to remind himself that English is not her first language. Expressing emotion can be difficult even when the words are familiar. — Elise Valmorbida

I can well imagine a lily-livered coward shying away from taking you on. But don't try to tell me that you haven't had your chances. I refuse to believe that every man in Hampshire is blind and stupid. Unless thin English blood is to blame." "You forget I've got thin English blood." He smiled. "There's nothing thin about your blood, lassie. Perhaps that's why it takes a proud Scot to see your true worth. I don't want a milk-and-water miss at my side. I want a woman of strength and fire. A woman like you." Shocked, she struggled to sit up. He'd started out with the familiar teasing, but purpose had resonated through that declaration. "Nobody's ever said anything like that to me before." "I want a wife to share my joys and troubles." His Scottish burr deepened with every word. "I want a wife who meets a challenge with a sparkle in her eyes. I want a wife who gives me a run for my money." Inside — Anna Campbell

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be. — George Bernard Shaw

Memories do not change, and change is the law of existence. If our dead, the closest, the most beloved, were to return to us after a long absence and instead of the old, familiar trees were to find in our souls English gardens and stone walls
that is to say, other loves, other tastes, other interests, they would gaze upon us sadly and tenderly for a moment, wiping away their tears, and then return to their tombs to rest. — Teresa De La Parra

We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been. — Allegra Huston

There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny. — Tom Stoppard

My readiness to admit to my fallibility is perhaps rather English, but I hope that the problems I describe will be familiar to doctors and patients everywhere. — Henry Marsh

What initially attracted me to The Seventh Seal was that it had values and characteristics which I was familiar with in other art forms, most notably, the European novel and certain forms on English drama, and indeed, in relation to my rather academic interest in history
not "history" in the normal sense, but history as a form of entertainment . It might be a very unfashionable view but I believe that history is an amazing bank or reserve area of plots, characterisations, extraordinary events, etc. — Peter Greenaway

I'll buy it right now, Jack," said an English voice, somehow familiar, "if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is. — Neal Stephenson

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

And of course we are familiar with the English common law rule of thumb that said a man could in fact use a stick no bigger than his thumb to discipline his wife and family. — Patricia Ireland

Children...wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride,; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well underway. — Annie Dillard

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. — Samuel Johnson

The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the fine structure constant. The value of this constant, almost exactly 1/137, has puzzled many generations of physicists. A joke made about the famous English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, says that upon arrival to heaven he was allowed to ask God one question. His question was: "Why 1/137? — Mario Livio

In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression. — George Polya

The question of how much English should be used in international research universities is one with which I am extremely familiar. I would even say I am deeply puzzled by this trend. I am not certain what the correct answer should be. — Henry Rosovsky

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months. — Nathan Myhrvold

There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese. — H.L. Mencken

As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work. — Jim Harrison

The old process of social assimilation used to be mainly about English new money - generated in London, the mucky, brassy North or the colonies - buying those houses and restoring them, and doing the three-generation thing, mouldering into the landscape, and the 'community,' identifying with the place in a familiar way. — Peter York

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. — William Hazlitt

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel ... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book. — Alan Bradley

I saw this French woman, this English man in Italy. It was a film [Certified Copy] I knew well, but I had already seen it, and I was familiar with it, and I had no feeling of anxiety or responsibility toward it. — Abbas Kiarostami