General English Quotes & Sayings

English people ... are very kind, very friendly, interested in a general way, and consider us a great, wonderful, unknown sort of Australia, and that is all. — M. E. W. Sherwood

The apothecary of this country is qualified by education to attend at the bedside of the sick, and, being in general better acquainted with pharmacy than the physicians of English universities ... is often the most successful practitioner.
JEREMIAH JENKINS, OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PROFESSION AND TRADE OF MEDICINE, 1810
For — Julie Klassen

These critics thought that the general commercialization of English life, including the rise of trading companies, banks, stock markets, speculators, and new moneyed men, had undermined traditional values and threatened England with ruin. The monarchy and its minions had used patronage, the national debt, and the Bank of England to corrupt the society, including the House of Commons, and to build up the executive bureaucracy at the expense of the people's liberties, usually for the purpose of waging war. — Gordon S. Wood

Why don't these translation books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like, "Say nothing unless it's in English"? — Joe Cawley

He had come to us only three years earlier, but had already won general sympathy, mainly because he "knew how to bring society together." His house was never without guests, and it seemed he would have been unable to live without them. He had to have guests to dinner every day, even if only two, even if only one, but without guests he would not sit down to eat. He gave formal dinners, too, under all sorts of pretexts, sometimes even the most unexpected. The food he served, though not refined, was abundant, the cabbage pies were excellent, and the wines made up in quantity for what they lacked in quality. In the front room stood a billiard table, surrounded by quite decent furnishings; that is, there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor's house. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are reasons for believing that the English increase will far surpass others, and that the diffusion of the United States will ultimately produce the general population of America. — Ezra Stiles

It was more just about serving the song, which is sort of the way that we work in general. We wanna do the best that we can with it and make it the most interesting to our ears. And putting auto-tune on 'California English', was just one reflection of that. — Chris Baio

American Heritage Dictionary: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin. . . . In general, the Usage Panel accepts the split infinitive." Merriam-Webster Unabridged online dictionary: "Even though there has never been a rational basis for objecting to the split infinitive, the subject has become a fixture of folk belief about grammar. . . . Modern commentators . . . usually say it's all right to split an infinitive in the interest of clarity. Since clarity is the usual reason for splitting, this advice means merely that you can split them whenever you need to." Encarta World English Dictionary: "There is no grammatical basis for rejecting split infinitives. — Steven Pinker

In general, both in Spanish and English, the quality of the entertainment media is horrible. — Ruben Blades

I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense. — James Bryce

Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent. — Leo Tolstoy

I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general. — Christopher Moore

I get a lot more abuse in England. That's just a general English attitude. I did the same thing to famous people. It's just your instinct. — Robert Pattinson

The laws of cricket tell of the English love of compromise between a particular freedom and a general orderliness, or legality. — Neville Cardus

Although I am a political liberal, I believe that conservatives have a better understanding of moral development (although not of moral psychology in general - they are too committed to the myth of pure evil). Conservatives want schools to teach lessons that will create a positive and uniquely American identity, including a heavy dose of American history and civics, using English as the only national language. Liberals are justifiably wary of jingoism, nationalism, and the focus on books by "dead white males," but I think everyone who cares about education should remember that the American motto of e pluribus, unum (from many, one) has two parts. The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen the unum. — Jonathan Haidt

The sad truth is, S - , most people are not writers. This has nothing to do with literacy - or intelligence, or general culture. There are people who can correct the grammar, spelling, diction, and style of a college English paper with the best of them - who are still not writers. Indeed, most of what gets published in books, magazines, and newspapers is not written by real writers - which is one reason why so much of it is so bad. — Samuel R. Delany

Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom ... — Alexander McCall Smith

the English general was less concerned for the moment with what he was going to do in Scotland than with the problem of actually getting his army there in working order. His main worry was a shortage of beer for the troops; on September 2 he was indenting for "vi or vii hundred tonne of bere", five days later he was noting that "I feare lak of no thyng so moche as of drynk", and this despite the brewing that was taking place at Berwick, and on September 11 he was announcing flatly that he could not hope to get his army to Edinburgh without beer. Like — George MacDonald Fraser

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

Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were. — William Golding

I love puppies, and I love animals in general. Besides that, I do martial arts: extreme martial arts. I also play real guitar and drums, and sing. And I'm taking some college classes, hoping to major in English and creative writing. — Cameron Monaghan

The spread of flash talk to the general population would prove to be a permanent shift in the English language. When you say "so long" to your "pal" in parting, you are participating in a subversive cultural phenomenon dating back to 1530 and the Derbyshire scoundrels who first developed a secret language all their own. — Lyndsay Faye

I was an English major in college, though I ended up getting my degree in "General Stduies" because my grades were too bad to qualify for an English degree. — Josh Lieb

For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete. — Lafcadio Hearn

I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle this matter by lunch time. — Napoleon Bonaparte

In general, American slang is much better than English slang. The entire world picks up American slang. — Jesse Sheidlower

The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general. — Lev Grossman

I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it. — Louis Menand

In the U.S., the term 'general aviation' means its exact opposite, the way 'public school' does in England. An English public school is private and, on top of that, exclusive. Likewise, general-aviation airports in the U.S. are for everyone but the general public. — Tom Wolfe

History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of continuity. It concerns the atavistic desire to find deep sources of identity. We live again in the twelfth or in the fifteenth century, finding echoes and resonances of our own time; we may recognise that some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost; we may also conclude that the great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed. That is why some of the greatest writers have preferred to see English history as dramatic or epic poetry, which is just as capable of expressing the power and movement of history as any prose narrative; it is a form of singing around a fire. — Peter Ackroyd

And English society was was not exactly welcoming to these rich newcomers: Imagine Kim Kardashian marrying Prince Henry today and you get the general idea of the suspicion and disdain that the Americans encountered. — Daisy Goodwin

English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us. — Willard Van Orman Quine

We the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing. — C.F.W. Walther

The general burden of the Coolidge memoirs was that the right hon. gentleman was a typical American, and some hinted that he was the most typical since Lincoln. As the English say, I find myself quite unable to associate myself with that thesis. He was, in truth, almost as unlike the average of his countrymen as if he had been born green. The Americano is an expansive fellow, a back-slapper, full of amiability; Coolidge was reserved and even muriatic. The Americano has a stupendous capacity for believing, and especially for believing in what is palpably not true; Coolidge was, in his fundamental metaphysics, an agnostic. The Americano dreams vast dreams, and is hag-ridden by a demon; Coolidge was not mount but rider, and his steed was a mechanical horse. The Americano, in his normal incarnation, challenges fate at every step and his whole life is a struggle; Coolidge took things as they came. — H.L. Mencken

Within a few moments he was immersed in his work. The evening before, he had caught up with the routine of his classwork; papers had been graded and lectures prepared for the whole week that was to follow. He saw the evening before hm, and several evenings more, in which he would be free to work on his book. What he wanted to do in this new book was not yet precisely clear to him; in general, he wished to extend himself beyond his first study, in both time and scope. He wanted to work in the period of the English Renaiisance and to extend his study of classical and medieval Latin influences into that area. He was in the stage of planning his study, and it was that stage which gave him the most pleasure-the selection among alternative appraoches, the rejection of certain strategies, the mysteries and uncertainties that lay in unexplored possibilities, the consequences of choice ... The possibilities he could see so exhilarated him that he could not keep still. — John Edward Williams

Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita). — Vladimir Nabokov

An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes. — H.P. Lovecraft

An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general. — George Bernard Shaw

A word Gorgeous is much sexier than a word Beautiful — Rahul

Beliefs are a powerful thing. I often travel the world and sometimes the local waitresses attending me are nervous if they can't speak English. Now, when this happens, I point at the pictures in the menu. However, I've noticed that the ones with the strongest beliefs, the most nervous ones, still do a mistake in my order. Another interesting things to notice in these situations is that, when I correct them, by pointing again at what I ordered before, they recognize their mistake, but get angry, as if their mistake was my fault, and that's called irresponsibility. Now, when you combine irresponsibility with the wrong beliefs, you have a a very dumb person. That's what stupidity is, it's a human being doing the wrong things with the wrong beliefs and never ever accepting any responsibility for it. That's how those with the lowest spiritual conscience behave in general with themselves and others. — Robin Sacredfire

There were two gentleman seated by it talking in French;impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or comprehend much of the purport of what they said ... yet French, in the mouths of Frenchmen or Belgians ( ... ), was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen presently discerned me to be an Englishman - no doubt from the fashion in which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice ,politely accosted me in very good English; I remember I wish to God that I could speak French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the capital I was in, it was my first experience of that skill in living languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels. — Charlotte Bronte

My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language. — Susan Sontag

Even though I'm English, I've all my life been heavily exposed to American television and culture in general. — Dominic West

I'm not a great fan of monarchy in general, but I have to say the Danish monarchy is closer to the people; it's not as stuffy as the English one. — Viggo Mortensen

These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days. — Winston Churchill

Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there. — Sarah Vowell

There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of the supernatural. In English literature, I believe there is no exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It touches something within us that relates to infinity — Lafcadio Hearn

The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home. — Frederick Forsyth