Practice Your English Quotes & Sayings

Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. — Morris Raphael Cohen

At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English. — Bill Bryson

Leaders learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders. — Warren G. Bennis

Tell Liz,' I say, 'the mean girl totally got what she deserved in the end. — Courtney Summers

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

desperately needed to practice her German, because she couldn't sing Schubert's songs in English for — Sarah Lark

Welcome to the Folly," he said. "Official home of English magic since 1775." "And your patron saint is Sir Isaac Newton?" I asked. Nightingale grinned. "He was our founder and the first man to systemize the practice of magic." "I was taught that he invented modern science," I said. "He did both," said Nightingale. "That's the nature of genius." Nightingale — Ben Aaronovitch

English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that. — Dean Wesley Smith

This was the move that was supposed to sweep me away. She seemed a little out of practice. I guess life with Charley Royce hadn't exactly been the third reel of The English Patient. It had to be bad if Mickey Dolan was your back-up. Not to put Mickey down but he didn't strike me as the lover-boy type. Especially when he took out his teeth. The last time Mickey thought about pleasing anybody but himself was just before he discovered how to sniff glue. — Dan Ahearn

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

'Marielena' was a wonderful experience that so many people still remember today. It challenged me to practice my Spanish. Having been born and raised in Miami, English was very much my dominant language! — Maria Canals Barrera

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so ... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice. — Shunryu Suzuki

So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks — Terry Eagleton

The smallpox vaccination was developed in the Ottoman Empire. The vaccine subsequently made its way to England through the wife of an English ambassador who observed the practice in Istanbul. — Firas Alkhateeb

Levinas's thought emphasizes not the primacy of the self, but the primacy of the other - that is, other human beings. He taught that the self comes into existence — Ira F. Stone

The English practice of accommodating the rules of commercial law to commercial practice. The line of causation ran from economic need to legal response — Nathan Rosenberg

As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses. — George Bernard Shaw

Somethings you know right away to be final- when you lose your last baby tooth ... Other times, you have to work out the milestone via subtraction, a math you do to assign significance, like when I figured out that I'd just blown through my last-ever wednesday with Mom on the day after she died. — Karen Russell

The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking. — Leslie Stephen

A woman indeed can't properly be said to choose, all that is allowed her, is to refuse or accept what is offered. — Mary Astell

If goodness is its own reward, shouldn't we get a little something for being naughty? — Lauren Bacall

Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions of the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I'm glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony. - PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect
a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960) — Jack McClelland

All day
I practice
squeezing hisses
through my teeth.

Whoever invented
English
must have loved
snakes. — Thanhha Lai

A not uncommon practice was to associate nationality with a particular disease, often sexually transmitted. For example, the English called syphilis "The French Disease"; the French called it "The Italian Disease"; the Italians called it "The Turkish Disease"; the Russians called it "The Polish Disease"; and both the Japanese and the Indians termed it "The Portuguese Disease." Only the Spanish accepted any blame, referring to it as "The Spanish Disease. — Daniel N. Leeson

How shall I speak of Doom, and ours in special, But as of something altogether common? — Donald Justice

They were family. They had a deal, him and Ian. They'd had it since they were kids growing up in the same low-rent trailer park with exactly two ways out - prison or the US military. Ian had stayed in the Army and Alex had gotten out the minute they would pay for his college. The friendship had survived years and distance. — Lexi Blake

Granted, I should love my neighbor as myself, the questions which, under modern conditions of large-scale organization, remain for solution are, 'Who precisely is my neighbor?' and 'How exactly am I to make my love for them effective in practice?'... It had insisted that all men were brethren. But it did not occur to it to point out that, as a result of the new economic imperialism, which was begging to develop in the 17th century, the brethren of the English merchant were the Africans whom he kidnapped for slavery in America, or the American Indians from whom he stripped of their lands, or the Indian craftsmen whom he bought muslin's and silks at starvation prices. Religion had not yet learned to console itself for the practical difficulty of applying its moral principles by clasping the comfortable formula that for the transaction of economic life no moral principles exist. — R. H. Tawney

The English also had a reputation, shared with the Dutch, for blowing up their ships to avoid capture. In 1611, for instance, the Spanish Admiral Don Pedro de toledo captured a Turkish pirate ship, but its English consort, 'being wont to seek a voluntary death rather than yield, blew up their ship when they saw resistance useless'. Blowing up their ships, or at least threatening to do so, would become standard pirate practice. — Peter Earle

Discussions about the ethics of suicide are immediately biased by the verb that customarily attaches to it in English. One "commits" suicide. Because this presupposes the wrongfulness of the suicide, I avoid that verb, opting instead for "carry out" suicide. This is evaluatively neutral, avoiding both the usual bias against suicide and the unusual bias in favor of it that the verb "achieve" would effect. "Carry out" is preferable to "practice", which implies something ongoing. Finally, "carry out" also implies a suicide that is completed rather than merely attempted. — David Benatar

I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone-and this is my biggest satisfaction. — Roman Polanski

This book is intended for use in English courses in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature. It aims to give in a brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention (in Chapters II and III) on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. The numbers of the sections may be used as references in correcting manuscript. — William Strunk Jr.

Whenever I visit Korea she [Kang] buys me lunch and takes me to a gallery. As if all this wasn't enough, she has incredible respect for translation as a creative, artistic practice - she insists that each English version is 'our book', offered to share her fees with me when she found out I wasn't getting paid for translating her publicity stuff, always asks the editor to credit me, and does so herself whenever she's interviewed. Too good to be true. — Deborah Smith

Because women are such potent ingredients of men's imaginations, we see how much power men feel women have over them, and how women must be suppressed, defanged, or idealized in one way or another. How, with Eve, they are often thought to be the root of the evil in the world -which says more about the man or men who wrote that story than about Eve herself. Eve is curious and wants knowledge, not power over others. [...] Both onstage and offstage, women have two levels of understanding concerning how to behave -one, to behave the way men want them to behave and forget that what they want might be different; two, to find out how they really feel and decide whether or not they are going to act on it! — Tina Packer

No matter how much more I practice, my English will never be perfect. If it is really terrible, I'll correct it, but otherwise, I do it my Jackie Chan way. — Jackie Chan

You don't have to fight to straighten the image of your country: You have to straighten the country. You must speak about problems openly. — Cristian Mungiu

A loving heart is always young. — Debasish Mridha

The gym teacher's name was Mr. Caruso. Mr. Caruso did
not speak English. He spoke 'Gym.' One day I was playing
basketball and Mr. Caruso told me I would have to get
an athletic supporter. He didn't express himself exactly
that way, though. He said, 'Hey, you, one day you're gonna
go up for a rebound and the family jewels aren't gonna
go with ya.' I had no idea what he was talking about.
Next day I showed up for practice without my watch and
my mezuzah. He said, 'Did ya take care of the family jewels?'
I said, 'I left 'em in my locker.' Took us a half hour to
revive Mr. Caruso. — Tommy Lasorda

Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.
"I hate you," she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. "I really, really hate you." Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help taking it personally. — David Sedaris

In the context of eternity, time doesn't matter. — Wayne Dyer

If they can make a fabulous gay man work like that, I thought, what can they do to the rest of us? — Gary Shteyngart

In the eleventh century obese English king William the Conqueror took to bed and consumed nothing but alcohol to shed pounds, a practice many of his countrymen seem to continue to this day. — David Sax

In a war the last thing the English know is how to practice fair play. — Adolf Hitler