Say English Quotes & Sayings

I came to Los Angeles for the first time in 1994. I spoke no English. I only knew how to say two sentences: 'How are you?' and 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.' — Penelope Cruz

Laistrygonians. The monsters in the gym. They're a race of giant cannibals who live in the far north. Odysseus ran into them once, but I've never seen them as far south as New York before." "Laistry - I can't even say that. What would you call them in English?" She thought about it for a moment. "Canadians," she decided. — Rick Riordan

I think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it. He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome, but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends instead of watching the cooking. He would just say, 'Ah, never mind'. — Chris Cleave

The phrase comes to him before the emotion; but we must add that he is nevertheless a born writer, a man who detests meals, servants, ease, respectability or anything that gets between him and his art; who has kept his freedom when most of his contemporaries have long ago lost theirs; who is ashamed of nothing but being ashamed; who says whatever he has it in his mind to say, and has taught himself an accent, a cadence, indeed a language, for saying it in which, though they are not English, but Irish, will give him his place among the lesser immortals of our tongue. — Virginia Woolf

Since every school in India teaches English, why can't it be our link language? Why do Tamils have to study English for communication with the world and Hindi for communications within India? Do we need a big door for the big dog and a small door for the small dog? I say, let the small dog use the big door too! — C. N. Annadurai

When one heated exchange (in English) led a commenter to write "Go fuck yourself!" in Lojban, it turned into a lengthy discussion of why he hadn't said what he meant to say, and what the proper Lojban expression for the sentiment might be. — Arika Okrent

The Japanese have five different ways to say 'thank you' - and every one of them translates literally as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty on this point! Instead, English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. 'Gratitude,' for example. — Robert A. Heinlein

Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various. The following means, among others, is in great vogue, 'is quite a favourite,' as the English say; a high official suddenly ceases to understand the simplest words, assuming total deafness. He will ask, for instance, What's to-day?' He is respectfully informed, 'To-day's Friday, your Ex-s-s-s-lency.' 'Eh? What? What's that? What do you say?' the great man repeats with intense attention. 'To-day's Friday, your Ex - s - s - lency.' 'Eh? What? What's Friday? What Friday?' 'Friday, your Ex - s - s - s - lency, the day of the week.' 'What, do you pretend to teach me, eh? — Ivan Turgenev

There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English. — Anne Carson

In life, you have to take the pace that love goes. You don't force it. You just don't force love, you don't force falling in love, you don't force being in love - you just become. I don't know how to say that in English, but you just feel it. — Juan Pablo Galavis

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I haven't yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things: I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don't think my first language can be written down at all. — Claire-Louise Bennett

When I finally calmed down, I handed her the Ewok. "Can you go back and give it to him" I said. "Oh, honey," she answered. "That's so sweet of you. But Isabel can clean the Lego set. It'll be good as new for Auggie, don't worry." "No, for the other kid," I answered. She looked at me a second, like she didn't know what to say. "Via said he doesn't speak any English," I sai. "It must be really scary for him, being in the hospital." She nodded slowly. "Yeah," she whispered. "It must be." She closed her eyes and hugged me again. And then she took me over to the security desk, where I waited until she went back up the elevator and, after about five minutes, came back down again. "Did he like it?" I asked. "Honeyboy," she said softly, brushing the hair out of my eyes. "You made his day. — R.J. Palacio

I would say that Catholics came in and competed with the Protestant work ethic. That is one thing. And they did assimilate into the broader society and a lot of them, especially Irish Catholic did their best to sound like they were English rather than Irish by dropping and the O and the apostrophe. — Steve King

It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break
these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward? — Laurie Halse Anderson

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

I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?) — Jodi Picoult

The best way to tell whether the Norwegian is a Norwegian is to say:
"Are you Swedish?"
Regardless whether you say this in English, French, Italian, Japanese, Urdu or Swahili, he will answer:
"Swedish? Me? I'm a Norwegian!"
Then you will be able to tell. — Odd Borretzen

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language. — Robert A. Heinlein

Olga noticed Mirium looking at her blankly. 'Don't you pray?' she asked.
'Pray?' Mirium shook her head. 'I don't understand - '
'Prayers! Oh, yes, I forgot. Didn't dear Roland say that on the other side everybody is pagan? You all worship some dead god on a stick, impaled or something disgusting, and pray in English,' she said with relish. — Charles Stross

It has long been said that the three hardest words to say in the English language are I love you. We heartily disagree! For most people, it is much harder to say I don't know. — Steven D. Levitt

Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie. — Owen Wilson

Curiously I was unmoved by my work. Unaffected by the act of murder, I had become entirely numb. I couldn't understand how such detachment was possible-- but I did some digging.

What I discovered would have horrified me... if I was capable of being horrified. My augmentation had included the binding of my DNA to some of history's most notorious assassins.

Are you not getting this? I'll say it in plain English--- I am the perfect killer in every sense of the word--- ---because--- ---I--- ---am--- ---every--- killer.

I'm the act of change possessed in a revolver. I am revolution packed into a suitcase bomb.

I am ever Mark David Chapman and every Charlotte Corday. I am Luigi Lucheni slow-dancing with Balthasar to the tune of semi-automatics, while Gavrilo Princip masturbates in the corner with bath-tub napalm. I am all of them and so much more... because I am going to live forever." Number Five — Gerard Way

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside? — Jackson Browne

I know that asshole you were with in college
"
"Can we leave that asshole out of it?"
Please, gentlemen, one asshole at a time. — Josh Lanyon

I'll tell you a thing that will shock you. It will certainly shock the readers of Writer's Digest. What I often do nowadays when I have to, say, describe a room, is to take a page of a dictionary, any page at all, and see if with the words suggested by that one page in the dictionary I can build up a room, build up a scene. ... I even did it in a novel I wrote called MF. There's a description of a hotel vestibule whose properties are derived from Page 167 in R.J. Wilkinson's Malay-English Dictionary. Nobody has noticed. ... As most things in life are arbitrary anyway, you're not doing anything naughty, you're really normally doing what nature does, you're just making an entity out of the elements. I do recommend it to young writers. — Anthony Burgess

Laistry ... I can't even say that. What would you call them in English?"
"Canadians. — Rick Riordan

Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too. — Robert Fitzgerald

It started when she passed me a note in English class. The note said you don't seem as awful as I hear you are. I passed one back that read: beware I am as awful as people say and worse. She laughed and I had a friend. She didn't become my Ally and I didn't ask her to or want her to but she became my friend and that was more than anyone else was willing to do. — James Frey

Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read. When I read a book, what do I hope will stay with me a year later? If it's a work of nonfiction, the thesis, maybe, if the book has one. A few savory details, perhaps. If it's fiction, the broadest outline of the plot, something about the main characters (at least their names), and an overall critical judgment about the book. Even these are likely to fade. Looking up at my shelves, at the books that have drained so many of my waking hours, is always a dispiriting experience. One Hundred Years of Solitude: I remember magical realism and that I enjoyed it. But that's about it. I don't even recall when I read it. About Wuthering Heights I remember exactly two things: that I read it in a high school English class and that there was a character named Heathcliff. I couldn't say whether I liked the book or not. — Joshua Foer

When I write a word in English, a simple one, such as, say, 'chief,' I have unwittingly ushered a querulous horde into the room. The Roman legionary is there, shaking his cap, or head, and Andy Capp is there, slouching in his signature working man's headgear. — Geraldine Brooks

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. — Yeng Pway Ngon

How well do you know the people who raised you? Look around your dining room table. Look around at your loved ones, especially the elders. The grandparents and the aunts and uncles who used to give you shiny new quarters and unvarnished advice. How much do you really know about their lives. Perhaps you've heard that they served in a war, or lived for a time in a log cabin, or arrived in this country speaking little or no English. Maybe they survived the Holocaust or the Dust Bowl. How were they shaped by the Depression or the Cold War, or the stutter-step march towards integration in their own community? What were they like before they married or took on mortgages and assumed all the worries that attend the feeding, clothing, and education of their children? If you don't already know the answers, the people who raised you will most likely remain a mystery, unless you take the bold step and say: Tell me more about yourself. — Michele Norris

The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. It has no time for dispossession and drought and farmers' debts, the ravages that the corporate globalization project is wreaking on the poor of India. So to suddenly turn around and condemn the riots is a typical middle-class response. Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, Oh, that's not very nice. Can't we be more civilized? — Arundhati Roy

Kissed. Cath loved that word. She used it sparingly in her fic, just because it felt so powerful. It felt like kissing to say it. Well done, English Language. — Rainbow Rowell

I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without — Mark Twain

Sometimes i want to say it. and there is nothing in english. that will say it. — Nayyirah Waheed

Now," she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow
for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to pt it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth. — Virginia Woolf

I say 20 words in English. I say money, money, money, and I say hot dog! I say yes, no and I say money, money, money and I say turkey sandwich and I say grape juice. — Carmen Miranda

Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note
to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form - like maybe a
watch or necklace.) — Ally Carter

Uniqueness Leads To Great Success Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were, and say, 'why not?' --George Bernard Shaw English Dramatist (1856-1950) — John Paul Carinci

Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love with you! — Haruki Murakami

In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the 'classical' English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, 'Oh, but that's OLD!' and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to SELL Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are 'always meaning to' read, — George Orwell

My shirt and my hat always say 'World Champion' in some language. English, Spanish, Chinese, 'Star Wars' language, which is also known as Aurebesh, mermaid language. — Judah Friedlander

We speak, and write, in one of the most diverse, gloriously ecumenical tongues on the planet. In English, there is a word or phrase for pretty much anything we want to say, and if there isn't, we make it up, and it is welcomed into the family. We can express ourselves as complexly or as simply as we like. We can be magniloquent didacts, or we can talk plain. — Jeff Deck

When I began 'Wicked', I really thought of it entirely as a one-off, as the English say. There was no intention that there should ever be a follow up, because the subtitle was 'The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'. She was dead and gone, as the book says, at the end. — Gregory Maguire

The count said in careful English, "That was perhaps not, as you English say, very sporting."
"Games are played to win," Cameron said. "And we're Scottish. — Jennifer Ashley

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me. — Harrison Birtwistle

My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, "Take me to Charles's unhealthy pictures." Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little
I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers. — Evelyn Waugh

At the negotiations in Irvine, it became clear to me that there was no side I could stand on. The English despise me and my countrymen don't trust me. Wallace and the others are rebelling in the name of Balliol. I cannot fight with them. It would be as much a betrayal of my oath as when I was fighting for England. I know what I must do. What I should have done months ago.'
Robert felt embarrassed, about to say the words. Inside, his father's voice berated him, but he silenced it. 'I want you to weave my destiny,' he finished. 'As you did for my grandfather.'
When she spoke, her voice was low. 'And what is your destiny?'
He met her eyes now, all hesitation and embarrassment gone. 'To be King of Scotland.'
A smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't a soft smile. It was hard and dangerous. 'I will need something of yours,' she said, rising. — Robyn Young

I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike. — Martin Amis

If you ask most high schoolers who Bruce Lee is, they will say that it someone they sit next to in English class. — Seth Rogen

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. "You are my country, Desdemona." Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. "My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining."
She gasped.
His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. "You'll never hear old Blake say something like that."
She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation?
"Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose. — Connie Brockway

I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city. — Todd English

I've gone into auditions and I think they have an assumption about me when they see my photo and then I open my mouth and they say, 'Where exactly are you from? And you were born in Ethiopia? But you're Irish, but you also kind of sound English. That's really strange.' They want to put you in a box in LA, that's how they tend to do it there, so if you don't fit in that box, it makes it more difficult. — Ruth Negga

At about 3:30 on May 9, 2013, then, I was puttering around when Pavel came over to say, "There is something interesting you might want to see. Little sparks and fireworks outside." Pavel's English isn't the greatest, so it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. Then I got it: fireworks, Russia, Victory Day - made sense, though it was surprising that he could see them from space. I floated over to the Russian segment to look out the window: no, it wasn't happening on Earth - it looked like fireflies were coming off the left side of the Station. — Chris Hadfield

I've said it once and I will say it again, why can't everyone just speak English? The Americans give it a bit of a go - why can't
other nations? — Louise Rennison

There are many words in the English language that you never want to hear you father say. Enema. Orgasm. Disappointed. — Lauren Oliver

There was a lot to think about. The strange liquid sensation that kept drifting over me, for one. The way the breeze seemed to follow me like a little lost puppy. The English test I was going to be way, way to tired for in the morning. What I was going to say to Lend to make everything better. How I was going to find a ride home with no communicator. How hard I was going to hit Jack for abandoning me.
The last one warmed me up a bit. — Kiersten White

'No' is the second shortest word in the English language, but one of the hardest to say. — Raymond Arroyo

But for the first time, I don't feel like the English language has developed enough letters in the alphabet to adequately express the words I want to say to you. — Colleen Hoover

You'll hear people say it's racist to test. Folks, it's racist not to test. Because guess who gets shuffled through the system oftentimes? Children whose parents don't speak English as a first language, inner-city kids. It's so much easier to quit on somebody than to remediate. — George W. Bush

I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got. — John Ruskin

I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their resume they can speak fluent English. In reality, they can't even count up to three. — Greg Akcelrod

I had to settle for two of the most inadequate words in the English language, words to pale to express what I needed to say. Thank you. — Lilith Saintcrow

All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world. — David Livingstone

Remember: If you go for a walk with a friend in England, don't say a single word for hours; if you go for a walk with your dog, talk to it all the time. — George Mikes

That was morality ; things that made you disgusted afterwards. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement. What a lot of bilge I could think up at night. What rot ! I could hear Brett say it. What rot ! When you were with the English you got into the habit of using English expressions in your thinking. — Ernest Hemingway,

My best friend Madison keeps a list on her phone of all of the different English slang that I say, so she has kind of like a translator so she can understand without having to ask me, "What on Earth are you talking about when you say 'nackered'?" — Emma Watson

If my opinion runs more than twenty pages," she said, "I am disturbed that I couldn't do it shorter." The mantra in her chambers is "Get it right and keep it tight." She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion's opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. "If you can say it in plain English, you should," RBG says. Going through "innumerable drafts," the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. "I think that law should be a literary profession," RBG says, "and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. — Irin Carmon

Why are people are so afraid of death? Why do they avoid talking about it? Maybe it's because there are no words. With my limited knowledge of the English language, there is not a word I have ever heard that accurately describes what "death" is. You can look it up in the dictionary for yourself. I don't believe what they say it is. How can you say death is death when it is not death at all, but life? — Kate McGahan

After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious about products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.
I tell this to the account people, and they say, "But it comes from trees!"
To which I reply, "Yes and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn't mean I'm going to spread them on my English muffin. — Augusten Burroughs

In my fairy tale, another year and a half has passed. I'm graduating with my English degree. And I ask you to marry me. What would you say?"
"Would you get down on one knee?"
"Absolutely."
"I would say yes. Hell yes. — Kim Holden

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook. — John Lukacs

People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening. — Anita Brookner

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. — David Foster Wallace

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating. — Dizzy Dean

One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain. — Sam Hamill

English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends. — James Fenton

The English prison system is altogether mediaeval and outworn. In some of its details, the system has improved since they began to send the Suffragettes to Holloway. I may say that we, by our public denunciation of the system, have forced these slight improvements. — Emmeline Pankhurst

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass — Virginia Woolf

Although all new talkers say names, use similar sounds, and prefer nouns more
than other parts of speech, the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies
from place to place (Waxman et al., 2013). For example, by 18 months, Englishspeaking infants speak far more nouns than verbs compared to Chinese or Korean
infants. Why?
One explanation goes back to the language itself. The Chinese and Korean
languages are "verb-friendly" in that verbs are placed at the beginning or end of
sentences. That facilitates learning. By contrast, English verbs occur anywhere in
a sentence, and their forms change in illogical ways (e.g., go, gone, will go, went).
This irregularity may make English verbs harder to learn, although the fact that
English verbs often have distinctive suffixes (-ing, -ed) and helper words (was, did,
had) may make it easier (Waxman et al., 2013). — Kathleen Stassen Berger

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

Farsi Couplet:
Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi
Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari


English Translation:
I have become you, and you me,
I am the body, you soul;
So that no one can say hereafter,
That you are someone, and me someone else. — Amir Khusrau

Can't I?" he said. "Did you know that they fertilized crops with human ash? After the war, the tomatoes were the size of an infant's head." He gave the words the same inflection that his grandfather did, only in English. They had a new but not unfamiliar sound on his tongue. He knew how to say them. — Boris Fishman

He quite liked the English. They tended to say sorry a lot, which was quite understandable given their heritage and the crimes of their ancestors. — Terry Pratchett

But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm — Meg Wolitzer

Some who were not yet ready to venture into the chapel on Sundays might well put in their first appearance on a Saturday night to see what Y dyn bach ('the little man') had got to say. (The Welsh term has an element of affection in it not obvious in the English) — Iain H. Murray

Now here is exactly the point, I am afraid, where multitudes of English people fail, and are in imminent danger of being lost for ever. They know that there is no forgiveness of sin excepting in Christ Jesus. They can tell you that there is no Saviour for sinners, no Redeemer, no Mediator, excepting Him who was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried. But here they stop, and get no further! They never come to the point of actually laying hold on Christ by faith, and becoming one with Christ and Christ in them. They can say, He is a Saviour, but not 'my Saviour,' - a Redeemer, but not 'my Redeemer,' - a Priest, but not 'my Priest,' - an Advocate, but not 'my Advocate:' and so they live and die unforgiven! No wonder that Martin Luther said, Many are lost because they cannot use possessive pronouns. — J.C. Ryle

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben', 'Hello Rodney', 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'. — Cher

That there should be so wide a difference between us Americans and these English, from whom we were divided, so to say, but the other day, is one of the most peculiar physiological phenomena that the history of the world will have afforded. As — Anthony Trollope

The hardest portion of English, I must say it: Idioms. — Flula Borg

If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend. — Richard P. Feynman

I want to say unequivocally that while I cherish every person who comes from anywhere, who comes here legally and seeks to pursue happiness, and I hope all of them decide to stay and become American citizens, but I want them to become American. And part of becoming American involved English. It is vital historically to assert and establish that English is the common language at the heart of our civilization. — Newt Gingrich

I'm English, without a doubt. I will never ever say I'm not English. English born and bred. I'm Turkish, though — Colin Kazim-Richards

I'm seeing so much of America today, Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him - whenever things were not to his liking, he'd say that - I'm seeing so much of America today. — Karen Joy Fowler

I will say that as far as I know, only in English are the words "self" and "conscious" put together to mean something bad. My — Elliott James

The problem with the word "vagina" is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get "examined.".. No. Let's clear this up right now - I don't actually have a vagina. I never have. I, personally, have a cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word, and it doubles up as the most potent swear word in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say "cunt." Compared to this, the most powerful swear word men have got out of their privates is "dick," which is frankly vanilla. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone "a girl" - I love that "cunt" stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. — Caitlin Moran

The Animal Farm is a well written book in comprehensive english. George Orwell compares the communist Russian political system trying to make a point that that system was using people that didn't have a critical mind. What Orwell didn't see is that this attitude can be found in all the political systems where is no supervising and rotation of work.We see corruption in every country.Specialy in countries that are ruled by capitalism systems like Britain and America.I can't say that communism system was bad because people had free education and housing and they didn't have to borrow money from the bank. I believe that Orwell has been sarcastic and he was serving his country not the human race. — George Orwell

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language. — Lauren Willig