Quotes & Sayings About Today English

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today
that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past. — Virginia Woolf

I am the first prime minister of this country of neither English nor French origin. So I determined to bring about a Canadian citizenship that knew no hyphenated consideration ... I'm very happy to be able to say that in the House of Commons today in my party we have members of Italian, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Chinese and Ukrainian origin and they are all Canadians. — John Diefenbaker

Why this book? In today's globalized world, it seems we forget things that happened only a decade ago. Thus, we repeat the mistakes of the past, unnecessarily. — Thomas Jerome Baker

In the history of humanity, there have been many languages, including French, that have served as universal languages: Latin, Chinese, Arabic, and more. Yet none of them ever ruled the world the way English does today. — Minae Mizumura

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now. — Julie Taymor

When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm. — David Dewhurst

In seventeenth-century England, 150 out of every 1,000 newborns died during their first year, and a third of all children were dead before they reached fifteen.9 Today, only five out of 1,000 English babies die during their first year, and only seven out of 1,000 die before age fifteen.10 — Yuval Noah Harari

Mexicans who come to America today end up opposing assimilation. They say they are "holding on to their culture." To them, I say, "If you really wanted to hold on to your culture, you would be in favor of assimilation. You would be fearless about swallowing English and about becoming Americanized. You would be much more positive about the future, and much less afraid. That's what it means to be Mexican. — Richard Rodriguez

The English team's revisions showed that the Cambrian had been a time of unparalleled innovation and experimentation in body designs. For almost four billion years life had dawdled along without any detectable ambitions in the direction of complexity, and then suddenly, in the space of just five or ten million years, it had created all the basic body designs still in use today. Name a creature, from a nematode worm to Cameron Diaz, and they all use architecture first created in the Cambrian party. — Bill Bryson

Good afternoon, class," he said.
I said a soft good afternoon, but no one else in the class joined me.
Dr. Green laughed. "I think my class is missing. Did no one show up today? I'll have to mark everyone as absent. I believe I said good afternoon."
The room chorused a low murmuring of 'good afternoon' in reply.
"This won't do," Dr. Green said. "I'm here to teach you Japanese. I can't very well teach you English, too. — C.L.Stone

English girls' schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century. — Mary Augusta Ward

Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning — Michael Swanwick

Sitting here now today, I can forgive a lot of the English people because it only takes a hand full of bad people to do something stupid like that and it can make the whole country look bad. — Marvin Hagler

Four years in England had filled Obi with a longing to be back in Umuofia. This feeling was sometimes so strong that he found himself feeling ashamed of studying English for his degree. He spoke Ibo whenever he had the least opportunity of doing so. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to find another Ibo-speaking student in a London bus. But when he had to speak in English with a Nigerian student from another tribe he lowered his voice. It was humiliating to have to speak to one's countryman in a foreign language, especially in the presence of the proud owners of that language. They would naturally assume that one had no language of one's own. He wished they were here today to see. Let them come to Umuofia now and listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them come and see men and women and children who knew how to live, whose joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other nations how to live. — Chinua Achebe

No damsel was ever in more distress, no dray horse more flogged, no defenseless child more drunkenly abused than the English language today. And — Robert Hartwell Fiske

The early dictionaries in English were frequently created by a single author, but they were small works, and not what we think of today as dictionaries. Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, is generally regarded as the first English dictionary. It was an impressive feat in many respects, but it contained fewer than 2,500 entries, the defining of which would not be a lifetime's work. This and the other dictionaries of the seventeenth century were mostly attempts to catalog and define "difficult words"; little or no attention was given to the nuts and bolts of the language or to such concerns as etymology and pronunciation. For — Ammon Shea

I had long ago learned that books are the best presents you can buy for a person
except me. I like toys. But the point is books last longer, and aren't as easy to break, like almost everything else you can buy in today's free market. Call me an English major, but I happen to believe that books are more substantial than pet rocks, hula hoops, and most fruitcakes. — Gary Reilly

The first heuristic addresses the asymmetry in rewards and punishment, or transfer of fragility between individuals. Ralph Nader has a simple rule: people voting for war need to have at least one descendant (child or grandchild) exposed to combat. For the Romans, engineers needed to spend some time under the bridge they built - something that should be required of financial engineers today. The English went further and had the families of the engineers spend time with them under the bridge after it was built. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Leave it to the English to fabricate a lake," she tossed over her shoulder to Carla, who snickered.
"And leave it to the Italians to fall into it!"
"I was retrieving my hat!"
"Ah . . . that makes it all much more logical. Do you even know how to swim?"
"Do I know how to swim?" she asked, and he took more than a little pleasure in her offense.
"I was raised on the banks of the Adige! Which happens to be a real river."
"Impressive," he said, not at all impressed. "And tell me, did you ever swim in said river?"
"Of course! But I wasn't wearing" - she waved a hand to indicate her dress - "sixteen layers of fabric!"
"Why not?"
"Because you don't swim in sixteen layers of fabric!"
"No?"
"No!"
"Why not?" He had her now.
"Because you will drown!"
"Ah," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Well, at least we've learned something today. — Sarah MacLean

The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long [ESL] class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I'm grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil. "Jao," I say to a man in my class. "You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet." I turn to a second man. "Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let's hear your conversation."
They stand up, clutching their papers. "This dog is reccommended," Jao begins.
"I have one already," Jaidee replies.
"Good job!" I encourage. "Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog."
"This dog is alive," Jao adds.
Jaidee shrugs. "Not everyone wants a pet that is alive."
Well, not all days are successes ... — Jodi Picoult

'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

I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad. — Jet Li

Peter held up the book he had been reading: 'Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'.
"To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure this is English," Peter said. "It's taken me most of today to get through a page. — Justin Cronin

I suppose I could have been nicer when I was at Columbia. I could have been polite, respectful, turned in my papers on time. Funny thing is, I knew a guy like that. English major. Loved to read. Never got in any trouble, just hung out in Butler Library reading poetry and English history. Ran into him the other day. Guy has three master's degrees, taught high school, even did a few years in the Marines. Know what he does today?
He makes $9.75 an hour as a librarian.
I was a jerk when I went to Columbia. But I was never a sucker. — Ted Rall

Today one might be tempted to say that patriotism is the last refuge of the tribal religion dedicated to the worship of German, French, English and Russian Gods of Battles. Surely such a religion has nothing in common with the religion which counsels for the disciple non-resistance, unstinted forgiveness, and the elimination of all rancor? — Joseph Alexander Leighton

A truly enlightened attitude to language should simply be to let six thousand or more flowers bloom. Subcultures should be allowed to thrive, not just because it is wrong to squash them, because they enrich the wider culture. Just as Black English has left its mark on standard English Culture, South Africans take pride in the marks of Afrikaans and African languages on their vocabulary and syntax.
New Zealand's rugby team chants in Maori, dancing a traditional dance, before matches. French kids flirt with rebellion by using verlan, a slang that reverses words' sounds or syllables (so femmes becomes meuf). Argentines glory in lunfardo, an argot developed from the underworld a centyry ago that makes Argentine Spanish unique still today. The nonstandard greeting "Where y'at?" for "How are you?" is so common among certain whites in New Orleans that they bear their difference with pride, calling themselves Yats. And that's how it should be. — Robert Lane Greene

There was something ghost-like and insubstantial about gases to these early chemists. They called liquids that turned into gases easily, "spirits." Methyl alcohol, they called "wood spirit"; ethyl alcohol, "wine spirit." Even today, alcoholic beverages are frequently referred to as "spirits." (Modern Arabs, from whose language the word "alcohol" was taken, call ethyl alcohol "spirit" from the English. This is a queer exchange.) — Isaac Asimov

If we do run, you'll need four legs to keep up with me today, Edwards. Oh that's right, you've been holding back because you're English, and it's not sporting to run down a girl. Well, this girl's been kicking your butt. — April White

As their notoriety spread, these lethal men became known by a single word - Hassassin - literally "the followers of hashish." The name Hassassin became synonymous with death in almost every language on earth. The word was still used today, even in modern English . . . but like the craft of killing, the word had evolved. It was now pronounced assassin. — Dan Brown

The way I putted today, I must've been reading the greens in Spanish and putting them in English. — Homero Blancas

Like when people (my parents) ask what I'm going to study in college and I say, "English." They say, "Oh. So you want to be a teacher?" And I want to cover my eyes and mouth with duct tape and pretend to be dead and done with it. No, you simpletons. I want to travel and write and live in a big city, and do cool things with my brain. This is not to disparage the fine and noble art of educating in any way. My English teachers have made me who I am today and I love them with a passion that surprises me. I just don't want to be one. — Arlaina Tibensky

In a small village near Calcutta, in 1998, a villager who could not speak English sang me What Did You Learn In School Today? in Bengali! Tom Paxton's songs are reaching around the world more than he is, or any of us could have realized. Keep on, Tom! — Tom Paxton

When I was about 17, I didn't speak. English was like a foreign language. I'd just grunt. The only time I talked was when I said my lines on set. I didn't speak to any of the actors or anything. Then one day Alison from the Corrie press office started talking to me in the green room and I just decided to talk back. She ran upstairs to tell everyone that she'd just had a 10-minute conversation with me like it was the most unbelievable thing in the world. I just woke up one day and thought, 'I'm going to talk today'. I've really made up for lost time since. — Jack P. Shepherd

Give your children regular, daily doses of Vitamin N. This vital nutrient consists simply of the most character-building two-letter word in the English language No ... Unfortunately, many, if not most, of today's children suffer from Vitamin N deficiency. They've been overindulged by well-meaning parents who've given them far too much of what they want and far too little of what they truly need. — John Rosemond

Bradford specifically there were a lot of Pakistanis there. Even today it has a very large Pakistani population.It was something that I experienced - getting chased home from the bus stop after school by English kids, boarding school, being targeted for praying to what they call Allah wallah ding dong. — Aasif Mandvi

The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that one of the signs of being cold today is that one knows what one doesn't have to know. — Joseph Epstein

The human mind is itself a miraculous machine. I am writing right now, but I have no idea how this is happening. I know that my brain is composed of a cerebrum, a cerebellum, and a medulla oblongata, but these are just words. I know that electrical impulses are involved somehow, but that is about the extent of my understanding of the mechanics. And while I at least have an intuition as to how an airplane works, I really have none with respect to my brain. Frankly, lots of what appears on my computer screen is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I certainly never expected over my oatmeal and English muffin this morning to be writing about Bernoulli's principle today. For that matter, I have no idea why I like English muffins. But I do. — Evan Mandery

By natural means, as the Lord always operates for the accomplishment of his purposes, means so simple that the thoughtless and unbelieving do not see the manifestation of his power, he brought the Puritans from the old world to New England, the Dutch to New York, the English Cavaliers to Virginia and the French to New Orleans, a combination of races which, paradoxical as it may appear, was just calculated to give us the composite America who made the United States of America what it is, the greatest nation of the world today. — Anthony W. Ivins

Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard. — Pope John Paul II

And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways not tried before. Nouns became verbs and adverbs; adverbs became adjectives. Expressions that could not have grammatically existed before - such as 'breathing one's last' and 'backing a horse', both coined by Shakespeare - were suddenly popping up everywhere. — Bill Bryson

If England had not used the services of privateers and pirates during its long struggle with Spain, there is some likelihood that people today in North America would be speaking Spanish rather than English. — Robert Earl Lee

Recall what used to be the theme of poetry in the romantic era. In neat verses the poet lets us share his private, bourgeois emotions: his sufferings great and small, his nostalgias, his religious or political pre-occupations, and, if he were English, his pipe-smoking reveries. On occasions, individual genius allowed a more subtle emanation to envelope the human nucleus of the poem - as we find in Baudelaire for example. But this splendour was a by-product. All the poet wished was to be a human being.
When he writes, I believe today's poet simply wishes to be a poet. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

3.
Ella,um,it's Alex. I hope this is the right number.I had to get it from a really old phone book. I would have gotten your cell number from Sadie Winslow, but ... well, every time I got near her today, Frankie Hobbes showed his teeth. He's a little scary for such a skinny guy ... Anyway. You weren't in English today. You weren't anywhere that I could see today.Um ... call me. I was thinking I could come over ... — Melissa Jensen

I saw a film today, oh boy,
The English army had just won the war,
A crowd of people turned away,
But I just had to look, having read the book ... — The Beatles

Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science. — Geoffrey Canada

Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia — H.G.Wells

We have made a conscious effort to blend in with U.S. society and have done our best to develop good English skills. Today, both Johanna and I communicate in English with ease, and our children speak English at native fluency levels, but we continue to speak Icelandic at home. — Gudjon Bergmann

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

President Bush called Arnold to congratulate him today, and after he got off the phone, Arnold said, 'I thought my English was bad.' — Jay Leno

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

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today. — Joshua Foer

In fact, when I met Kit Harington first, he was pretty much feeling how I'm feeling today - at a photo shoot and you've had no sleep. He was just a really nice, English, down-to-earth guy. No pretense, nothing. — Max Irons

The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his brother's remark, There's more Arabs in this country than there is Jews! Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers. — Jimmy Carter

In 1914, I believe, the excitement in Berlin on the first day of the World War was tremendous. Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria. There is not even any hate for the French and British - despite Hitler's various proclamations to the people, the party, the East Army, the West Army, accusing the "English warmongers and capitalistic Jews" of starting this war. When I passed the French and British embassies this afternoon, the sidewalk in front of each of them was deserted. A lone Schupo paced up and down before each. — William L. Shirer

Democracy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is a political system that specialises in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions. — Gilad Atzmon

Today there are about six thousand languages in the world, and half of the world's population speaks only ten of them. English is the single most dominant of these ten. — Christine Kenneally

Today 350 million people speak English as their first language and around 450 million have it as a second language. That is roughly one in every seven people on the planet. — Niall Ferguson

It would be just as pointless to oppose the international use of English today as it would have been to oppose the worldwide use of French in the 18th century. — Maurice Allais

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

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? -Pablo Picasso. — Pablo Picasso

There is an English expression: 'high-maintenance girlfriend,'" Csongor remarked. "Now, of course, Zula is not my girlfriend. Probably never would be, even if all this shit were not happening. And I think that if she were my girlfriend? She would not be high maintenance at all! She is just not that type of girl. However. Because of circumstances, today she is the most high-maintenance girlfriend since Cleopatra. — Neal Stephenson

What we would think of as a beef animal had the double purpose of being a working or draught animal that could pull heavy loads. There is an old adage, "A year to grow, two years to plough and a year to fatten." The beef medieval people would have eaten would have been a maturer, denser meat than we are used to today. I have always longed to try it. The muscle acquired from a working ox would have broken down over the fattening year and provided wonderful fat covering and marbling. Given the amount of brewing that took place, the odds are that the animals would have been fed a little drained mash from time to time. Kobe beef, that excessively expensive Japanese beef, was originally obtained from ex-plough animals whose muscles were broken down by mash from sake production and by massage. I'd like to think our beef might have had a not dissimilar flavour. — Clarissa Dickson Wright

How would you like your child in kindergarten through 12th grade attending classes with kids who can't read, write, speak or understand English
or American education values? Furthermore, how would you feel if those students felt zero investment in education, in English and the American way? How would you like your child's education dumbed down to that of a classroom from the Third World? Guess what? Today, if you're a parent of a child in thousands of classrooms across America, that's what's happening to your children with your tax dollars. — Frosty Wooldridge

Bass Ale's triangle logo was the first registered trademark in the English-speaking world, and today that sturdy oldness is a big part of the brand's appeal. — Christian Rudder

I am all for the inclusion of foreign cultures, not their omission in our media. Foreign names, brands, and inventions must be allowed to show and to compete in US publications. Today, most foreign words are still banned. And almost 7 billion people whose first language is not English are silenced. — Thorsten J. Pattberg

Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most ... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so. — James Fenton

Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire-led and the American-Republic-led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common
and enough that separated them from everyone else
that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately. — Andrew Roberts

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say. — Dan Rhodes

Everything has been planned. The ascent will be completed in two days' time. He will climb another one hundred floors today. Another hundred the next day. He does not want to take the lift. The rush of life causes people to drown in the temporary. He wishes to dip into eternity before he leaves. — Isa Kamari

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?' — Kangana Ranaut

We build our futures together, in the words we exchange today. — Sherwood Fleming

I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that. — Marlon James

Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth. — Calvin Trillin