Quotes & Sayings About Yourself English

Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking-
glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at
himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do
you belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly.
You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and
vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen and the drudges,
in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There are the
stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are rotting. Smell them,
damn you, smell them. And yet you dare to open the books, to
listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful paintings, to
speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your own kind
thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie
Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million
miles beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you? and what
are you? damn you! And are you going to make good? — Jack London

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

11 WAYS TO BE UNREMARKABLY AVERAGE 1. Accept what people tell you at face value. 2. Don't question authority. 3. Go to college because you're supposed to, not because you want to learn something. 4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England. 5. Don't try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English. 6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it. 7. Think about writing a book, but never do it. 8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it. 9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work. 10. Don't stand out or draw attention to yourself. 11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes. — Chris Guillebeau

It is time," said the Lord Pilot, "to see this calamity to its end." Spoken in Archaic English: the words uttered by Thomas Clarkson in 1785, at the beginning of the end of slavery. "I have set my will against this disaster; I will break it, or it will break me." Ira Howard in 2014. "I will not share my universe with this shadow," and that was the Lord Pilot, in an anger hotter than the nova's ashes. "Help me if you will, or step aside if you lack decisiveness; but do not make yourself my obstacle, or I will burn you down, and any that stand with you - — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I remember hearing you scream, Cat, and seeing your face. But I don't remember dying. And how can I go on if I'm dead?"
Tat answered fiercely, "Dead is stuffed inside that box, not what you are now. You're my friend. Always will be. No matter what the fuck you eat. I didn't believe that pale prick when he said he could wake you up, but you're here. And don't you dare think about covering yourself back up with dirt. I need you, buddy. It's been hell without you."
"I missed you, amigo," Juan said in almost incoherently accented English. "You can't leave me again! Tat's boring, and Copper only wants to train. You stay!"
Dave stared at us. — Jeaniene Frost

I will find you another long-forgotten Queen Mab poem in no time. Depend on it. I refuse to let Cody or anyone else know more about English Literature than me. So calm yourself, Elfish, and let an expert take over. — Martin Millar

Do you have to discipline yourself to have breakfast, lunch or dinner? Of course not; and so discipline - the usual concept of it - doesn't apply here. I had to discipline myself to learn English, but never to train. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian. — Margaret Atwood

It's a challenge getting rid of an accent by yourself. I have parents that have such thick accents. They are like, "She sounds fine." They didn't know. To them, I spoke perfect English because their accents were so heavy. I don't even want to know what I sounded like. I don't want to know! — Odeya Rush

The English don't like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It's alright if they come from an 'intellectual,', but from a pop star you're getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn't rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you're in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn't it? — Brian Eno

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. — J.I. Packer

Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy, and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility ... Clothes and language can be things of beauty, I would no more write without art because I didn't need to than I would wander outdoors naked just because it was warm enough. — Mark Forsyth

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

You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls ("You are not like other girls," the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You're not like other girls. — Sarah McCarry

I started modeling when I was - not older, but not 12. I have a mom who's a feminist - she's an English professor, an intellectual. She really gave me the equipment to understand that you can celebrate yourself without putting yourself down or needing to apologize for the way you look. I think that attitude is really crucial for a model. — Emily Ratajkowski

Mr. Lindell's English classes are meant to make you think I guess about yourself and people and everything. Some of the kids say it's pretty weird but they're more honest in English than they are anywhere else and they say more about what they feel...Everything that's said in English etches itself clearly and sharply in my mind like letters carved neatly into deep frost. But I never let them see how eagerly I listen. — John Marsden

Lord Bacchus, can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me."
Bacchus dropped his hands and nodded.
"You have never killed a Druid all by yourself, and you never will. Only with hordes of Bacchants and Roman legionnaires and the aid of Minerva have you ever managed to slay a single one of us. Your lackeys may get me eventually, and I know that I will never be able to slay you, but admit to yourself now that you, alone, will never prove my equal. The earth obeys me, son, not some petty god of grape and goblet." I switched to English for a postscript, "So suck on that, bitch. — Kevin Hearne

I believe in eating smaller meals more often throughout the day to keep the metabolism going. Don't deprive yourself, just make better choices. At 50 years old it is definitely a lot harder to stay in shape then it was when I was in my 20's. — Todd English

Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true - all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They're dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn't fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself. — Haruki Murakami

There's this thing, they have in french: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English. It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out. — Neil Gaiman

I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me,will you. Stop defending yourself. — Michael Ondaatje

The English reputation for humour is a way by which people avoid revealing themselves and have superficial relationships, so that you can engage in banter without making yourself vulnerable. — Theodore Zeldin

I'm skipping, but Cam doesn't have a class until this afternoon, so he's a good boy."
"And your a bad boy?"
"Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy."
"Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I wanted to be accepted. It must have been in sixth grade. It was just before the Fourth of July. They were trying out students for this patriotic play. I wanted to do Abe Lincoln, so I learned the Gettysburg Address inside and out. I'd be out in the fields pickin' the crops and I'd be memorizin'. I was the only one who didn't have to read the part, 'cause I learned it. The part was given to a girl who was a grower's daughter. She had to read it out of a book, but they said she had better diction. I was very disappointed. I quit about eighth grade. Any time anybody'd talk to me about politics, about civil rights, I would ignore it. It's a very degrading thing because you can't express yourself. They wanted us to speak English in the school classes. We'd put out a real effort. I would get into a lot of fights because I spoke Spanish and they couldn't understand it. I was punished. I was kept after school for not speaking English. — Studs Terkel

Although the advice that you get if you got to see Margaret is 'stand up for yourself, shout back, and argue the toss and then she will respect you', the trouble is that sort of advice to the English middle-class male of a certain age doesn't actually help us very much because we've always been brought up to believe that it's extremely rude to shout back at women. — Julian Critchley

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. — George Bernard Shaw

The mass migration of the poorest of the poor to America is bad for the whole country, but it's fantastic for Democrats. Ask yourself: Which party benefits from illiterate non-English speakers who have absolutely no idea what they're voting for, but can be instructed to learn certain symbols? — Ann Coulter

I snorted. 'For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can't even spell England properly.'
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. 'Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?'
'You know that I do not.'
'Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted. — Matthew Reilly

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

When you have lived your life under such dominant image-leadership, its pressures put a certain invisible English on the cue ball of your development: It influences all of your ideas about who you should be, all the ways in which you become yourself. — Cintra Wilson

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will. — George Bernard Shaw

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

I mean, if you're really plunging - you said plunging, right? - into this book, then tethering yourself to every single guidepost along the way isn't really going to make that happen." Mr. Tipton's mirth was palpable. "So you think critical reading is a useless activity? That your classmates are just, what, not experiencing the book?" "I think the best way to experience this book is to let it happen to you and think about what it all means later." "Later when?" "Later when you're a high school English teacher. — Mira Jacob

I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do. — Paul Reiser

The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.
The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.
The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.
It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.
It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.
It's about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.
And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it. — Anne Lamott

Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married. — Susanna Clarke

GT: You know how you think you know these things about yourself?
GT: Like all these personal attributes about you as if theyre written down somewhere like a sort of mini biography so they have to be true.
GT: So you just believe them and hope that the believing is what makes them true.
GT: But then you spend so much time believing those things and taking their truth for granted that you somehow forget to MAKE them true with your words and deeds.
GT: How can i truly love adventure when i never even knew what it was? — Andrew Hussie

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

It was possible to explore the 'great tradition' of the English novel and believe that in doing so you were addressing questions of fundamental value
questions which were of vital relevance to the lives of men and women wasted in fruitless labour in the factories of industrial capitalism. But it was also conceivable that you were destructively cutting yourself off from such men and women, who might be a little slow to recognize how a poetic enjambement enacted a movement of physical balancing. — Terry Eagleton

My favorite subject was English, and I wanted to study English abroad when I was young, when I was a kid, but my mom said 'No, it's too dangerous to go abroad by yourself.' So I gave up. — Doona Bae

You have taught yourself to read English, too," Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. "English is just a little different - I can understand it," the boy told him, — John Irving

This was the English passion, not for self-improvement or culture or wit, but for DIY, Do It Yourself, for bigger and better houses with more mod cons, the painstaking accumulation of comfort and, with it, status - the concrete display of earned cash. — Hanif Kureishi

It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with. — William Wiley

And you call yourself an English gentleman,' she exclaimed, savagely.
'No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life. — W. Somerset Maugham

And again. I kept clicking until the photograph was demolished, until it was no more than a mosaic of gray tiles, adding up to nothing.
Nothing. Because wasn't that how I felt that day? If you zoom close - if you really get close to someone, if you really get close to yourself - then you
lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore. Your mind becomes all these abstract fragments.
English becomes math. — David Levithan

You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. — Agatha Christie

Some might argue that the reality of Nordic autonomy is that you are free ... to be Nordic. If you are a Muslim who is looking to build a mosque, or an American who wants to drive a large car, espouse your deeply held Creationist beliefs, and go shopping with your platinum card on Sunday, or even if you are English and choose to conduct yourself according to archaic forms of baroque politeness, you are likely to experience varying degrees of oppression and exclusion should you come to live in this part of the world. This is true. — Michael Booth

We thought speaking in English meant you were more intelligent. We were wrong of course. It does not matter what language you choose, the important thing is the words you use to express yourself. — Malala Yousafzai

The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that
first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.
But then because you have to do all this, when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And, because you are speaking like falling, it's as if you are an idiot, when the truth is that it's the language and the whole process that's messed up. And then the problem with those who speak only English is this: they don't know how to listen; they are busy looking at your falling instead of paying attention to what you are saying. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge. — Theodora Goss

Would you like to stand next to me and introduce yourself to the class?' Smiled Mr Zimmerman, the English teacher.
Nope, I would rather turn into bat! Leave me the heck alone. Ughh, why is it teachers ask ' Would you like to?' No teen ever wants to stand in front of strangers and be forced to talk about them.
- Lenore Lee from Whitby After Dark — Stella Coulson

Nine out of ten English chefs have their names on their chests. Who do they think they are? They're dreamers. They're jokes. Just ask yourself how many chefs in this country have Michelin stars and how many have their names on their jackets. We all wear blue aprons in my kitchen because we're all commis. We're all still learning. — Marco Pierre White

You took advantage of Amelia," Merripen said.
"Not that it matters," Cam said in Romany, "but how did you find out?"
Merripen's huge hands flexed as if longing to rip him apart. Lucifer himself could not have had blacker, more burning eyes. "Speak in English," he said harshly. "I don't like the old language."
Frowning in curiosity, Cam readily complied.
"The maids were talking about it," Merripen replied. "I heard them standing outside my door. You dishonored one of my family."
"Yes, I know," Cam said quietly.
"You're not good enough for her."
"I know that, too." Watching him intently, Cam asked, "Do you want her for yourself, chal?"
Merripen looked mortally offended. "She's a sister to me."
"That's good. Because I want her for my wife. — Lisa Kleypas