English Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

In an English dinner-party... I have never known small-talk run short!

When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about.... A little tea or coffee restores them.... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.

Florence Nightingale

So it was in the Civil War. Farragut's father was born in Spain and Sheridan's father in Ireland; Sherman and Thomas were of English and Custer of German descent; and Grant came of a long line of American ancestors whose original home had been Scotland. But the Admiral was not a Spanish-American; and the Generals were not Scotch-Americans or Irish-Americans or English-Americans or German-Americans. They were all Americans and nothing else. This was just as true of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson and of Beauregard.

Theodore Roosevelt

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.

Charles Dickens

Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.

The 'bus is English. When that is said, all is said. As a rule, any English thing is nineteen times as strong and twenty-three times as heavy as it needs to be. The 'bus fills these requirements.

This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry, Harry.

William Shakespeare

The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English.

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.

Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. 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, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?

I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice.

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

Henry David Thoreau

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.

Henry David Thoreau

St. George he was for England,
And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
Out of an English flagon.

G. K. Chesterton

You should study the Peerage, Gerald…It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India.

Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different— in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Awake, awake, English nobility! Let not sloth dim your horrors new-begot.

William Shakespeare

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary change without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere, it would be possible to abolish poverty without destroying liberty.