523 Quotes About English

Along with every other male of his acquaintance he loathed the Naked Chef with messianic passion and prayed for the day he suffered a fatal accident on his scooter or burst into flames with the friction of sliding down that nauseating banister. Mark hated to think how rich he must be. And the fact that a mere bloody cook was taking up space in The Times that could be filled by a train journalist. Like himself, for example. Bastard.

English is the language through which I reach hearts from various corners of the world. English is the language through which I flirt with my species. English is the language through which I make my species think.

Moderation is all very well, but only in moderation.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn't when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn't set in stone.

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

The attitude of English speakers to foreign languages can be summed up thus: let’s plunder, not learn them.

Go outside English, and the wild multiplies.