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English Language Quotes

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English Language Quotes

“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du, Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht! SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu, Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher Wacht Beim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See, Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand; Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der Schnee Sanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band. Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegt MöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust, Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt, Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust, Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen - So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!”

LoveDesirePassionPoemEnglish LanguageLiebeSehnsuchtLeidenschaftDeutsche Sprache
Book:Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
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“If accuracy, fidelity, and the strictest attention to the letter of the text, be supposed to constitute the qualities of an excellent version, this of all versions, must, in general, be accounted the most excellent. Every sentence, every word, every syllable, and every letter and point, seems to have been weighed with the nicest exactitude; and expressed, either in the text, or margin, with the greatest precision”

WritingBibleProseEnglish LanguageEnglishTranslationEnglish LiteratureKing James Bible
Author:Father Alexander Geddes
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“How are you going do your writings? How can the others understand you through words describing places, sensations, thoughts, feelings, hope, love, separations on a maze of phrases and paragraphs cemented with your ability to 'knit' your story? Maybe, 'how' is more relevant to provide for your readers a consistent path to build a story from the beginning to the end than 'what' and 'why'. Of course, you are not going to dismiss them. These ones – 'what' and 'why' –, they are pretty damn good too.”

LettersHope QuotesEnglish LanguageWriters QuotesThoughts QuotesUnderstanding QuotesSeparationsWritings On The Wall
Author:Frederick Vanderbuilt
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“Even though English is the universal language of earth, due to its primitive colonial escapades, and indeed the most convenient, it is neither the most beautiful nor the most soulful language on earth.”

ColonialismEnglish LanguageEnglishLanguage LearningColonial HistoryLanguage BarrierLanguage StudiesColonial MentalityEnglish Translation
Book:Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch
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“I thought that directness spoke for itself, but hadn’t realized that the English like their ritual and distrust plain speaking as somehow mendacious. Everything has a hidden meaning, does it not? And the more direct the speech, the more carefully hidden the true meaning must be, the more effort must be expended to understand what is really being said.”

English LanguageHidden MeaningDirectness
Book:[The Portrait] (By: Iain Pears) [published: July, 2005]
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“mesembrianthemum should be so spelt. In a cumbrous word whose length can only be excused if it is at least significant to the learned, it is absurd not to correct the misspelling y for i; the y at once puts the Greek scholar off the track by suggesting embryo or bryony (Greek βρύω swell, burgeon), and forbids him to think of μεσημβρία noon, which is what he ought to be thinking of. When a word like rhyme that is familiar to everyone has settled itself into our hearts and minds with a wrong spelling, there is much to be said for refraining from correction; but with the y of m. no one has tender associations.”

English LanguageSpellingCranksSpelling ReformFowlerMesembryanthemum
Book:A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
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“Now Scots, it must be observed, is not English badly spelled; nor is it a dialect of English. To simplify, but not in a direction away from the truth; the Scots language was a development - and by now is a degeneration - of the Anglian branch of what is called Old English, and was originally spoken from the Forth to the Humber - that's to say, on both sides of the Border. The Saxon branch to the South flourished and became what we call English. With the establishment of the Border, the Anglian branch developed as Scots. Scots and English, therefore, are cousin languages with a common ancestor, and it is as absurdto call Scots a dialect of English as it would be to call English a dialect of Scots.”

ScotlandEnglish LanguageScots LanguageAnglo Saxon England
Book:Scottish Eccentrics
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“The language of this Poeme is (as thou seeist) mixt of the English and Scottish Dialects; which perhaps may be vnpleasant and irksome to some readers of both nations. But I hope the gentle and judicious English reader will beare with me, if I retaine some badge of mine owne countrie, by vsing sometimes words that are peculiar therevnto, especiallie when I finde them propre, and significant. And as for my owne countrymen, they may not justly finde fault with me, if for the more parte I vse the English phrase, as worthie to be preferred before our owne for the elegance and perfection thereof. Yea I am perswaded that both countrie-men will take in good part the mixture of their Dialects, the rather for that the bountiful providence of God doth invite them both to a staiter vnion and conjunction aswell in languages as in other respectes.”

English LanguageScots LanguageUnion Of The Crowns
Book:The Tragedie of Darius
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“Scots words to tell to your heart how they wrung it and held it, the toil of their days and unendingly their fight. And the next minute that passed from you, you were English, back to the English words so sharp and clean and true - for a while, till they slid so smooth from your throat you knew they could never say anything that was worth the saying at all.”

English LanguageScots Language
Book:A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite
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“Jorge’s andd Yesi’s experiences show how particular enactments of Puerto Ricaness and Mexicanness were viewed as problematic. Not coincidentally, Jorge and Yesi became marked in part because of their Spanish and English language practices, respectively.”

English LanguageSpanish LanguageMexican AmericansPuerto Ricans
Book:Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad
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“Finally, I would like to point out that now in the age of English, choosing a language policy is not the exclusive concern of non-English-speaking nations. It is also a concern for English-speaking nations, where, to realize the world’s diversity and gain the humility that is proper to any human being, people need to learn a foreign language as a matter of course. Acquiring a foreign language should be a universal requirement of compulsory education. Furthermore, English expressions used in international conferences should be regulated and standardized to some extent. Native English speakers need to know that to foreigners, Latinate vocabulary is easier to understand than what to the native speakers is easy, child-friendly language. At international conferences, telling jokes that none but native speakers can comprehend is inappropriate, even if fun. If native speakers of English – those who enjoy the privilege of having their mother tongue as the universal language – would not wait for others to protest but would take steps to regulate themselves, what respect they would earn from the rest of the world! If that is too much to ask, the rest of the world would appreciate it if they would at least be aware of their privileged position – and more important, be aware that the privilege is unwarranted. In this age of global communication, some language or other was bound to be come a universal language used in every corner of the world English became that language not because it is intrinsically more universal than other languages, but because through a series of historical coincidences it came to circulate ever more widely until it reached the tipping point. That’s all there is to it. English is an accidental universal language. If more English native speakers walked through the doors of other languages, they would discover undreamed-of landscapes. Perhaps some of them might then begin to think that the truly blessed are not they themselves, but those who are eternally condemned to reflect on language, eternally condemned to marvel at the richness of the world.”

LanguageEnglish LanguageEnglishLinguisticsUniversal LanguageGlobal LanguageEnglish Language ImperialismLinguistic Imperialism
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“You will tell me that there always exists a chasm between the world depicted in novels and films and the world that people actually live in. It is the chasm between the world mediated by art and the world unmediated by art, formless and drab. You are absolutely right. The gap that my mother felt was not necessarily any deeper than the gap felt by a European girl who loved books and films. Yet there is one critical difference. For in my mother's case, the chasm between the world of art and real life also symbolized something more: the asymmetrical relationship I mentioned earlier—the asymmetrical relationship between those who live only in a universal temporality and those who live in both a universal and a particular one. To make this discussion a little more concrete, let me introduce a character named Francoise. Francoise is a young Parisienne living before World War II. Like my mother, she loves reading books and watching films. Also like my mother, she lives in a small apartment with her mother, who is old, shabby looking, and illiterate. One day Francoise, full of artistic aspirations, writes an autobiographical novel. It is the tale of her life torn between the world of art and the world of reality. (Not an original tale, I must say.) The novel is well received in France. Several hundred Japanese living in Japan read this novel in French, and one of them decides to translate it into Japanese. My mother reads the novel. She identifies with the heroine and says to herself, "This girl is just like me!" Moved, my mother, also full of artistic aspirations, writes her own autobiography. That novel is well received in Japan but is not translated into French—or any other European language, for that matter. The number of Europeans who read Japanese is just too small. Therefore, only Japanese readers can share the plight of my mother's life. For other readers in the world, it's as if her novel never existed. It's as if she herself never existed. Even if my mother had written her novel first, Francoise would never have read it and been moved by it.”

English LanguageTranslationJapaneseModern LiteratureMeijiPost ColonialismLinguistic Hegemony
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“Life is a tiring business indeed. Soy sauce runs out. Milk runs out. Dishwashing detergent runs out. Lancôme lipsticks—I thought I had stockpiled several years' worth—run out. Dust underneath the dining table becomes dust balls. Newspapers and magazines pile up, and so does laundry. E-mail and junk mail keep coming. When occasion demands, I make myself presentable and I present myself. I listen to my sister's same old complaints on the phone. I withdraw money for my elderly mother, whose tongue works fine but whose body is a mess. I contact her caseworker. And now I have reached a stage in life when my own health is prone to betray me.”

LanguageEnglish LanguageTranslationModern LiteratureMeijiLinguistic HegemonyEnglish Language History
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“And yet, as you all know, joining humanity is never a simple matter. By beginning to live the same temporality as Westerners, the Japanese now had to live two temporalities simultaneously. On the one hand, there was Time with a capital "T," which flows in the West. On the other hand, there was time with a small "t," which flows in Japan. Moreover, from that point on, the latter could exist only in relation to the former. It could no longer exist independently, yet it could not be the same as the other, either. If I, as a Japanese, find this new historical situation a bit tragic, it's not because Japanese people now had a live in two temporalities. It's rather because as a result of having to do so, they had no choice but to enter the asymmetrical relationship that had marked and continues to mark the modern world—the asymmetrical relationship between the West and the non-West, which is tantamount, however abstractly, to the asymmetrical relationship between what is universal and all the rest that is merely particular.”

LanguageEnglish LanguageTranslationJapaneseModern LiteratureMeijiPost ColonialismLinguistic Hegemony
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“Language is art, language is imagery, music, rhythm, thought, responsibility and communication. With the extensive English vocabulary available to us, an abundance of words allow for precision of depiction - well almost”

LanguageCommunication SkillsVocabularyImageryEnglish LanguagePrecisionWords QuotesRhythmic
Book:A Fantasist & A Scientist In Conversation: Creativity, Imagination, and Scientific Verification
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“Is It True? English is a really a form of Plattdeutsch or Lowland German, the way it was spoken during the 5th century. It all happened when Germanic invaders crossed the English Channel and the North Sea from northwest Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia to what is now Scotland or Anglo Saxon better identified as Anglo-Celtic. English was also influenced by the conquering Normans who came from what is now France and whose language was Old Norman, which became Anglo-Norman. Christianity solidified the English language, when the King James Version of the Bible was repetitively transcribed by diligent Catholic monks. Old English was very complex, where nouns had three genders with der, die and das denoting the male, female and neuter genders. Oh yes, it also had strong and weak verbs, little understood and most often ignored by the masses. In Germany these grammatical rules survive to this day, whereas in Britain the rules became simplified and der, die and das became da, later refined to the article the! It is interesting where our words came from, many of which can be traced to their early roots. “History” started out as his story and when a “Brontosaurus Steak” was offered to a cave man, he uttered me eat! Which has now become meat and of course, when our cave man ventured to the beach and asked his friend if he saw any food, the friend replied “me see food,” referring to the multitude of fish or seafood! Most English swear words, which Goodreads will definitely not allow me to write, are also of early Anglo-Saxon origin. Either way they obeyed their king to multiply and had a fling, with the result being that we now have 7.6 Billion people on Earth.”

WordsWorld HistoryEnglish LanguageLanguages And CultureGerman Language
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."
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“Some 40 per cent of the 15,000 words in Shakespeare’s works were of French origin. The same percentage can be found in the current English version of the Bible. Évidemment, I make no bones about that. This is a book written in bad faith. It’s a French book. So (it is) arrogant. English, full of French, Norman and Latin, is more of a Romance language than a Germanic one. Its Saxon backbone is clothed in a luxuriant and precious Roman flesh.”

English LanguageWilliam ShakespeareFrench Language
Book:La langue anglaise n'existe pas
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“In an uncertain world, English is a reliable direction.”

Self ImprovementPersonal GrowthEnglish LanguageLanguage LearningLearning EnglishInternational TravelGlobal CommunicationEducation MotivationModern Life SkillsWorld Languages
Book:In English as in Russian: 1000 words with explanations - ПО-АНГЛИЙСКИ КАК ПО-РУССКИ: 1000 слов с пояснениями
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“In the nonlocal model,” she continued, “your brain does not create consciousness, but rather your brain experiences what already exists around it.” She glanced from Faukman to Langdon and back. “In simple English, our brains interact with an existing matrix of awareness.” “That was simple English?” Faukman looked bemused. “Count your blessings,” Langdon said. “She could ruin lunch by trying to explain the triadic dimensional vortical paradigm.” “Seriously, Robert?” she chided. “A man of your intellectual capacity should be able to grasp a nine-dimensional quantized, volumetric reality embedded in an infinite continuity.” Langdon rolled his eyes. “See what I mean?” “Kids.” Faukman held up his hands. “Don’t make me stop the car.”

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Book:The Secret of Secrets
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“But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

PeopleIfsMenTryingSoulFactsAmericaTurnsHouseLanguageRoomsBecomingLoyaltyDividedEnglish LanguageNationalityAllegianceCrucibleDwellersPolyglotsBoarding House
Book:Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia
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“You and I must realize that the English language is filled with words that, in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity. For example, if you develop a habit of saying you 'hate' things - you 'hate' your hair; you 'hate' your job; you 'hate' having to do something - do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you use a phrase like 'I prefer something else'?”

IfsThinkingStatesUseMotivationalJobsHateLanguageRealizingExampleEmotionalHairHabitNegativeRaisesFilledPhrasesIntensityEnglish LanguageLiteralJobs You Hate
Book:Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial
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