English Language Quotes

• Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Inspiration, Learning, People

  Rita Mae Brown (2011). “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual”, p.47, Bantam

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• My favorite three words in the English language are: ’I don’t know’, because every time I say them, I learn something new.

  Timothy Leary

  Three, Language, My Favorite

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• Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

  Walt Whitman

  Communication, Race, Growth

  Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.557, Penguin

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• When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.213, Courier Corporation

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• Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

  William Penn

  Writing, Language Words, Plain Language

  William Penn (1792). “Fruits of Solitude: In Reflections and Maxims Relating to the Conduct of Human Life”, p.130

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• 

  Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  Fun, Mean, Broken

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• Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Mistake, Problem Solving, Obligation

  Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”

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• We all live in a small unique world, that's why we need at least one sole common language.

  William C. Brown

  Unique, Needs, World

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• Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Communication, Inspiration

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• If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

  Nelson Mandela

  Leadership, Travel, Crazy

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Two Nations

  The Canterville Ghost pt. 1 (1887) See George Bernard Shaw 58

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• Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

  Henry James

  Beautiful, Summer, Time

  Quoted in Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934)

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• Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

  Robert Benchley

  Inspirational, Funny, Sarcastic

  "With Truth as Our Sword". Book by C. E. Sylvester, February 2005.

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• Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Vocabulary, Bread

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• I speak two languages, Body and English.

  Mae West

  Two, Body, Language

  "Body Language Pocketbook". Book by Max A. Eggert (p. 17), September 1, 2012.

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• Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Communication, Plain Language, Imagination

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2001). “On the Constitution of the Church and State”, p.326, Classic Books Company

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• High thoughts must have high language.

  Aristophanes

  Book, Communication, Beer

  Aristophanes (1962). “Four comedies”

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• Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Business, Communication, Past

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1840). “The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Prose and Verse: Complete in One Volume”, p.313

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• The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Simple, Language Words

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• The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Ignorance, Good Man, Privacy

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• A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.

  George Mikes

  Behaviour, Crowds, Pushing

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• Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Baseball, Italian

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• A different language is a different vision of life.

  Federico Fellini

  Life, Work, Communication

  Federico Fellini, Bert Cardullo (2006). “Federico Fellini: Interviews”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Language is the dress of thought.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Learning, Thinking

  Lives of the English Poets "Cowley" (1779 - 1781)

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• Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

  George Orwell

  Communication, Joints, Language

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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