Modern English Quotes

• Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Death, Running

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 2, sc. 2, l. 30

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Stars, Fate

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 134

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

  Paul Krugman

  Stars, Good Luck, Astrology

  9 Copy quote

• Men at some time are masters of their fates.

  William Shakespeare

  Fate, Men, Cassius

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 134

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.

  Mark Antony

  Ambition, Loss, Dogs Of War

  "Fictional character: Mark Anthony". "Mark Anthony’s Speech at Funeral in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare", www.cbsenext.com. October 17, 2013.

  121 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

  William Shakespeare

  Dog, Military, War

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 3, sc. 1, l. 270

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

  William Shakespeare

  Tragedy, Cassius, Ears

  Julius Caesar act 3, sc. 2, l. 74 (1599)

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the Latin word "imponere", base of the obsolete English "impone" and translated as "impress" in modern English, Nordic hackers have coined the terms "imponator" (a device that does nothing but impress bystanders, referred to as the "imponator effect") and "imponade" (that "goo" that fills you as you get impressed with something - from "marmelade", often referred as "full of imponade", always ironic).

  Erik Naggum

  Latin, Bystanders, Ironic

  "Polymorphism in Common Lisp". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 18, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period.

  Robert Burchfield

  Believe, English Grammar, Years

  4 Copy quote

• English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.

  James Fenton

  Language, Modern, English Poetry

  2002 An Introduction to English Poetry.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system?

  Edward Jenks

  Land, Law, Chaos

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kindness, Character, Doe

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Believe, Reading, Phrases

  8 Copy quote

• It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.

  Rebecca West

  Errors, Literature, Monkeys

  "Rebecca West, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Marina Warner, The Paris Review, No. 79, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1981.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers.

  George Orwell

  Fighting, Thinking, Political

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

  George Orwell

  Clarity, Trouble, Imitation

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper.

  Rudolf Flesch

  Writing, Editing, Kicking

  Rudolf Flesch (1946). “The Art of Plain Talk”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time.

  Ronald Sydney Nyholm

  Country, Children, Teaching

  4 Copy quote

• At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English.

  Bill Bryson

  Practice, America, Feelings

  11 Copy quote

• The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Believe, Men

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.94, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

  Pete Townshend

  Class, People, Hypocrisy

  7 Copy quote

• At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.

  Wilbur Smith

  Mother, School, Age

  7 Copy quote

• You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

  John Ruskin

  Passion, Lightning, Incense

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.312, University of Virginia Press

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mind, Female, Three

  29 Copy quote

• The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Losing, Modern

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.175, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source