#English Quotes

“The English never draw a line without blurring it.”

“The English are loth to express their feelings, but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent-up, passionate emotion, and also the fear of the congregation, not of death or wounds or material loss, but of defeat and the final ruin of Britain.”

“The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable.”

“Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence, which is a noble thing.”

“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”

“It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it.”

“By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.”

“There is one thing about Englishmen, they won't fix anything till it's just about totally ruined. You couldn't get the English to fix anything at the start. No! They like to sit and watch it grow worse. Then, when it just looks like the whole thing has gone up Salt Creek, why, the English jump in and rescue it.”

“All Englishmen talk as if they've got a bushel of plums stuck in their throats, and then after swallowing them get constipated from the pips.”

“The English country-gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”

“The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.”

“The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.”

“The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.”

“I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.”

“Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything.”

“The English are a nation of consummate cant.”

“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.”

“The Englishmen is at his best on the links and at his worst in the Cabinet.”

“English is the easiest language to speak badly.”

“One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no organized determination to think things out. What is there is a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability submergence of matter in manner--in brief, what is there is the feeble, uninspiring quality of German painting and English music.”

“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.”

“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence.”

“The fight against bad English is not frivolous.”