Famous quotes about the English language

1. The two most beautiful words in the English language are “check enclosed.” —
Dorothy Parker
2. If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe
with fur. — Doug Larson
3. Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it
sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes
through their pockets. — Eddy Peters
4. A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it’s two-tired. — English Proverb
5. Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English. —
William Shakespeare
6. The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in
one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian “pahks” his “cah,” the
lost r’s migrate southwest, causing a Texan to “warsh” his car and invest in “erl
wells.” — Author Unknown
7. We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of
course, language. — Oscar Wilde
8. If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to
do with a shortage of flowers. — Doug Larson
9. If the French were really intelligent, they’d speak English. — Wilfred Sheed
10. The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the
imagination: it is the property of the language itself. — Derek Walcott
11. Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the
strongest slang of all is the slang of poets. — George Eliot
12. English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway
and drive our car on the parkway. — Author Unknown
13. Me fail English? That unpossible! — Ralph Wiggum
14. Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably
English. — Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
15. W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name,
the names of the others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the Roman
alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling out some
simple Greek word, like “epixoriambikos.” Still, it is now thought by the
learned that other agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have
been concerned in the decline of “the glory that was Greece” and the rise of
“the grandeur that was Rome.” There can be no doubt, however, that by
simplifying the name of W (calling it “wow,” for example) our civilization
could be, if not promoted, at least better endured. — Ambrose Bierce
16. Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. —
Robert Benchley
17. ‘I am’ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be
that ‘I do’ is the longest sentence? — George Carlin
18. What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters:
abcdef? Answer: feedback. Don’t forget that feedback is one of the essential
elements of good communication. — Author Unknown
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19. My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little
value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to
perpetuate the decline of the English language. — James Thurber
20. Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in
quotes. — Author Unknown
21. More has been screwed up on the battlefield and misunderstood in the Pentagon
because of a lack of understanding of the English language than any other
single factor. — General John W. Vessey
22. English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason
that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has
precious little in common. — Bill Bryson
23. The English language is like a broad river on whose bank a few patient anglers
are sitting, while, higher up, the stream is being polluted by a string of refuse-
barges tipping out their muck. — Cyril Connolly
24. He is, I think, already pondering a magisterial project: that of buggering the
English language, the ultimate revenge of the colonialised. — Angela Carter
25. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to split an infinitive, any more
than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren’t
available to the Romans. — Bill Bryson
26. A major cause of deterioration in the use of the English language is very simply
the enormous increase in the number of people who are using it. — Anonymous
27. The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a
beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the
sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man’s
fate and man’s follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the
fallow earth. — T.E. Kalem
28. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play
baseball using the rules of football. — Bill Bryson
29. The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the
government and I’m here to help.’ — Ronald Reagan
30. Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern
language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one. — Henry David
Thoreau
31. To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. Whoever writes
English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is
struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the
decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above
all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language
is cluttered up. — George Orwell
32. My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of
a learned language. — Edward Gibbon
33. Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to
bend or break them. — Robert Graves
34. English is just as much big business as the export of manufactured goods. There
are problems with what you might call ‘after-sales service’, ‘delivery’ can be
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 awkward, but at any rate the production lines are trouble free. — Randolph
Quirk
35. The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the
whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. — Robert Burchfield
36. I speak twelve languages. English is the bestest. — Stefan Bergman
37. ENGLISH IS OUR LANGUAGE NO EXCETIONS LEARN IT — village of
Crestwood welcome sign
38. Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel
comparatively at home in prison. — Evelyn Waugh
39. My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop
Tutu. — Billy Wilder
40. From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which
I will not put. — Winston Churchill
41. In my sentences I go where no man has gone before…I am a boon to the
English language. — George W. Bush
42. Introducing ‘Lite’ - The new way to spell ‘Light’, but with twenty percent
fewer letters. — Jerry Seinfeld
43. 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
44. The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm. —
Alexander Woollcott
45. I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I
seen it. — Carl Sandburg
46. The English contribution to world cuisine - the chip. — John Cleese
47. In two words, im possible. — Samuel Goldwyn
48. The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to
dinner. — Margaret Halsey
49. I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world. —
Malcolm Bradbury
50. 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