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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
08edfcc "Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. " disappointment emotions english excitement fail hatred language sadness Jeffrey Eugenides
07f239e In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child. english inadequacy-of-words language lose loss mourning parent Jodi Picoult
412a563 "The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in "Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me english literature reading teachers Pat Conroy
d17cf81 For , literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the and , it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking . is a father's . It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While ('God be with you') and say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's . But says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara. emotion english farewell father french german god goodbyes japanese mother spanish Anne Morrow Lindbergh
de082e5 She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else english slang Jonathan Safran Foer
d4b651c We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. britain english Oscar Wilde
da0d939 ...I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialetics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking acadamese instead of English and they don't really know what's happening in the real world. elitism english funny graduate-school intellects language long-words pomposity university Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
9ab3209 "Mrs. Todds my English teacher gives an automatic if anyone ever writes "I woke up and it was all a dream" at the end of a story. She says it violates the deal between reader and writer, that it's a cop-out, it's the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But every single morning we really do wake up and it really was all a dream." dreams english reading writing David Mitchell
b8a5b19 Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French. english female french learning male Jeffrey Eugenides
85af8d8 "This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it. Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know... But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, What am I going to do? In the end I thought Nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice..." I mean, it doesn't really work. english humor Douglas Adams
36296f2 " "Still, not to be English is hardly regarded as a fatal deficiency even by the English, though grave enough to warrant sympathy." english nationality pride Beryl Markham
106b428 "More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is." (We should perhaps bear in mind that the House of Lords is a largely powerless, nonelective institution. It is an arresting fact of British political life that a Briton can enjoy a national platform and exalted status because he is the residue of an illicit coupling 300 years before between a monarch and an orange seller.)" english humor politics Bill Bryson
1a5bf12 One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. english herman-melville history literature masterpiece moby-dick novel prose quotes Herman Melville
2c31d73 Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg's quarterly in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened with a kind of encouragement: 'There used to be a story that discerning Frenchmen preferred to read Marcel Proust in English on the grounds that the prose of was deeply un-French and heavily influenced by English writers such as Ruskin.' I cling to this even though Kilmartin thought it to be ridiculous Parisian snobbery; I shall never be able to read Proust in French, and one's opportunities for outfacing Gallic self-regard are relatively scarce. ben-sonnenberg english essays french french-people grand-street-magazine in-search-of-lost-time john-ruskin marcel-proust paris revisionism snobbery terence-kilmartin Christopher Hitchens
9f9873c "Speak English!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!" And the Eaglet bend down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds tittered audibly." english language mocking speech wonderland Lewis Carroll
bc78915 A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless. belong belonging england english irritation language past rootless roots speciesless John Fowles
51f0a46 Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense of Guillam's life till now. elusiveness english englishmen englishness inspiration understatement vague vagueness John le Carré
af66bf9 It was English, and the wych-elm that she saw from the window was an English tree. No report had prepared her for its peculiar glory. It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. english tree E.M. Forster
21eebfe I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour's extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they'd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There's an international symbol for the gents' toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television. disadvantaged english fruit gents-toilets heroin intelligent learning-to-read martin-sharpe oxford pacino prodigy reading symbol telly tutoring Nick Hornby
91b3956 "Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school - with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses - then I am a happy man." He turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed "To hell with school," he cried. "To hell with school. English is what matters. ENGLISH IS LIFE." The Head grabbed him and led him off to her sitting-room for tea, not looking too thrilled, and we were let out and I went flying home." english reading school Jane Gardam
8017097 So I went to bed, full, happy, and caring nothing for all the hurt of all the englished Welshmen that ever festered upon a proud land english funny hiraeth wales welsh Richard Llewellyn
a0f4ad1 "Took her [Ms. Whitlock] long enough to grade it." He mumbles. True. "But it took us forever to turn it in. She didn't have to accept it was from, she didn't have to let us write it together and she didn't have to give us an A-plus, but she did." english ms-whitlock pigpen violet Katie McGarry
762587e Excuse me, I must go and putt british comedy english english-society golf putt putting P.G. Wodehouse
f6306ea There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would say that, as with many English, the moment is somewhat delayed. england english englishmen John le Carré
aeab5c5 But the English are different, and they don't know how to be other than different. english Larry McMurtry
a24cdd8 The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she. england english Honoré de Balzac
e051000 The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly. character class english industry work Paul Theroux
fbd8c5d He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. english insight language observations wonder Robert M. Pirsig
e300166 Ramsey made the mistake of guessing it didn't and shook his head, gaining him a scowl and a blasphemy from the cantankerous baron cantankerous english Julie Garwood
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