Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible.

“Still, not to be English is hardly regarded as a fatal deficiency even by the English, though grave enough to warrant sympathy.

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like ʌ(OO)ʌ, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to ‘ʌoo’.

Polysyllables obfuscate a preponderant ignorance with so much more style and panache.

English muffins with avocado is one of my favorite breakfasts.

The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!

It does not matter what you write in English nobody has understood it anyway.

Because of social strictures against even the mildest swearing, America developed a particularly rich crop of euphemistic expletives – darn, durn, goldurn, goshdad, goshdang, goshawful, blast, consarn, confound, by Jove, by jingo, great guns, by...

Everything has been planned. The ascent will be completed in two days’ time. He will climb another one hundred floors today. Another hundred the next day. He does not want to take the lift. The...

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best...

Pot itself has nothing to do with pots and pans, but comes from the Mexican-Spanish word potiguaya, which means marijuana leaves. And marijuana is a Mexification of ‘Mary Jane’ for reasons that everybody is much...

My father was English. He date-raped my mother so she’s hated English men ever since. You know my boyfriend’s English, and I’m, uh, I’m half-English, which she’s never been real happy about. If she finds...

English is so past,’ she said. ‘Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don’t have to be English graduates. Theology graduates who don’t believe any of it – that...

I want to have roles in English.

There was once an abbot who had spent thirty-nine years alone in the temple with cats as his only companions. As someone who believed that faith and willpower could conquer any difficulty, the abbot began...

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people – and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of...

Remember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd you walked smilingFlushed enraptured streaming-wetIn the rainRemember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd I ran into you in Siam StreetYou were smilingAnd I smiled...

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

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world – there I am a child – there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance – I...

I’ve always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I’ve done bits of journalism.

Pak Suleh recalled the atmosphere on his island of Pulau Sebidang, which had been ruled by his ancestors for more than a hundred years. Now it had been passed to foreign hands—whichever nation from whatever...

Susie: Hi Calvin! Aren’t you excited about going to school? Look at all these great school supplies I got! I love having new notebooks and stuff!Calvin:All I’ve got to say is they’re not making me...

Remember that lettuce doesn’t grow on a spruce; and it also doesn’t rhyme with it.

Annoyance has made me bilingual.

Even English Language doesn’t provide you with the Synonyms of the word Success.

Englishmen who came here had the spirit of close kinsmen in all they did; often were blood related and moved from place to place in clans strengthened by civic and ecclesiastical covenants.

The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have...

I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.

And so we went. And so it went. And, slowly, I began to learn: speaking in the same language does not equal communication, especially when there is a cultural divide.

I want to type one of my books into a free online translation website, and convert it from English to German and then publish the results as an exercise in the absurd.

I don’t understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

Whenever I write a paragraph in English, I first check it with the Google Translator, and most often it says no language detected.

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual...

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won’t go away.

English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one...

When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film...

full English breakfast,” which consisted of tea, orange juice, cookies, oatmeal, granola, berries, bananas, croissants, grapes, pineapples, prunes, yogurt, five kinds of cold cereal, eggs, hash browns, back bacon, sausage, smoked salmon, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans,...

I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

I’m not a salsa singer who wants to sing in English, and I’m not this American kid who wants to sing Spanish.

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

I remember the very day, sometime during the first two weeks of my five-year amorous sojourn in Brutland, when I was made privy to one of the most arcane of their utterings. The time was...

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 Grand Street in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened...

age” whatsoever.

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that,...

At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, “Mythology and Archetypal Experience,” confounded me. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then

Real love is booty grabbin

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.