#english

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul. ↗

— Paul Hoffman

#cale #destruction #easier #easy #english-quote

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. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#english #tree #men

Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers. ↗

— James Kelman

#crises #emotional #english-literature #fortune #money

We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#music

Nature pulls one way and human nature another. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#english-lit #gay-authors #nature

Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone. ↗

— F. Murray Abraham

#answer #days #english #english language #every

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand. ↗

— Fredrik Bajer

#also #been #demand #doubt #english

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath. ↗

— Lynn Abbey

#bullets #by the time #dodging #end #english

I don't know French at all. I took some lessons when I was younger but all I know are the numbers. I've been told basically everyone in Monaco speaks English because of it being a huge vacation spot so I'm excited about that. I might not need to learn French after all. ↗

— Freddy Adu

#after #basically #because #been #being

Listeners will wonder what an Englishman is doing on the German radio tonight. You can imagine that before taking this step I hoped that someone better qualified than me would come forward. ↗

— John Amery

#better #come #doing #englishman #forward