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1 " I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter.Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips.A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought.And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart. "
2 " The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed. "
3 " The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. "
― James D. Nicoll
4 " Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes? "
― George Orwell , 1984
5 " Hear me now or regret it later: Everything you write must be read aloud. Once all the context items are in place, this is the final test for any written piece...Do not neglect your sense of hearing in the process of writing and reading. As a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, I can tell you on good authority that you have been listening to the English language at least five or six years longer than you have been writing and reading. And, most probably, your ears also had eighteen or more years of familiarity with the language before you began to read or write with a writer's sensibility. For these reasons, your ears know when things sound okay, good, beautiful, strange, awkward, or just plain bad, before your eye can pick up on such things...Your written voice should burn with the fire of fervent prayer, soothe like a friend's voice during a late-night phone call, alure like a lover's whisper. You must, through your accessible, infinitely read-aloudable voice, make your audience into an insatiable reader of your words. "
6 " Ah! The English language was a wonderful thing! You could always find the right word. He only wished he could speak the language. "
― , Trouble On The Heath (Quick Reads)
7 " There is a love for structure in them that I recognize, and a desire to worship correctness that I know and I share. When I look at them, I think: to prize traditionalism above all else in a church that began in revolution is to do a great violence to it. But I feel that same ache for the past in myself: to uphold the columns of literature, grammar, the Western tradition. The English language began as an upheaval; I am not protecting it when I try to guard it against change. The Jesus Christ of it, Chaucer, walked across the water telling dirty jokes, made twenty stories stretch to feed a million people, spelled the word " cunt" five ways, performed miracles. Any innovation I put down on paper is an attempt to remind myself of this. I am not modern. I was not born to blaze new paths or bring down walls. I break form against my nature to tell myself that revolution, too, is a tradition that must be upheld. "
8 " She'd always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language -- more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be under "
9 " It’s incredible how small the English language gets when you’re trying to make it fix something. "
― Corey Ann Haydu , The Careful Undressing of Love
10 " My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets —no, they're little gifts, containing meanings! "
― Philip Roth
11 " There are thousands of words in the English language for acts of senseless violence, but not one seems to be a contestant when a child dies. "
12 " In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child. "
― Jodi Picoult , My Sister's Keeper
13 " 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. "
― Dannika Dark , Gravity (Mageri Series, #4)
14 " Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to " personalize" the author. It's a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength. "
15 " The four most expensive word in the English language are 'This time it's different. "
16 " Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years. "
― Douglas Coupland , Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
17 " When animals do something noble we say they are behaving ‘like humans’. When humans do something disgusting we say they are behaving ‘like animals’. Clumsy use of the English language perpetuates the myth that animals are inferior and disposable beings. "
18 " ...there are no sweeter words in the English language (or any other) than husband and wife. "
19 " On various occasions, especially in trying to think of western American history in the context of the worldwide history of colonialism, it has struck me that much of the mental behavior that we sometimes denounce as ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity actually derives less from our indifference or hostility than from our clumsiness and awkwardness when we leave the comfort of the English language behind... [V]enturing outside the bounds of the English language exercises and stretches our minds in ways that are essential for getting as close as we can to the act of seeing the world from what would otherwise remain unfamiliar and alien perspectives. "
― Karl Jacoby , Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History
20 " Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart — and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. "
― Brené Brown
