When a man over forty tries to repent of the sins of England and to love her enemies, he is attempting something costly; for he was brought up to certain patriotic sentiments which cannot be mortified without a struggle. But an educated man who is no...
I know I am flaky, I accept that—and I know, as well, that I can mangle the good king’s English like no one else in my or the next ten governesses’ acquaintances, but that will not prevent me from speaking! I may not be as wise as you in the wa...
Nurse Noakes: You are going to be sorry in ways you cannot even imagine. Mr. Meeks: [shrieks to draw attention of the crowd in the pub] Are there no true Scotsmen in the house? Those there English gerrunts are trampling all over my God-given rights! ...
[calling the police about an intruder] Jeannie: There is an intruder - male, Caucasian, possibly armed, certainly weird - in my kitchen... M-my-my-my name is Bueller... [pause] Jeannie: Look, it's real nice that you hope my brother is feeling better,...
The Bride: [in Mandarin] Master... Pai Mei: [in Mandarin; subtitled] Your Mandarin is lousy. It causes my ears great discomfort. You bray like an ass! You are not to speak unless spoken to! It is too much to hope but... do you speak Cantonese? The Br...
Duncan: You there, Scout! We must rest soon, the women are tired. Magua: No, two leagues, better water. We stop there. Duncan: No, we'll stop in the glade just ahead. When the ladies are rested, we will proceed. Do you understand? Magua: [speaking Hu...
Professor Henry Higgins: I know your head aches; I know you're tired; I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish. Think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English lan...
[first lines] [English subtitles] Benjamín Esposito: [voiceover] On June 21st, 1974, Ricardo Morales had breakfast with Liliana Coloto for the last time. For the rest of his life he'd remember every single detail of that morning. Planning their firs...
Tommy: Doesn't it make you proud to be Scottish? Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: It's SHITE being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization...
[Little Bill tells the real story of English Bob's gunfight] Little Bill Daggett: First off, Corky never carried two guns. Though he should have. W.W. Beauchamp: No, no, he was, he was called "Two-Gun Corcoran." Little Bill Daggett: Yeah well, a lot ...
Hamish: There's somebody coming. Campbell: MacGregors from the next clan. MacGregor: We heard about what was happenin' and don't want you "Amadans" thinkin' you can have your fun without us. William Wallace: Go home. Some of us are in this; can't hel...
Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The Engli...
Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to quest...
To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.10 10 One has only to spend a term trying to teach college literature to realize that the quickest way to kill an author's...
We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early mo...
This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no...
Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And ...
I have seen them stagger out of their movie palaces and blink their empty eyes in the face of reality once more, and stagger home, to read the Times, to find out what's going on in the world. I have vomited at their newspapers, read their literature,...
O, great wise man,' she said, 'I have been wondering so many things. Is life more than sitting at home doing the same thing over and over? Wise man, is life more than watching one's relatives do unpleasant things, or more than grim tasks one must per...
If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who...
A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -...