As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. The way nouns could sometimes modify other nouns in that tongue had always been one of his weak points. In Latin, as in most simple dialects of the reg...
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 Q...
A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she's laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through...
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest, Where can we finde two better hemispheares Without sharpe North, without declining West? What ever dyes, was not mixt equally; If our two loves be one, or, th...
It was a bitch living with your old English teacher, especially when your old English teacher wasn’t old at all, and he had exactly the kind of body that most appealed to her, tall and lean, broad in the shoulder, narrow at the hip. Then there was ...
I had not particularly liked the way in which he wrote about literature in , and I was always on my guard if not outright hostile when any tincture of 'deconstruction' or 'postmodernism' was applied to my beloved canon of English writing, but when Ed...
Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels, written between 1870 and 1895, made him not only the recorder of his distinctive region of 'Wessex', but the explorer of the transition of liv...
Later, Hobbes will stress the notion central to Augustan thinking, the binary of passion and reason: The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry ...
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 without altering the language to the extent that its value as a me...
Are there any two words in all of the English language more closely twinned than courage and cowardice? I do not think there is a man alive who will not yearn to possess the former and dread to be accused of the latter. One is held to be the apogee o...
It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. he considered Monday specially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood of work and discipline. He ...
Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by so...
An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages....
I have not harmed her. I have not allowed harm to come to her. It's more than her lot has ever offered me, and English has seen what befalls them when they press the boot on our necks. She has survived the wages of justice through luck, mettle, and w...
English: Ten years ago, I was in this bar in Alabama when two dudes started hassling me. That was their first mistake. They pulled knives. That was their second mistake. They didn't know how to use them. That was the last mistake they ever made. I go...
Muller: [interrogating Caravaggio] Look here, for every name you give me, I'll let you keep a finger. You give me something, and you'll keep something. Caravaggio: Don't cut me. Muller: Are thumbs fingers? [to Lieutenant] Muller: Ist ein Daumen ein F...
Katharine Clifton: [dancing] Why did you follow me yesterday? Almásy: I'm sorry, what? Katharine Clifton: After the market, you followed me to the hotel. Almásy: I was concerned. A woman in that part of Cairo, a European woman, I felt obliged to. K...
Lisa: You should be sleeping, baby. Pita: I'm trying, Mom Lisa: Good news. You're going back to school Pita: When? Lisa: Samuel is going to hire a new bodyguard. It may take a few days, but you're going back Pita: Could he speak English? Emilio could...
Juror #8: Let me ask you this: Do you really think the boy'd shout out a thing like that so the whole neighborhood could hear him? I don't think so - he's much to bright for that. Juror #10: Bright? He's a common ignorant slob. He don't even speak go...
[after the fighting is over, Bittrich rides in to meet the English captives. He sees Frost, who is sitting on the ground with a leg injury. He offers a bar of chocolate and says something in German] Bittrich's Aide: My general says, please take it. I...
Usually, English personalities are difficult; they don't take criticism easily.
