English Quotes (page 23)
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He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside? why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening? I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I...
Dodie Smith
I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)
Jodi Picoult
Berndt handed in a plan for the occultist propaganda to be carried on by us. We are getting somewhere. The Americans and English fall easily to this kind of propaganda. We are therefore pressing into service all star witnesses of occult prophecy. Nostradamus must once again submit to being quoted.
Joseph Goebbels
Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity?
Wilkie Collins
I'm on the New York State Council for the Arts now, and every so often some other member talks about sending notices to college English departments about some literary opportunity, and I say, "Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physics departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.
George Eliot
What is 'camp'? A much misunderstood word, everyone has their own feel for it. Here is mine:
Camp is not in rugby football.
Camp is not in the Old Testament.
Camp is not in St. Paul.
Camp is not in Latin lessons, though it might be in Greek.
Camp loves colour.
Camp loves light.
Camp takes pleasure in the surface of things.
Camp loves paint as much as it loves paintings.
Camp prefers style to the stylish.
Camp is pale.
Camp is unhealthy.
Camp is not English, damn it.
But …
Camp is not...
Stephen Fry
In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.
Thomas Merton
