"English language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... provisional administration of the American Government, and which is destined to develop under the protection and guidance of the United States. The only comprehensive publications on the Dominican Republic, in the English language, are the Report of the United States Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, published in 1871, Hazard's "Santo Domingo, Past and Present," written about the same time, and Professor Hollander's notable Report on the Debt of Santo Domingo, published in 1905. The first and the last ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... muttered "curses not loud, but deep." Deep or loud, no purpose would they have answered; the waggoner's temper was proof against curse in or out of the English language; and from their snail's pace neither Dickens, nor devil, nor any postilion in England could make him put his horses. Lord Colambre jumped out of the chaise, and, walking beside him, began to talk to him; and spoke of his horses, their bells, their trappings; the beauty and strength ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... disfigured with foreign idioms which had been picked up at Rome and Douay, appeared to little advantage when compared with the eloquence of Tillotson and Sherlock. It seemed that it was no light thing to have secured the cooperation of the greatest living master of the English language. The first service which he was required to perform in return for his pension was to defend his Church in prose against Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who has nothing to say; and this was Dryden's case. He ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... subjoining some reflections concerning the origin of these sentiments of praise or blame. On all occasions, where there might arise the least hesitation, I avoided the terms VIRTUE and VICE; because some of those qualities, which I classed among the objects of praise, receive, in the English language, the appellation of TALENTS, rather than of virtues; as some of the blameable or censurable qualities are often called defects, rather than vices. It may now, perhaps, be expected that before we conclude this moral enquiry, we should exactly separate the one from the other; should ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... element, or words of Latin etymology, in our English tongue is mainly due. The loss of the old Saxon inflections is another marked change; but this is not due, to so large an extent, solely to the influence of Norman speech. But the English language continued to be essentially Teutonic in its structure. For a long time the two tongues lived side by side. At the end of the twelfth century, if French was the language of polite intercourse, English was the language of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a distressing doubt, and a doubt that strikes at vital interests. "Grammar," our President is reported to have said before he had cast the integuments of a grocer's clerk, "Grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety"! Is this a definition, we sorrowfully ask, becoming an American citizen? It has, indeed, in many respects the qualities of a perfect definition. It is deep; it is accurate; it is exhaustive; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... that two words in the English language could be suspended, and went off to see if any comfort was going ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... my dear Belinda," said Lady Delacour, calmly, "till Marriott has exhausted all the expletives in and out of the English language; and presently, when she has fought all her battles with Champfort over again, we may hope ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the habit of reading well—that is, of interpreting the printed page in such manner as to give pleasure and instruction to themselves and to those who listen to them. In his eighth year at school the pupil is supposed to be able to read, with ease and with some degree of fluency, anything in the English language that may come to his hand; but, that he may read always with the understanding and in a manner pleasing to his hearers and satisfactory to himself, he must still have daily systematic practice in the rendering of selections not too difficult for comprehension and yet embracing ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... bottom of this speech to make it rather discordant, though the manner was refined and the person well-favoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so skilfully thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly acquainted with the English language to understand, or, even understanding, to take offence at: so simple and dispassionate was its tone. After finishing his veal in the midst of silence, the speaker again addressed ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... confusion, and chuse a dictator. Upon this principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare, that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship. Nay more, I will not only obey him, like an old Roman, as my dictator, but, like a modern Roman, I will implicitly believe in him as my Pope, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... are as a rule very eager to learn both their native and the English language. They have their adult schools for this purpose. Their children go to the public schools. There are four Ruthenian weeklies and one monthly published in this country, and some books. Education is prompted by reading circles, lectures, and ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... experience and practice of other peoples, while Roman religion expanded mechanically and extensively, by taking on the deities and worship of others without any organic change of its own being. Just as the English language has been able to absorb words of Latin origin, through its early contact with French, into the very tissue and fibre of its being, while German has for certain reasons never been able to do this, but has ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... several schools, and graduated at the university of his native city. He was ordained in 1817, and soon became noted for his zeal and energy as a clergyman. His literary productions were collected and published in 1825. "The Burial of Sir John Moore," one of the finest poems of its kind in the English language, was written in 1817, and first appeared in the "Newry Telegraph," a newspaper, with the author's initials, but without his knowledge. Byron said of this ballad that he would rather be the author of it than of any ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... scheduled to come on line in 2006. In its rivalry with India as an economic power, China has a lead in the absorption of technology, the rising prominence in world trade, and the alleviation of poverty; India has one important advantage in its relative mastery of the English language, but the number of competent Chinese English-speakers ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty and poetic spirit, "The Sad Shepherd." There is also the exceedingly interesting 'English Grammar' "made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all strangers out of his observation of the English language now spoken and in use," in Latin and English; and 'Timber, or discoveries' "made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times." The 'Discoveries', as it is usually called, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... invidious. The recognition of their language is precious to a small people. I have never been able to work myself into a passion because there are in parts of South Africa Dutch people who wish to have Dutch teachers to teach Dutch children Dutch. I have not so poor an opinion of the English language, with its priceless literary treasures and its world-wide business connections, as not to believe that it can safely be exposed to the open competition of a dialect like the taal. We believe that the only sure way to preserve in the years that are to come such a language as the taal would ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... But it was of a piece with grammar and rhetoric as then taught—all preposterous studies viewed as helps toward correct writing and speaking. Think of our parsing Milton as an aid to mastering the English language! ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... motion to insert in the constitution a section to read thus: "All citizens twenty-one years of age, who can read and write the English language, shall be eligible to the elective franchise, and be entitled to equal political and legal rights and privileges." The motion was seconded and I had the floor, but the House became so clamorous that the president could not restore ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... are free; they are not polite as we are polite; they are not contented as we are contented; and no one for a moment who is even an amateur observer and an amateur philologist combined would claim that the three words, love and amour and Liebe mean the same thing. No word in the English language is used so often from the pulpit as the word love, but this cannot be said of the use of amour in France or of Liebe in Germany. Nations pour themselves into the tiny moulds of words and give us statuettes of themselves. The ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... name would live, if at all, in his hymns, and in this his judgment has proved true. Some of these, such as For ever with the Lord, Hail to the Lord's Anointed, and Prayer is the Soul's sincere Desire, are sung wherever the English language is spoken. M. was a good and philanthropic man, the opponent of every form of injustice and oppression, and the friend of every movement for the welfare of the race. His virtues ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... works having a scientific or non-literary object, they rest mainly upon devices (such as the use of apostrophes, accents, diacritical points and the employment of both vowels and consonants in unusual groups and senses) foreign to the genius of the English language and calculated only to annoy the reader of a work of imagination. Of these points of departure from established usage I need only particularize some of the more important; the others will, in general, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... previously settled, which was obtaining such an addition to his income, as would be sufficient to enable him to defray the expence in a manner becoming the first literary character of a great nation, and independent of all his other merits, the Authour of THE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The person to whom I above all others thought I should apply to negociate this business, was the Lord Chancellor, because I knew that he highly valued Johnson, and that Johnson highly valued his Lordship; so ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... benefits which we derived from this study, and our recollection that the study was at that time optional, and did not affect more than a small number of the pupils, lead us to anticipate that when once the English language and literature become recognized, not as an optional but as a regular part of our educational course, the advantages will be so great as to constitute nothing ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... Spanish, She played all over the States as an amateur, and when the occasion came, and she was thrown on her own resources, she adopted the stage as a profession. She has played in every country and city where the English language is spoken. Mrs. Potter has, perhaps, the largest repertoire of any ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... (or neo-Paganism), as it was preached flamboyantly by Mr. Swinburne or delicately by Walter Pater, there is no necessity to take any very grave account, except as a thing which left behind it incomparable exercises in the English language. The New Paganism is no longer new, and it never at any time bore the smallest resemblance to Paganism. The ideas about the ancient civilization which it has left loose in the public mind are certainly extraordinary enough. The term "pagan" is continually ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... or the Highlands of Scotland; and that nothing approaching to the extinction of that people took place in Devonshire, Somerset, or the western moiety of Britain generally. Nevertheless, the fundamentally Teutonic English language is now spoken throughout Britain, except by an insignificant fraction of the population in Wales and the Western Highlands. But it is obvious that this fact affords not the slightest justification for the common practice of speaking of the present inhabitants of Britain as an "Anglo-Saxon" ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... As in the Case of "Life is a Dream", "The Wonderful Magician" has previously been translated entire by an English writer, ("Justina", by J.H. 1848); but as Archbishop Trench truly observes, "the writer did not possess that command of the resources of the English language, which none more than ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... it from others. This is a function that is always in process of further development; for the mind of a nation elaborates its language, and the language gives tone to the mind of the new generation. The influences at work upon the English language at present are very complex, and play on it with great force, so that the changes are startling in their rapidity. English is not only the language of a nation or of a race, not even of an empire; and the inflowing ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... could appeal to the right hon. baronet the member for Tamworth in favour of the credibility of that gentleman. He never met with a man of a more dignified character, or one apparently of greater intelligence, and there were few who spoke the English language with greater purity and perfection. That gentleman had written a pamphlet, in which he stated that throughout his whole line of march from Bombay he found the Nizam's territories better cultivated, and the ryots in a better state of circumstances, than were the Company's territories, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... points. India achieved 8.5% GDP growth in 2006, and again in 2007, significantly expanding production of manufactures. India is capitalizing on its large numbers of well-educated people skilled in the English language to become a major exporter of software services and software workers. Economic expansion has helped New Delhi continue to make progress in reducing its federal fiscal deficit. However, strong growth combined with easy consumer credit ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... old—in the English language—many miles away from any literary assistance, and fifty miles from the Boston Public Library, where I could derive many testimonies and opinions of undisputable authorities to strengthen my religious opinions and actions, which are tested in the most practical way by all conditions and ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... life of the common people. It has been teacher and school for the millions. The Puritans, for example, used it as a poem, story book, history, law and philosophy. Out of it New England was born. It has been the chief representative of the English language at its best. Anglo-Saxon life and learning are saturated with it. The literature of England and America is full of the Bible. Shakespeare and Tennyson are specimens. Each of these authors quote from nearly every book in the Bible, and each of them refers to the Bible not less than five hundred ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... we call the fort, Frank?" said his companion. "We have a Fort Good Hope, and a Fort Resolution, and a Fort Enterprise already. It seems as if all the vigorous and hearty words in the English language were used up in naming the forts of the Hudson's Bay Company. What shall we ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... the partial vocabulary of the names of plants, which follows them, we have the two languages in juxtaposition, the Anglo-Saxon having then emerged from that state which has been termed semi-Saxon, and become early English. We are again introduced to the English language more generally by Walter de Biblesworth, the interlinear gloss to whose treatise represents, no doubt, the English of the beginning of the fourteenth century. All the subsequent vocabularies given here belong, as far as the language is concerned, to the fifteenth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... learned that a certain Noah Webster was to publish "A Columbian Dictionary" containing "American corrections of the English language," he had a few suggestions to offer. The Columbian language he understood to be an elegant dialect of the English, but, he went on, "there is one remark which I would wish with deference to submit to our great lexicographer before I finish this paper. As his dictionary, I understand, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... out-stations, located remote from the Central Stations. These stations, numbering twenty-one, have been hindered and also enlarged during the past year. The hindrance came from the interference of the Government. In its well-intended zeal for the introduction of the English language, it surpassed the limits which experience had fixed, by requiring that the vernacular should not be taught, nor even spoken, in any Indian schools on the Reservation including these mission stations, which were wholly sustained ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... Early Manhood: by S. T. Coleridge. A Note was prefixed:—'It may not be without use or interest to youthful, and especially to intelligent female readers of poetry, to observe that in the attempt to adapt the Greek metres to the English language, we must begin by substituting quality of sound for quantity—that is, accentuated or comparatively emphasized syllables, for what in the Greek and Latin Verse, are named long, and of which the prosodial mark is [macron]; and vice vers, unaccented ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... up for the sake of my family. The most abusive terms to be found in the English language were poured forth on us with bitter oaths. They tied my hands behind me, and drove us home before them, to suffer the penalty of a slaveholder's ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... this provision in the Constitution, that law is void. If the Espionage law finally stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead. If that law is not the negation of every fundamental principle established by the Constitution, then certainly I am unable to read or to understand the English language. ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... delightful for delighted, as weak epithets, and such as I do not believe that Shakespeare would have used. It was not as a schoolmaster or grammarian, but in reference to the peculiar fitness and force of his expressions, and his perfect acquaintance with the powers of the English language, and his mastery over it, that I ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... meaning—we see a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. And it may be remarked, in passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having carried this subdivision of function to a greater extent and completeness, that the English language is superior ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... on this island did not speak the English language; and the family with whom I was to reside could speak ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... knowed that our firin' had prob'ly woke up some o' the sleepers. We pounded the ground an' got thar as quick as we could. The two wimmen wa'n't fur behind. They didn't cocalate to lose us—you hear to me. Two young braves had sprung up an' been told to lie down ag'in. But the English language ain't no help to an Injun under them surcumstances. They don't understan' it an' thar ain't no time when ignerunce is more costly. They was some others awake, but they had learnt suthin'. They was keepin' quiet, an' I ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... knowledge, merely," replied Holmes. "A merely worldly vessel leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake. That one we have just discovered is not so, but sulphurescent, if I may coin a word which it seems to me the English language is very much in need of. It proves, then, that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian craft, and the only Stygian craft that has cleared the Cimmerian Harbor for years is ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... read the missive. I did not know the English language perfectly, but Yolanda, who spoke it as if it were her mother tongue, translated as she read. I had always considered the island language harsh till I heard Yolanda speak it. Even the hissing "th" was music on her lips. Had ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... selecting such rulers, and the laws by which such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement of the people.] He despairs of having communicated to the English language any portion of the surpassing graces of the composition, or having done more than present an imperfect shadow of the language and the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... were among the number of those who contrived to acquire millions. Englishmen, indeed, were not congenial to the Transvaal, whilst foreigners, claiming to be Englishmen because they murdered the English language, abounded and prospered, and in time came sincerely to believe that they were British subjects, owing to the fact that they continually kept repeating that Britain ought to ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of the German language, Mr. Adams made a metrical translation of Wieland's Oberon into the English language. The publication of this work, which at one time was designed, was superseded by the appearance of a similar ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... in which they acquired a knowledge of the language is somewhat novel. They were unable to find any one who was acquainted with the English language, and were obliged to select an agreeable and pleasant Burman, who, to the best of his ability, instructed them in the principles of the language of his country. They would point to houses, and trees, and the various objects around them, and he would ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... one of the vigorous servant-girls in national costume, we discovered that the place was really a boarding house for some English engineers engaged at the works of the St. Gothard Tunnel; and I could listen my fill to the sounds of the English language, as far as it is used at a breakfast-table by men who do not believe in wasting many words on the mere ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the ordinance constituting English the official language of India. In a like spirit, he promoted the work of native education, partly for the purpose of developing the political and judicial capacity of the higher orders among the Hindus, but partly also for the purpose of making the English language and literature the instrument of their elevation. He earnestly desired to raise the standard of Indian civilisation, but he equally desired to fashion it ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... a variety in colour and size, there is no ambiguity about species or genus. Wherever the English language is spoken, it has but one name, the "raccoon." In America, every man, woman and child knows ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... consistent system has been adopted, and the result will therefore be open to criticism in many details; but the aim has been to avoid on the one hand the pedantry of seriously altering the form of those names which are fairly established in the English language of literature, as distinguished from that of scholarship, and on the other hand the absurdity of looking to Latin rather than to Greek for the orthography of the names which are not so established. There is no intention to put forward ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... Lady Guest's translation I have put, in the form of footnotes, what appears to me to be a more correct or a more literal rendering of some of the passages of the Welsh. This course makes it unnecessary to tamper with the charming translation that has become a classic of the English language. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... success, and the views entertained by the Society in respect to Spain, adding that he hoped I should pay particular attention to the Asturias, which he assured me was the best ground in the Peninsula for our labour. After about half-an-hour's conversation, he suddenly said in the English language, 'Good night, sir,' wrapped his cloak around him, and walked out as he had come. His companions, who had hitherto not uttered a word, all repeated, 'Good night, sir,' and adjusting their ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and principal assertion is, that effects have their adequate cause; it is then added, that the universe is an effect, that it therefore must have a cause, and to this cause in the English language is given the name of God. This proposition is true, provided the universe is an effect, but that is a postulatum without concession and without a proof. This original Being he advances in another place to be that only something which ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... the mourners' bench is? Say, if you'd only study the English language 'stead of loading your think tank with them furrin' words you wouldn't need nobody to tell you that the mourners' bench is just another name ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... because 'he made all things,' and (as the bowler said about a 'Yorker') 'what else can you call him?' In all such cases, where 'creator' and 'creative' are used by me, readers will allow for the imperfections of the English language. As anthropologists say, the savages simply cannot have the corresponding ideas; and I must throw the blame on people who, knowing the savages and their language, assure us that they have. This Fang Father or Tata 'is considered indifferent to the ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, was ordained in the Church of England in 1837, and became chaplain to a central London workhouse. In 1839 he was appointed lecturer in classical literature at King's College, London, and in 1855 he became professor of English language and literature and lecturer in modern history, succeeding F.D. Maurice. Meanwhile from 1854 onwards he was also engaged in journalistic work on the Morning Herald, Morning Post and Standard. In 1856 he was commissioned by the master of the rolls to prepare a calendar of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... waited in silent patience until the latter had summoned Hist to the party. This interruption proceeded from the chief's having discovered that there existed a necessity for an interpreter, few of the Hurons present understanding the English language, and they ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... up to the davits; and he was alone in a strange land, charged with a dangerous mission, with no white man to share his burden, and with only one man, Ling, who had even a nodding acquaintance with the English language. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... that the wit of one generation is rarely appreciated by the next, but this is not true of Artemus Ward. There is a constant demand for his writings, for the reason that his jokes require no appendix for their elucidation. No one who speaks the English language can fail to appreciate his wonderful humor. It will always be funny. There is a fascination about it which can neither be questioned nor resisted. His particular niche in the temple of Fame will not be claimed by another. His intellect was sharp and electric. He saw the humor of anything ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... language, and in some cases of her institutions. Her neglect in this instance she now feels to have been at her own cost, and therefore politically to have been her crime. Granting to her population a certain degree of education, and of familiarity with the English language, certain civic privileges, (as those of voting at political elections, of holding offices, profitable or honorary, &c.,) under such reasonable latitude as to time as might have made the transition easy, England would have prevented the late wicked insurrection in Canada, and gradually ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... in his hands a little package of cards on which notes were jotted down, he occasionally cast his eyes upon them, but he evidently trusted to the inspiration of the hour for his phrasing, and his trust was not misplaced. I never heard a more simple, strong, lucid use of the English language than was his on that occasion. The speech was a very noble plea for the restoration of good feeling between North and South, with an effort to show that the distrust felt by the South toward the North was natural. In the course of it he said ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... true. The idea of progress has led more than one eager mind to think that the old religions were outgrown; that they were the belated leftovers of a bygone age and were not for modern minds; that a new religion fitted to our new needs alone would do. Suppose, however, that one should say: The English language is an archaic affair; it has grown like Topsy, by chance; it has carried along with it the forms of thinking of outgrown generations; it is not scientific; what we need is a new language built to order ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. And what do you propose to do in gratitude? To run, to flee, to hide from the expression of authority, to bring disgrace upon the very newspaper whose munificence pumps life into your ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "altum silentium" my "interrogations follow'd one another with such amazing rapidity, that he (poor man) was almost out of breath in repeating them." - Here, gentle reader, is presented to you a group of ideas in the chaste, the elegant style of CURONUS, which required much more skill in the English language than I am a master of, to reduce to the level of common sense. Thus I have given you a short specimen of the taste of Chronus, who is said to be the top hand on the side of the ministry: For want of leisure I must omit taking notice of his "method of reasoning" ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken—that is to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more their ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... tranquillity — perhaps one or two pieces, sprung from a momentary mood, which, on reflection he would have rejected.* But they not only show a great advance on his earlier work: they rank high, or I am much mistaken, among the hitherto not very numerous poems in the English language produced, not in mere memory or imagination of war, but in its actual stress ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... excesses when roused. Under the influence of religious excitement, losses at gambling, jealousy or other domestic troubles they are liable to amok or run-a-muck, an expression which appears to have passed into the English language." With strangers, the Brunai Malay is doubtless taciturn, but I have heard Brunai ladies among themselves, while enjoying their betel-nut, rival any old English gossips over their cup of tea, and on an expedition the men will sometimes keep up ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... and the rest of the company by surprising gymnastic feats in the rigging. The speech of these two Britishers gave the untravelled American a new appreciation of the beauty and significance of the English language. Not all Englishmen speak good English, but when they ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... remained strong in 2001 with adequate foreign exchange reserves, and moderately depreciating nominal exchange rates. Growth in manufacturing output has slowed, and electricity shortages continue in many regions. India has large numbers of well-educated people skilled in English language; India is a major exporter of ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... College is open to natives speaking the English language; but it is especially designed for pupils from that increasing and important portion of the Hawaiian community, which is of foreign origin. This of course includes those who have heretofore constituted the mission. These, with their families, must be regarded as in the highest ...
— The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands • Trustees of the Punahou School and Oahu College
... scarcely goes so far as I have done, though I have merely worked out his suggestion. His only revolutionary proposal is to displace the wind star by the "rathe primrose" for Forsaken, on the strength of a quotation familiar to every reader of Mason's little text-book on the English language. For the rest he followed his authorities, and has followed them now to the remote recesses of the literary lumber-room and into the twopenny book-box. From that receptacle one copy of him was disinterred only a day or so ago; a hundred and seventy pages of prose, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... amusing rhyme clipped from an old paper shows to advantage some of the peculiarities of the English language: ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... of our forefathers' intentions to banish from our schools the Scriptures, those finest examples of the strength and beauty of the English language, to say nothing of their lessons in individual self-government, which is the only foundation that a republic can ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... is noticed by Mr. Hickson; and demerits was used for merits by many of our old writers as well as Shakspeare. I find decompound for compound in Heylyn's Microcosmos, 1627, p. 249., thus:—"The English language is a decompound of Dutch, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... English language is spoken, the name of HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW has become a household word, and there is scarcely a library, however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking backward, and in looking forward ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... and balance which are of the essence of Greek art. It is necessary also to preserve as much as possible the simplicity of diction, and to avoid words and phrases suggestive of very modern ideas. After all, it is difficult, with a material so motley and irregular as the English language, to produce anything like the pure marble of the Greek. There are translations of Greek tragedies or parts of them by writers of high poetic reputation, which are no doubt poetry, but are ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... head to foot with Copperhead slime, to be called a knight-errant, a seeker after notoriety, an abortive negotiator, and a meddlesome volunteer diplomatist; but I expected also, if a good Providence spared our lives, and my pen did not forget the English language, to be able to tell the North the truth; and I knew that the Truth would stay the Peace epidemic, and kill the Peace party. And by the blessing of God, and the help of the Devil, it did do that. The Devil helped, for he inspired Mr. Benjamin's circular, and that forced home the bolt we had driven, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... piercing eyes, a straight, pointed nose, and well-formed mouth. His hair, also, had none of that crimp so indicative of negro extraction, but lay in dark curls all over his head. As he answered to the captain's orders, he spoke in broken accents, indicating but little knowledge of the English language. From the manner in which the crew treated him, it was evident that he was an established favourite with them as well as the officers, for each appeared to treat him more as an equal than a menial. He laboured cheerfully ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... have occurred in March or April, 1811. The Indian who gave us an account of them, appeared to have a great deal of intelligence and knew some words of the English language. He added that he had been at the Russian trading post at Chitka, that he had visited the coast of California, the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Gray stands for beauty of form rather than for depth of thought or breadth of sympathy. He is first of all an artist, and his poems are among the most perfect in the English language. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... comprehend all of it then, a cause, to me, of considerable chagrin, for which I later found some consolation in the opinion of Dr. Frederick Lynch, who pronounces Darwin's epochal work "one of the two most difficult books in the English language." But like many others, I understood enough of Darwin's book to catch glimpses of the grandeur of the conception which underlies its argumentation. It was then that my beloved uncle, out of that wide and accurate ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the man in black, 'principally because, being of British extraction and education, I could speak the English language and bear a glass of something strong. It is the opinion of my See that it would hardly do to send a missionary into a country like this who is not well versed in English—a country where, they think, so far from understanding any language besides his own, scarcely one individual in ten speaks ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "The English language," he said, "is full of distracting homonyms. I am not asking her for a sermon, but to be directed where a certain gentleman resides—at present, I have reason to believe, abroad—where, for instance, a ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... appear in open court and swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States, and renounce all allegiance to any foreign power. Two witnesses must testify to his term of residence, and declare that he is a man of good moral character. The applicant must be able to speak the English language. His wife, and those of his children who are under twenty-one years of age, become citizens at the same time. In certain cases Congress has, by a single act, admitted large numbers of aliens to American citizenship, as it did at the time ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... Belchior was more than a martinet. He was known as "Bucko" Belchior in every port where the English language is spoken, having earned this prefix by the earnest readiness with which, in his days as second and chief mate, he would whirl belaying-pins, heavers, and handspikes about the decks, and by his success in knocking down, tricing up, and working up sailors ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... A Frenchman's Struggle in the English Language. Instructive as a handbook of French conversation. By Professor ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... those Indian words, like bundobust, for which there is no equivalent in the English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a good word of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the fact that it once had royal patronage is nothing in comparison to the other fact that it was the headquarters of the Pickwickians on a certain memorable occasion. That is the attraction to it; that is the immutable thing that makes its name a household word wherever the English language is spoken. Indeed, that was the one notable event in its history which filled the proprietor with pride, and in his wisdom, in order to lure visitors into its comfortable interior, he could find no more magnetic announcement for the signboard on each side of the entrance ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... best book on Socialism by any American, if not the best book on Socialism in the English language."—Boston Herald. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... as the diffusion of the English language throughout India has been attempted, it seems rather extraordinary that the efforts of the committee should not have been directed to the same result in Malta, and that the progress of education should not have been conducted in the language that promised to prove the most useful ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... The English language is a language of small words. It is, says Swift, "overstocked with monosyllables." It cuts down all its words to the shortest possible dimensions: a sort of half-Procrustes, which lops but never stretches. In one of the most magnificent ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... expression and to insinuate a false doctrine. The English word priest is derived, not as some say, from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros] through the French pretre, but from the Greek [Greek: proestos], in Latin praestes, and in Saxon preost. See Webster's "Dictionary of the English Language." ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... though the hearth was the holy place, the altar of the castle and of the family. There was room in its wide expanse for the gathering of a household about the fire; its embrace was the embrace of love; and it was the type and model of those venerable and hallowed places which have given to the English language a word holier even than "Home," ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... immigrants, the second and the third and fourth generations, are now thoroughly absorbed into every phase of American life. Their national idiosyncrasies have been modified and subdued by the gentle but relentless persistence of the English language and the robust vigor of American law ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... bringing with them various habits, and establishing, each for itself, institutions entirely different from the institutions which they left, and in many cases from each other. But they were all of English origin. The English language was theirs, Shakepeare and Milton were theirs, the common law of England was theirs, and the Christian religion was theirs; and these things held them together by the force of a common character. The aggressions of the parent state compelled them to assert ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... principle. I used to tell him that I found something truly grand in the original motive for saying thee and thou; but it seemed to me that it had degenerated into a mere hereditary habit, since the custom of applying you exclusively to superiors had vanished from the English language. He admitted the force of this argument; but he deprecated a departure from their old forms, because he considered it useful, especially to the young, to carry the cross of being marked and set apart from the world. But ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... be vested in the hands of catholic archbishops and bishops Education, value of, to a young clergyman university Election, Elisha and Hazael Employments, battle for Empson and Dudley English language, value of its study "Englishman, The" Epicurus Epiphonema Episcopacy Erasmus Establishment, enquiry into its nature Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli Evans, Dr., Bishop of Meath Executive Power, the care it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... English language, Stilly. You were right in the first place. I am not thin-skinned. You were saying after ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... as Many Drunks, with intense gravity, proudly conferred upon himself the most objectionable title that exists in four words of the English language—rounding that same off ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... a good place to express a regret that the English language is such a crude affair that we use the same word to express a man's regard for roast-beef, his dog, child, wife and Deity. There are those who speedily cry, "Hold!" when one attempts to improve on the language, but I now give notice that on the first rainy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the cuisine was very bad in England, but I thought this dinner perfect. I had been told that the English were cold and sedate: I found them charming and full of humour. Every one spoke French very well, and I was ashamed of my ignorance of the English language. After dinner there were recitations and music. I was touched by the gracefulness and tact of my hosts in not asking ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the word 'all,' which has been before commented upon ( 119), is a great assistance in the English language to the pair of fallacies just ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... brought down to date the original edition, embodying the discoveries made during the progress of the work. The book will be found to be an epitome of all that is known on the subject of which it treats, and covers ground not at present occupied by any other work in the English language. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... of The Brick Moon was begun in my dear brother Nathan's working-room in Union College, Schenectady, in the year 1870, when he was professor of the English language there. The account of the first plan of the moon is a sketch, as accurate as was needed, of the old chat and dreams, plans and jokes, of our college days, before he left Cambridge in 1838. As I learned almost everything I know through his care and love and help, directly or indirectly, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... and strange, has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of heart, however, cannot have been missed by anybody with eyes to see. And she crowns all by speaking the English language with a beauty that ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... "It will be a great day when the Go Ahead boys learn how to use the English language. You don't mean 'in' the canal, you ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... the child is not sufficiently familiar with the English language to be properly instructed in the full-time ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... simply a letter of introduction from Captain Passford, intended to assure him of the identity of the French detective. Mr. Gilfleur evidently prided himself on his knowledge of the English language, for he certainly spoke it fluently and correctly, though with a little of the ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... on which young Nick Ribsam started for the country school, a half mile away, was one which he can never forget. He was six years old, and had picked up enough of the English language to make himself understood, though his accent was of that nature that it was sure to excite ridicule on the part ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... approaching in one direction, Sir W. Johnston in another, and he (Wolfe) was at their very doors. Succour from France was unobtainable. To the peasantry he, therefore, offered the sweets of peace, amid the horrors of war. The French colonists, however, were ignorant of the English language as of English customs. They saw no sign of fine feeling towards themselves in so large a fleet and so considerable an army. Every obstacle that could be placed in the way of an invading force, the French colonists patriotically placed in the way of General Wolfe. They readily formed themselves ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... two words in the English language which are now used to express the two great divisions of mental production—Science and Literature; and yet, from their etymology, they have so much in common, that it has been necessary to attach to each a technical meaning, in order that we ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... an hour afterwards with the skin of another fish in his hand, prepared by himself, and so well done, too, that it was added to the collection. He went with us to Singapore, Java, and Sydney, and, from his great good-humour, became a favourite with all on board—picking up the English language with facility, and readily conforming himself to our customs and the discipline of the ship. He was very cleanly in his personal habits, and paid much attention to his dress, which was always kept neat and tidy. I was often much amused and surprised by the oddity and justness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... ballot on which a number of measures are printed, almost always in abbreviated form, and, if he says anything at all, he says Yes or No. The most brilliant amendment in the world may occur to him. He votes Yes or No on that bill and no other. You have to commit violence against the English language to call that legislation. I do not argue, of course, that there are no benefits, whatever you call the process. I think that for certain kinds of issues there are distinct benefits. But the necessary simplicity of any mass decision is a very ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... in a mob cap and black gown, was introduced as a certain Sister Margaret who had taught in St Peter's School, Boston. She came to speak to a former pupil, who gave her spiritualistic experiences in such remarkably bad grammar as reflected small credit on Sister Margaret's teaching of the English language. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... the subject of our argument: a tamer genius than the illustrious Byron would not have dared to 'crunch' the bone. But where, in the whole compass of the English language, will you find a word capable of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... dear Mrs. Boldero," said he, "I am second only to you in my admiration and grief, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep your husband's memory green. But it is green, thank goodness. How do I know? By two signs. One that people wherever the English language is spoken are eagerly reading his books—I say reading, because you deprecate the purely commercial side of things; but you must forgive me if I say that the only proof of all their reading is the record of all their buying. And when people buy and read an author ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... written—such as anagrams, acrostics, word-squares, and charades. In this class we also find palindromes, or words and sentences that read backwards and forwards alike. These must be very ancient indeed, if it be true that Adam introduced himself to Eve (in the English language, be it noted) with the palindromic words, "Madam, I'm Adam," to which his consort replied ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... representing the recent critical research, this very important work of reference, which had been in previous editions so timid, was now arrayed on the side of the newer thought, insuring its due consideration wherever the English language is spoken. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... comrade of my Antwerp days would evolve a long and uninterrupted series of masterpieces, resuscitating the Past and presenting it with the erudition of the Student and the genius of the Artist. Nor did anything foreshadow that my genial Dutch friend, to whom the English language was a dead letter, was destined in a not too distant Future to become a shining light ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... as she could, for the discharge of my difficult duties. Unfortunately, we had no books, so my mother was compelled to rely entirely upon her own knowledge and experience in the matter of my education and training; but she not only taught me the English language, but also how to read and write it, spending many hours in printing with her own hand long passages containing maxims for my guidance, simply that I might have the means of learning to read English books, should ever any ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of Mr. Wake's claim, "The Real History of the Rosicrucians" still remains to be written, at any rate in the English language. The book he has published under this name is merely a superficial study of the question largely composed of reprints of Rosicrucian pamphlets accessible to any student. Mr. Wigston and Mrs. Pott merely echo Mr. Waite. Thus everything that has been published hitherto consists ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. By Joseph E. Worcester. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Spencer, and myself were observing the difficulty there was in acquiring a correct pronunciation of the English language, when Lady Spencer remarked that it only required ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... question "What is the number of words a good hand speaker can make or say in one minute?" A deaf mute says, "Take the average number of letters per word of the English language as five; this is the number decided upon by the Postal Telegraph department. The average of the Bible is ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... Bay the chaplain of the Golden Hind held the first religious service in the English language on the American continent—a service that is commemorated by a Celtic cross set up on a hill in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Though close by, Drake did not find the Bay and site ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... mother watched over his childhood. At the village school he learned the rudiments of the English language. In after life he often playfully boasted that the dame who taught him to spell flattered him into learning his letters by telling him he would prove a scholar. The notes and habits of the birds and wild animals of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Lord Bolingbroke's metaphysical works, which is said to be equally ingenious and orthodox: but in the meantime, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance for having blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord's Day. The Scotchman gives lectures on the pronunciation of the English language, which he is ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... detailed on service for which they are wholly unfit, figures that illustrate nothing but their own absurdity, and rhymes that any common book would die of, astonish the reader on every page. Had the poet purposely aimed to twist the English language into every conceivable form of awkwardness; had he designed to illustrate, for the use of beginners, every possible defect and every positive fault of diction; his success in accomplishing the object could not have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... permitted to enter the Promised Land with those he had led out of Bondage; he beheld it from afar off, and slept with his fathers." "The deceased," he impressively added, "needs no perishable monuments of brass or marble to perpetuate his name. So long as the English language shall be spoken or deciphered, so long as Liberty shall have a worshipper, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... my wife, Grace Carey, will collect from my library whatever books in the English language she wishes for, and keep them for ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... like other places of its size;—only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... history I shall gently lead them to a serious contemplation of the word itself. Once in use, I'll have it put in a revised edition of the dictionary. It's high time there were a few new words introduced into the English language. I can make up beautiful ones and not half try. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... word in the English language more stirring, more intimate, or more beloved. It has in it all the elan of the old French phrase, En avant! It carries all of the old Saxon command, Forward!! It means all that America ever meant. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... livery stable—a sort of monopolistic cab stand, where a few ponies and carriages were to be found—but no one understood or did anything as long as possible, except to say that all the rigs were engaged now and always. However, a little violent English language, mixed with Spanish, would arouse emotion and excite commotion eventuating in a pony in harness, and a gig or carriage, and a desperate driver, expert with a villainous whip used without occasion ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... where, after spending some time in sight-seeing, he was placed in the school of Mr. Lancaster at Wimbledon. Here he remained for three months, from July to September, laying the foundation of his knowledge of the English language, while his parents proceeded to Scotland. English formality, and what he conceived to be English hypocrisy, did not contrast favourably with his earlier and gayer experiences in France, and made an extremely unfavourable ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Governor-General should promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this composition it is unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's observation that in it 'the words "justice and necessity" were applied in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English language,' and Sir Henry Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the views and conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood which a Russian statesman might ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... WHAT DR. STOCKHAM says: "If women had common sense, instead of fashion sense, the corset would not exist. There are not words in the English language to express my convictions upon this subject. The corset more than any other one thing is responsible for woman's being the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... There are several amusing errors relating to the position of English authors, to some of which we cannot help alluding, as they seem to have escaped the vigilant eye of the editor. Speaking of Guizot and Sismondi as the leaders of the school of French philosophical historians, he remarks that "the English language possesses some good specimens of this class of history; the most remarkable are Gibbon's Decline and Fall and the works of Mr. Millar." This is as if the author had said that England possessed some good specimens of the Romantic ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... a bark dish. I grew up to be a young man, and married me a wife, and I had no kettle or gun. I then knew where my father lived, and went to see him, and found he was a white man, and spoke the English language. He gave me victuals, while I was at his house, but when I started to return home, he gave me no provision to eat on the way. He gave me neither ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... how one figures the reader of Meredith's later verse. It is not merely that Meredith's meaning is not obvious at a glance, it is, when obscure, ugly in its obscurity, not beautiful. There is not an uglier line in the English language than: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and, save Edward Walsh, the most Gaelic of Irish poets in the English language. Ferguson took a leading part in the Protestant Repeal Association in 1848 and afterwards became one of the first of Irish archaeologists. In 1878 ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... made great progress in the English language: many of them could speak it very tolerably. Tameamea understood, but did not speak it. If any of my readers should wish for a farther acquaintance with the character of this distinguished sovereign, I must refer them to Vancouver, and to my former voyage; but for the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... which indeed was great. For while he was still fond of all kinds of sporting, it was not in his former crude way; he had even become something of a connoisseur of pictures and was cultivating a respect for the purity of the English language that made him wince at Susan's and Brent's slang. But when he spoke thus frankly and feelingly of the change in him, Susan looked at him—and, not having seen him in two weeks and three days, she really saw him for the first time in many a month. She could not think of the internal change he spoke ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... seemed to some of their descendants in the nineteenth century, that an English grammar-school or an English university should trouble itself about such aboriginal products of the English skull, as English language and literature. But by the end of the sixteenth century, as by the end of the nineteenth, there was a moving of the waters: the Renascence of ancient learning had itself brought into English use thousands of learned words, from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and other ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... capricious, altering their fashions every year, both the men and the women. When they go away from home, riding or travelling, they always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other nations. The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation. They do not speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "With this power," he says, "Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree surpassing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded him and inferior to none that has since written English verse [sic]. He first showed"—and here we see Scott's eighteenth-century affinities—"that the English language was capable ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... a most fascinating story from beginning to end. It is a true picture of what daring healthful British men and boys can do, written by an author whose name is a household word wherever the English language is spoken. All is described with a master's hand, and the plot is just ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... men worked together, the harmony between them remained unbroken, untroubled by even the most passing cloud. Near the close of this time, in recognition of his distinction as a scholar and of his great services to the University, a separate post, as Professor of the English Language, was created for him. ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... found that the short vowels predominate in the English language. The long vowel sounds come next in frequency. When the child has mastered the letters and combinations representing these two sounds, he is able to recognize a large majority of the phonetic words ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... in thought, and still more in style, as passionately as any man ever has eschewed it, and, having not merely will and delicacy, but power, he not only achieved an immense temporary popularity, but even influenced the English language permanently. Yet—and those who thus praise him know it—he, the apostle of ornate prose, the model of a whole generation of the greatest wits that England has seen, the master of Shakespeare in more things than one, including romantic comedy, the originator of the English analytic novel, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... History, was translated into the English language and published in 1724-25[**Modern presentation.] by M. de la Roche. He concludes his Preface to it by observing, that "No good man can read the work without abhorring arbitrary power, and all manner of persecution." The persecution of the Scottish Non-conformists by the Episcopalians, and ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... account of what is going on in his own country and he will tell you everything about it with great good humour and in excellent language. He has certainly hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... which they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Chinaman the boys had planned to use such uncomplimentary language in his presence as would be likely to excite his anger, if he understood what was being said. They did not believe he was as ignorant of the English language as ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to it, and so the word "boycotting" was coined, after the man who first suffered from the system, and in the new editions of the dictionaries "boycott" and "boycotting" appear as regular words of the English language. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... would be glad to get a hearing from you as soon as it would be convenient for you to reply. There are also many of my friends that would be glad to get a situation. I am willing to do most eny kind of earnest work. I am 36 years of age and can read and wright the english language. and have good experance in busness. Any communication whitch you may be pleased to make addressed as above will ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Shakespeare much more just, than that of the Grecians for AEschylus. In the age of that poet, the Greek tongue was arrived to its full perfection; they had then amongst them an exact standard of writing and of speaking: the English language is not capable of such a certainty; and we are at present so far from it, that we are wanting in the very foundation of it, a perfect grammar. Yet it must be allowed to the present age, that the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... bison's head, there, and is bound to catch him! That is the way Robert Browning catches you. The first sixty or seventy pages of The Ring and the Book are altogether the most doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music, in the English language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi, that of Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, me judice. Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... just like Barty to begin a lyric that will probably last as long as the English language with an innocent jingle worthy of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... but my friends I throw my prejudices to the winds and confess, to wit: That I, with the buckler of Will, wooed Oblivion on September the sixth at exactly 5 P.M., having been up at my desk mauling and drubbing the English language with a vengeance for thirty-six consecutive hours, and that I awoke at 12.30 A.M. that selfsame night with the entire contents of the accompanying——? (have as yet not decided in what category the critics will consign this weird hypotyposis of the Supernal) jingling through my tired brain. ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque |
