"English language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... the English language by Charles I. during his confinement in the Isle of Wight, and printed at ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... English alphabet only as it is English; and even in this narrow disquisition I follow the example of former grammarians, perhaps with more reverence than judgment, because by writing in English I suppose my reader already acquainted with the English language, and consequently able to pronounce the letters of which I teach the pronunciation; and because of sounds in general it may be observed, that words are unable to describe them. An account, therefore, of the primitive ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... always intended to pass lightly over my travels in the western and better known portions of the Archipelago, in order to devote more space to the remoter districts, about which hardly anything has been written in the English language. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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
... 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 ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... that anybody reads any author for the visual beauty of the words on the page. (3) The sound of the words, either actually uttered or imagined by the brain to be uttered. Now it is indubitable that words differ in beauty of sound. To my mind one of the most beautiful words in the English language is "pavement." Enunciate it, study its sound, and see what you think. It is also indubitable that certain combinations of words have a more beautiful sound than certain other combinations. Thus Tennyson held that the most beautiful line he ever ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... reply is a letter to a mother who has given her all—her sons on the field of battle—and an address at Gettysburg, both of which will live as long as the tongue in which they were written. These are tributes not only to his mastery of the English language but also to his mastery of all those sentiments of sweetness and strength which are the finest flowers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure," looking towards the Miss Bertrams; "and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of his clergy to keep a record from year to year of things which happened in his kingdom. This record was called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and was the first history written in the English language. It was carefully kept for many years after Alfred's death. Another wise thing Alfred did was to collect the laws or "dooms" of the earlier kings, so that every one might know what ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... those of the mother countries themselves. The fall of Quebec decided that the Anglo-Saxon race should predominate in the New World; that Britain, and not France, should take the lead among the nations of Europe; and that English and American commerce, the English language, and English literature, should spread ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... diligence and diversification of employment, he in time collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printing-office, and began the Gentleman's Magazine, a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken. To this undertaking he owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the fortune which he left behind him, which, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it, by innumerable projects, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... My comrade, who was exercising himself in the English language, went again to hear the English ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... venerated him so profoundly, every true heart in the stricken South will feel that the country has lost its pride and glory, and that the citizens of that country have lost a father. I dare not venture to speak of him as I feel. Nor do we come to eulogize him. Not only wherever the English language is spoken, but wherever civilization extends, the sorrow—a part at least of the sorrow—we feel will be felt, and more eloquent tongues than mine will tell the fame and recount the virtues of Robert E. Lee. We need not come to praise ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... arouse bitter resentment. Mrs. Dahlgren's ablest work, however, was the life of her husband, which was published in 1882 in a volume of over six hundred and fifty pages. She had a fine command of the English language and excellent literary discrimination in the use of its words, as appears everywhere in her writings and especially in the following tribute to her husband in the preface ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... sides with his characters. He never does this to the point of lying about them. But he is in his own still way passionately on the side of the finer types. In The Turn of the Screw, which seems to me to be the greatest ghost-story in the English language, he has dramatized the duel between good and evil; and the effect of it, at the end of all its horrors, is that of a hymn in praise of courage. One feels—though a more perverse theory of the story has been put forward—that the governess, who fights against the evil in the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... 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 at sailor's duty until the first sea ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... when called on to act, he seemed to fancy he must have lost time, and could only make up for it by plunging. This habit got him into many awkward scrapes, but his herculean power as often got him out of them. He was a French-Canadian, and a particularly bad speaker of the English language. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... we will now consider the special needs for writing, as a gentleman writes, or a lady, in the English language, which is, fortunately for us, the best language of ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... of the book which follows, the rhymed prose of the original Hebrew is reproduced only in one case. This form of poetry is unsuited to the English language. What may have a strikingly pleasing effect in Oriental speech, becomes, in English, indistinguishable from doggerel. I have not translated at full length, but I have endeavored to render Zabara accurately, without introducing ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... him to be the dead man risen from the grave; he received the name of the deceased, was adopted by his relations, and lived with the tribe for thirty-two years without ever conversing with a white man; when at last he met one, he had forgotten the English language.[167] Again, a Mr. Naseby, who lived in the Kamilaroi country for fifty years, happened to have the marks of cupping on his back, and the natives could not be persuaded that he was not one of themselves come to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... boys, after answering many foolish questions, laid plans to look over the wonderful city. It was necessary to station a strong guard about the machine, for the natives—many of whom spoke the English language fairly well—were overly ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Spencer, and myself were observing the difficulty there was in acquiring a correct pronunciation of the English language, when Lady Spencer remarked that it ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... paper was of foreign manufacture. The handwriting presented a strongly marked character; and the composition plainly revealed the mistakes of a person imperfectly acquainted with the English language. The contents of the letter, after alluding to the means supplied for the support of the child, announced that the writer had committed the folly of inclosing a sum of a hundred pounds in a banknote, "to pay expenses." ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the laws of inheritance. The precepts which were primarily addressed to the man, as the very form of the Greek words demonstrate, were tacitly transferred to the woman. When, in a standard dictionary of the English language, I look out the word "virtue," which etymologically means "manliness"—the manliness which would scorn to gratify its own selfish passions at the cost of the young, the poor, and the weak, at the cost of a woman—I find one of its meanings defined, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... born in Thuringia, not far from the Baths of Liebenstein. His father was a German, but his mother was of English descent, and he had visited England with her in his youth, and so spoke the English language naturally and perfectly. He had become an advocate of the plans of Pestalozzi, the father of common-school education, in his early life. One of the most intimate friends of his youth was Froebel, afterward the founder of the kindergarten ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... has got a good opinion of himself. He told me he considered both books among the finest in the English language." ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... for the spectator to supply by his own imaginative powers. "Suggestion" is the key-note to both the above arts; and in both, "Impressionism" has been also at the command of the gifted, centuries before the term had passed into the English language. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... 'discoveries.' The book was admired by Mackintosh,[155] who, of course, did not accept the principles, and had a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865), who wrote in its defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its authority in his elaborate dictionary of the English language.[156] But its chief interest for us is that it was a great authority with James Mill. Mill accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common between the two writers, though Mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere, especially ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... General. Archdeacon William Coxe's History of the House of Austria, 1218-1792 (3 vols., London, 1817), with its continuation by W. Kelly (London, 1853; new edition, 1873), remains the only general history of Austria in the English language. It has, of course, long been superseded as a result of the research indicated above. The amount of work that has been devoted to this subject since Coxe's time will be seen from the following list of books, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... censure it as announcing a policy of confiscation. In fact, in endeavouring to defend it, hon. Members insist that it does not mean something which it says it does mean, and which if any of us understand the English language it assuredly does mean. The right hon. Gentleman asks us to do that which I think is an absolute impossibility. He wants us to condemn the censure, and wishes at the same time—and I give him credit for this—that we should pronounce no ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... do people say that silver is the only perfect spondee in the English language? Salver is a perfectly good spondee; so is North-Cape; so is great-coat; so is High-Mass; so is Wenchthorpe; so is forewarp, which is the rope you throw out from the stem to the little man in the boat who comes to moor you along the west gully in the Ramsgate Harbour; so is Longnose, the name of ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... in England, and which year by year had been making its strength more and more felt. But it was a class which no one had thought of writing about in plain fashion. And it is in the Canterbury Tales that we have, for the first time in the English language, pictures of real men, and what is more wonderful, of real women. They are not giants or dwarfs, they are not fairy princes or knights in shining armor. They do no wondrous deeds of strength or skill. They are not queens of marvelous beauty or enchanted princesses. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... must be congratulated on having written the only good book on Portuguese general history in the English language.' ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... assumed that these constituted the cipher; and, seeking for my key-letter, e (that which most frequently occurs in the English language), I found the sign of a full-stop to appear more frequently than any other in the first message, namely ten times, although it only occurred thrice in the second. Nevertheless, I was hopeful ... until I discovered that in two cases it ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... that important treatises on criminology in foreign languages be made readily accessible in the English language, Resolved, that the president appoint a committee of five with power to select such treatises as in their judgment should be translated, and to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... childhood left but little impression on my mind. I have, however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Selected and arranged, with ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... dislike is twofold; one, because we are accounted too severe and precise, which is very displeasing to those who fear reproof; the other is, because formerly, though without our knowledge, during the lifetime of Queen MARY, two books were published here in the English language, one by Master KNOX against the Government of Women, the other by Master GOODMAN on the Rights ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... admirably adapted to 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, be found to speak for themselves. One of the most salient is the case of the short vowel ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... at Ducie Street, where the latter was staying. Their interview was short and absurd. They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood. Charles saw in Helen the family foe. He had singled her out as the most dangerous of the Schlegels, and, angry as he was, looked forward to telling his wife how right he had been. His mind was made up at once: the girl must ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... by attacking me on the English language. He said it was utterly absurd and illogical, and though he ought to know it, as he had an English wife, he felt he never ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... aid us in understanding the real nature of the syllabary. Let us take for consideration the consonantal sound represented by the letter b. A moment's consideration will make it clear that this sound enters into a large number of syllables. There are, for example, at least twenty vowel sounds in the English language, not to speak of certain digraphs; that is to say, each of the important vowels has from two to six sounds. Each of these vowel sounds may enter into combination with the b sound alone to form three syllables; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... flag unconditionally before a single shot was fired; and Bernard and I, hard hit at all points, surrendered at discretion. She was the most charming little girl the human mind can conceive. Our cold English language fails, in its roughness, to describe her. She was petite, mignonne, graceful, fairy-like, yet with a touch of Yankee quaintness and a delicious espieglerie that made her absolutely unique in my experience ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... pointed out that six three-volume novels in three years (the term of her literary activity, at the time of which I write) could hardly be called "a small way," she would smile modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were told that the English language embraced no such word as "authoress," she would smile again and say that it ought to; a position toward the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess, I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked from ten to one every day while ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... contrary, that when he set to work at a fresh language he tried to put out of his head all others. I asked him of all modern languages which he preferred, and which he considered the richest in literature. He said, 'Without doubt the Italian.' He then discussed the genius of the English language, and the merits of our poets and historians, read, and made me read, a passage of an English book, and then examined the etymology and pronunciation of several words. He has never been out of Italy, or further in it than Leghorn, talks of going to Rome, but says it is so difficult to leave his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... pompous pedant who is so commonly supposed to be the writer of Johnson's books? The English language has not often been more beautifully handled. It is true that, until one looks closely, the last words of the first sentence appear to be a piece of empty verbiage; but taken as a {199} whole the passage moves with a grave music fitted to its sober truth. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... of the rank and file is a speaking and reading knowledge of the English language, so that the workers can be taught to avoid and prevent accidents, and give themselves the necessary care when they occur. Instruction in English with possibly courses in accident prevention and personal hygiene represent about the only ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... three years in England, years which exercised a deep influence on his life. He learned the English language exceptionally well, and practiced writing it in prose and verse. He associated on terms of intimacy with Lord Bolingbroke, whom he had already known in France, with Swift, Pope, and Gay. He drew an epigram from Young. He brought out a new and amended ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... silk Union Jack, made by Lady Roberts, was run up to the truck amid a great sound of cheering. The singing of the National Anthem ended the ceremony. The town seemed altogether English—English shops, English manners, the English language, and English faces. All that day enthusiasm bubbled in the town like water boiling in a pot; all day the troops continued to march in; shabby and dusty and dirty and tired, they were nevertheless all stamped with some nameless quality which they had not when they left England. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... word in the English language to express the meaning of the ejaculative sound he made, which signified, equally, acquiescence, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... jealousy of their neighbours, and have been attacked by their confederate strength. But in 1793 the peace of Europe was assailed by an enemy still more dangerous and energetic—still more destructive—we doubt whether in the English language a more vivid description is to be found of the evil, its progress, and its termination, than Dr Arnold has given in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... of something at all events; for out of all despair sprang a new time of hope lighted by the torch of the French Revolution: and things that have languished with the languishing of art, rose afresh and surely heralded its new birth: in good earnest poetry was born again, and the English Language, which under the hands of sycophantic verse- makers had been reduced to a miserable jargon, whose meaning, if it have a meaning, cannot be made out without translation, flowed clear, pure, and simple, along with the music of ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... which, let us Englishmen say and think what we may of them at this present moment, has made itself one of the five great nations of the earth, and has enabled us to boast that the two out of the five who enjoy the greatest liberty and the widest prosperity speak the English language and are known by English names. For all that has come and is like to come, I say again, long may that honor remain. I could not but feel that that road from Boston to Concord deserves a name in the world's history greater, perhaps, than has yet been given ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... stream. "He doesn't know the foundation of the English language, English morals—I said morals, George—the spiritual food of his fathers. Do you ever go ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Williams has quoted Chesterton's Alfred as a stirring expression of the significance of the spiritual conquest of England by Christianity. In the same book she shows how superficial is the view which believes that the English language was a creation of the Norman Conquest. The struggle, she says "between the English and French tongues lasted for some three hundred years, until the two finally blended into a unified language, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... passed from the room. A study-hour in the big assembly room followed for Dick & Co. Yet, had anyone watched Dan Dalzell, it would have been found that young man was in the reference room, and reading, or thumbing—-of all volumes in the English language—-the city directory! ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... like to peruse the letter itself in the words in which it was written. It is a very good specimen of the form in which the English language was written in those days, though it seems very quaint and old-fashioned now. It ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... English and Norman was dying out, and though the upper classes, for the most part, still spoke French, intermarriages had been so frequent that there were few amongst them who had not some English ancestress and who did not understand the English language. Henry was even strong enough to regain much that he had surrendered when he abandoned the Constitutions of Clarendon. In his Continental possessions there was no such unity. The inhabitants of each province were tenacious of their own laws and customs, and this ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing, geography, grammar, and "casting accounts." He was neither studious nor teachable. As a boy he preferred sport to study, and as a man he chose to rely on his own fertile ideas rather than to accept guidance from others. He never learned to write the English language correctly, although he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. In an age of bad spellers he achieved distinction from the number of ways in which he could spell a word within the space of a single page. He could use no foreign languages; and of the great ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... 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 Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands • Trustees of the Punahou School and Oahu College
... that I never learned to write; a glance at the first folios of the plays attributed to me will likewise show that I never learned to spell; and yet I walked into London with one of the most exquisite poems in the English language in my pocket. I am still filled with merriment over it. How was it, the critics of the years since have asked—how was it that this untutored little savage from leafy Warwickshire, with no training and little education, came into London with "Venus ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... first used in the English language by Dryden in 1667, and the first descriptive ballet seen in London was The Tavern Bilkers, which was played at Drury Lane in 1702. Since then the ballet in England has been purely exotic and has merely followed on the lines of French developments. The palmy days of the ballet in England were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... way to read between the lines, to come to some other understanding of the baffling situation. Evidently the old man had given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... scholar, was born on the 28th of October 1829, at Neisse in Prussian Silesia, of Jewish extraction. On reaching his sixteenth year he began his studies at the university of Berlin, paying special attention to theology and the Talmud. He also mastered the English language and studied English literature. In 1855 Deutsch was appointed assistant in the library of the British Museum. He worked intensely on the Talmud and contributed no less than 190 papers to Chambers's Encyclopaedia, in addition ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... few years ago their "club" was a common brothel, too horrible to describe in the English language. As soon as a girl gave birth to her first child she came down on the father to keep her. In many cases, it is only fair to say, they lived together faithfully as man and wife, although such cases were not by any means in the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... it. There is a general impression that an American can do anything that he sets his hand to, but it is not true; it is true only that he tries everything. The reporter is born, as the poet is; it cannot be acquired—that astonishing, irresponsible command of the English language; that warm, lyrical tone; that color, and bewildering metaphorical brilliancy; that picturesqueness; that use of words as the painter uses pigments, in splashes and blotches which are so effective; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... true there was a new stir in the atmosphere of old Detroit. For General Wayne with the prescience of an able and far-sighted patriot had said, "To make good citizens they must learn the English language and there must be schools. Education will be the corner stone of this ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hundred thousands. The prize-fighter, with his interesting personal infirmity, is the common property of the millions, and would have headed the list in celebrity, but for that other of the name who added a new invention to the arts of industry and enriched the English language with a term which bids fair to outlive the reputation of his illustrious namesake. Around the professors and heroes of the art of personal violence are collected the practitioners of various callings less dignified by the manly qualities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... sturdy, thick-set man, fairly fluent in the English language, and of a cheery disposition, Dr. Ascher was a true and illuminating representative of his profession. His mission being frankly one of mercy he emphatically refused to acknowledge the frontiers of races and tongues, poverty and wealth, education and ignorance. He was sympathetic ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... not in the same manner. Layamon's "Brut" is translated (though not without original episodes) from the French of Robert Wace: and the "Ormulum," though drawn as to its matter from Latin comments on the Gospels, yet is in form deeply imbued with the character of French poetry. Indeed, the English language became more and more a vehicle for the reproduction of French literature. This continued to the middle of the fourteenth century, when the plague, which altered so many things, altered also this. The supremacy ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... involve arrest in order to choke the local jail and the courts. The state authorities investigating the situation reported that "all of those on strike were foreigners and few, if any, could speak or understand the English language, complete control of the strike being in the hands of ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... which, if not the finest known, is at all events surpassed by none. His strong religious feelings, and his sincere attachment to the Established Church, as well as his mastery and knowledge of the English Language, concurred in making him eager to possess the earliest, as well as the rarest, editions of the translations of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue. He succeeded to a great extent; but what deserves particular ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... mud camp near Reninghelst, and hearing the tune of a famous hymn, drew near to listen, for Jock sometimes sings to hymn tunes words that certainly never appeared in any hymn-book, and I wanted to make sure that it was the greatest hymn in the English language which was being sung. It was a quiet night. Now and again a heavy gun fired a round, and infrequently, on a gentle wind blowing from the trenches, was borne the rattle of a machine-gun. From all the camp arose the subdued ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... must have been almost as much of a business as my first had been, only rather less longsome. I had first to relearn the English language, which came back to me by degrees, much quicker, of course, than I had picked it up in my childhood. Then I had to begin again with reading, writing, and arithmetic—all new to me in a way, and all old in another. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... himself as editor or put into the hands of others 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
... collection of Ana in the English language—and, indeed, in any language—is to be found in a work which does not correspond to the normal type either in name or in form. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Boswell relates that to his remark, a propos of French literature, "Their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... through glasses, specially rimless and invisible, perched on the bridge of her firm, well-shaped nose, and now and then speaking to her parrot. The bird could say, "Scratch a poll, Poll," already, and "Hullo!" those keys to the English language. The maid Augustine, having completed some small duty, would often come and stand, her head on one side, gazing down with a sort of inquiring compassion in her wise, young, clear-brown eyes. It seemed to her who was straight and sturdy as a young ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and freemen. Some real mitigation of their lot no doubt there was, through teaching of religion and from other conditions. Professor Du Bois says that slavery brought the African three advantages: it taught him to labor, gave him the English language and—after a sort—the Christian religion. But it ruined such family life as had existed under a kind of regulated polygamy. Again we must decline to measure the good and the evil of the system. Probably the negro was in better condition ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... it, when we try to put our story into words—when we try to set down on paper the unspeakable horror of it—we realize what a futile, incomplete thing the English language is. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a recent treatise in the English language containing detailed descriptions of the raw materials and receipts for the preparation of Inks, and the apparent necessity, as shown by frequent inquiries, for such a volume, were the considerations which led to the preparation of The ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... out, 'tis a sign that the CRISIS is a retrograde movement! In short, without Darrell the CRISIS will be a failure, and the House of Vipont smashed—Lady Montfort—smashed! I sent a telegram (oh, that I should live to see such a word introduced into the English language!—but, as Carr says, what times these are!) to Fawley this morning, entreating Guy to come up to town at once. He answers by a line from Horace, which means, 'that he will see me shot first.' I must go down to him; only waiting to know the result of certain negotiations as to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strange to me and I doubt not that were his questioner not a simple man, Morris had been more violent. Another day the same man started by praising Chaucer, but the gout was worse and Morris cursed Chaucer for destroying the English language ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... scholars together amounted to upwards of forty; the room was well-filled, "presenting a scene that would have delighted the heart of many a friend of missions. Classes were examined in reading, spelling, geography, first lessons in arithmetic, Scripture questions, the English language, and sacred music, and the whole was closed by a brief address from Mrs. Dodge. The mothers then came forward of their own accord, and in a gratifying manner expressed their thanks to the ladies for what they had done for their daughters." Of the pupils of this school, the greater part ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... obliged if any of your readers will kindly refer me to any authority for the use of the word Cromlech, prior to the sixteenth century, whether in the Welsh or English language. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... shown much feeling at the loss which they, too, have sustained,—more than might have been expected, when it is considered that few of them are conversant with the English language, and that to those few English poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... arouse you to tension, PULL yourself together. When a man faces the necessity of leaping across a crevasse he does not wait for inspiration, he wills his muscles into tensity for the spring—it is not without purpose that our English language uses the same word to depict a mighty though delicate steel contrivance and a quick leap through the air. Then resolve—and let it all ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... wrote in English, but because the English language has already got a firm hold of all those portions of the earth's surface which are most absorbing the overflow of European populations. Germans and Scandinavians and Russians emigrate by the thousand now to all ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... remarkable group of men whom he intellectually outshone. Some of his orations are as chaste and fervent as Emmet's, as rich and varied as Curran's, as intellectual as Grattan's, as logical as Flood's, and as graceful and eloquent as Shiel's. There are few specimens of political oratory in the English language which rival some of the speeches of this young tribune. He was almost as gifted with his pen as with his tongue. His letters abound with pathos, and poetry of thought and feeling; his descriptions are graphic and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... old tried servant Pascoe, as well as Jowdie, and two natives of the Eboe country, who were likely to be of great service to the expedition, one of them being the son of a chief, and both intelligent, with a slight knowledge of the English language. The Alburkha, of which vessel some fears were entertained, was found to work admirably, exceeding the expectations of her commander and the other officers attached to the expedition. They sailed from Cape Coast ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... resemblance. Those who are curious in such matters will do well to compare the two portraits. The one was the most prolific and popular writer at the commencement of the century; the other is the most prolific and popular song-writer of the present day. Wherever the English language is heard and patriotic songs are sung, Charles Mackay will be present in his verse. He rejoices in his English songs; but Scotland claims him as ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... English language in India. Epitaphs, deal with the common people; length of Roman epitaphs; along Appian Way; sentiments expressed; show religious beliefs; gods rarely named; Mother Earth. Epitaphs, metrical, praises of women predominate; literary ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... gait of the nineteenth century. "Hurry up!" was about the most threadbare phrase in the English language, and rather than "E pluribus unum" should especially have been the motto of the American people, but it was the first time the note of haste had impressed my consciousness since I had been living twentieth-century ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the spirit of old Boney—short for Napoleon Bonaparte. He understood the talk about coons as clearly as if he could speak the English language. He was in a quiver of eager excitement. He knew from the Boy's talk that he was going, too. He wagged his tail, pushed his warm nose under his little friend's arm, whining and trembling while he tried to explain what it meant to ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... down verbally from generation to generation for hundreds of years, but they are very reluctant to speak of these legends to white people, and it is extremely difficult to get reliable information on the subject. Moreover, the Indians most familiar with them have not a sufficient knowledge of the English language to be able to express their ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... word roused Hobo, who was sleeping in the next room. Perhaps his ear was not sufficiently trained to the niceties of the English language to distinguish between this name and the other by which he had been addressed all summer. Be that as it may, in an instant he was at Peggy's elbow, looking up into her face, and ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... A Book of Travel and Research with more than two hundred illustrations and a map by A.V. Williams Jackson, Professor of Indo-Iranian Languages, and sometime adjunct Professor of the English Language and Literature in Columbia University. New York, The Macmillan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... people had gradually come to worship, were removed from the churches; the people were informed that they need not confess themselves to priests unless they chose; a common prayer-book was drawn up in the English language, which all could understand, and many other improvements were made; still moderately. For Cranmer was a very moderate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy from violently abusing the unreformed religion—as they very often did, and which was not a good ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... began Madame Obosky, standing before them, her feet wide apart, her knees bent slightly to meet the varying slants and lurches of the vessel. She spoke the English language confidently and well. Her accent, which was scarcely noticeable, betrayed the fact that she had mastered French long before attempting English. There was a piquant boldness in the occasional misplacing of words and in the haphazard construction of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... has presented itself in preparing the succeeding chapters, and that is the lack in the English language of a pronoun including both genders. The English impersonal pronoun, being masculine in form, is liable to create the impression that "he" or "his" exclusive of "she" or "her" is the subject of discourse. This ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 1912-13, 2 vols.) is the work of an Austrophil, as is also W. von Schierbrand's Austria-Hungary: The Polyglot Empire (New York, 1917); H. W. Steed's The Habsburg Monarchy (London, 1914, 2d ed.) is one of the ablest surveys in the English language. It is thoroughly worked out in the general features, but slights many of the national and provincial aspects of the Austrian question. V. Gayda's La crisi di un impero (2d ed., 1915), English ed., Modern Austria (New York, 1915) is an unusually able work by an Italian who sees clearly ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... in 1892. I did not 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 reading ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... 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 of the purchase of Louisiana, the ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... render the present edition more complete, or, at least, more interesting to Americans. Although written during the first residence of General Lafayette in America—when he was little accustomed to write in the English language—the letters in question are given exactly as they came from his pen—and as well as the others in the collection written by him in that language are distinguished from those translated from the French by having the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... no word in the English language more unceremoniously and indefinitely kicked and cuffed about, by what are called sensible people, than the word romance. When Mr. Smith or Mr. Stubbs has brought every wheel of life into such range and order that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... 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 Drama, the most remarkable being Shakspeare's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... studied in order to comprehend the spirit of ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely critics, like Drumann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure, Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of Roman literature in the English language. Yet nearly every great writer has occasional criticisms, entitled to respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals. As critics and commentators ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... gain Mona's affections I did not despair of success. I should have to take time and approach the citadel of her untutored heart with more caution. In the pleasant task of teaching her the intricacies of the English language I anticipated many delightful opportunities of leading her into the Elysian fields of romance. If she could learn to understand fully my intense feeling for her I had no doubt she would return my passion. With such a hopeful spirit does the love god ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... he had received from his benefactor and from the people generally in London, in generous requital now attached himself cordially to the Pilgrims, and became their firm friend. His residence in England had rendered him quite familiar with the English language, and he proved invaluable not only as an interpreter, but also in instructing them respecting the modes of obtaining a support ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... 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, his name ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... through, many of them did so unwillingly; and it must be remembered that they were all savages in the strictest sense of the word, entirely unacquainted with civilisation, and with no knowledge of the English language. The majority of them were natives of the Congo and of Great and Little Popo, two towns on the western frontier of Dahomey; and it may be here remarked that the negroes of these districts have maintained their reputation for ultra-barbarism even ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... beaten the French from the days of Cressy and Poictiers to the days of Waterloo, that Alfred the Great was the wisest of kings, and that Englishmen dominated the world and had planted colonies in every corner of it, that the English language was the noblest in the world and men speaking it had invented railway trains, steamships, telegraphs, and everything worth inventing. Esther absorbed these ideas from the school reading books. The experience ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... girl," he said softly, and stopped. For the crowding emotions in his heart and brain the English language ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... dwindling factor at the present day, and a new presentation of fact is occasionally to be met with in the printed page. The best "book of travel" within the knowledge of the writer, and perhaps one of the slightest in bulk ever written in the English language, is Stevenson's "Inland Voyage"—here were imagination, appreciation, and a new way of seeing things, and, above all, enthusiasm; and this is the formula upon which doubtless many a future writer will build his reputation, though ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... the city; it was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon; and they were on their way to the Park. There were four of them, all arm-in-arm, with white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms, light trousers of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English language has yet no name—a kind of cross between a great-coat and a surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... agents whom Muhlenberg called Newlanders (Neulaender). In Holland they were called "soul-traders." By means of stories of the fabulous wealth acquired in America they enticed Germans and other emigrants into the signing of papers in the English language which not only committed them and their children to slavery, but sometimes separated husband and wife, parents and children. The following is an instance of the revolting horrors connected with this trade: In 1793, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Selected and Arranged by ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... 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 ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb |
