The British...used to regard foreigners as either a comic turn or a sexual menace. To learn a European language...was, at best, to seek to acquire a sort of girls'-finishing-school ornament, at worst, to capitulate feebly to the enemy. (Anthony Burgess)

The British...used to regard foreigners as either a comic turn or a sexual menace. To learn a European language...was, at best, to seek to acquire a sort of girls'-finishing-school ornament, at worst, to capitulate feebly to the enemy.

Anthony Burgess

Related topics

best british capitulate comic enemy european language learn menace ornament regard seek sexual sort turn worst

Related quotes

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought.... life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

Clarice Lispector

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

George Orwell

Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.

Erwin Rommel

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Gore Vidal

I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

Marilyn Monroe