Quotes Web

Quotes Web has over 100 quotes from over 100 authors and books!

This blog aims at becoming the biggest resource of quotes from fiction and non-fiction writing on the internet. We also post quotes from motion pictures.

You can use the search box to find quotes from your favourite authors and books, or use the tag cloud to browse quotes from a specific category.

Foreign language acquisition

"Foreign language acquisition is a skill, more than a body of facts, acquired with practice; therefore, sustaining motivation and promoting lengthy practice outside the classroom are key factors." (Anne Fox, UsingPodcasts in the EFL Classroom )

Quotes about Intelligence

“Can you imagine us tolerating any form of rival intelligence on earth, no matter how it got here? Why, we can’t even tolerate anything but the narrowest differences of views within our own race.”
(John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes)

“The instinct of self-protection is opposed to the very idea of an alien intelligence – and not without pretty good cause. It’s difficult to imagine any kind of intelligence, except a sheer abstraction, that wouldn’t be concerned to modify its environment for its own betterment. But it is unlikely that the idea of betterment held by two different types would be identical – so unlikely that it suggest a hypothesis that, given two intelligent species with differing requirements on one planet, it is inevitable that, sooner or later, one will exterminate the other.”
(John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes)

“The thing is that once we had developed intelligence we weren’t satisfied with the world as we found it.”
(John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes)

“Life in all its forms is strife; the better matched the opponents, the harder the struggle. The most powerful of all weapons is intelligence; and intelligent form dominates by, and therefore survives by, its intelligence: a rival form of intelligence must, by its very existence, threaten to dominate, and therefore threaten extinction. And intelligent form is in its own absolute; and there cannot be two absolutes.”
(John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes)

“Physically we are poor weak creatures compared with many animals, but we overcome them because we have better brains. The only thing that can beat us is something with a still better brain.”
(John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos)

“There is no doubt that primates are far superior in intelligence to man.”
(Michael Crichton, Congo)

“Some people think with their heads – their subsequent actions are as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who think only with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also.”
(James Stephens, The Blind Man)

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Quotes about Children

“… children always think anything old and strange is funny.”
(John Steinbeck, Cannery Row)

“Kids always have a soft spot for silly limericks.”
(Daen-aran Saengtong, Venom)

“Like children are all people.”
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

“Even bad people, even thieves and robbers have children and love them.”
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

“… children individually were great, only became unbearable en masse.”
(Rosemary Hall, Falling for Greece)

“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince)

“Kids are a pain in the ass.”
(Harold Robbins, The Piranhas)

“Even children have a sense of feminine beauty, or at least they understand instinctively whether a woman is pure or not.”
(Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi – Book One: The Way of the Samurai)

“It ruins a man’s concentration to have a crèche hanging over his head.”
(John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos)

“How easily, in the absence of children, the whole experience of life becomes abstracted, a pattern of words and daydreams.”
(Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord)

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Quotes about Childhood

“The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.”
(Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask)

“This toy increased in volume at every opportunity and hinted that, rightly used, it would be quite a delightful thing. But directions for its use were nowhere written, and so, when the toy took the initiative in wanting to play with me, my bewilderment was inevitable. Occasionally my humiliation and impatience became so aggravated that I even thought I wanted to destroy the toy. In the end, however, there was nothing for it but to surrender on my side to the insubordinate toy, with its expression of sweet secrecy, and wait passively to see what would happen.”
(Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask)

“In childish times
it’s easier;
a child believes
just what it’s told.
But children grow
and soon begin
to see too much
that doesn’t mach
the simple tales,
and not enough
of what’s behind
their parents’ words.”
(Terry Anderson, Den of Lions – Memoirs of Seven Years)

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Quotes about Language

“Language was inadequate. Young as I was, I recognized that words were merely a medium; that they externalized a tiny fraction of what we felt.”
(K.S. Maniam, The Return)

“Actually, my boy, Latin is the ideal model of the universe. Every noun, adjective, particle knows its ranking and stands proudly to attention, just as, in heaven, the cherubim, seraphim, thrones, domination, virtues, princedoms, powers, archangels and angels all stand in perfect concentric circles about the ineffable glory of God. That is why the proper language of worship is and always will be Latin. It’s the only language that doesn’t offend God’s ears.”
(P.S. Somtow, Jasmine Nights)

“But the quality of teaching a language is not determined by whether you are a native speaker or a non-native speaker, assuming sociolinguistic competence is achieved.”
(Jun Liu, Reflections on Multiliterate Lives)

“Dictionaries are the graveyards of language.”
(Simon Denith, Bakthinian Thought: an introductory reader)

“Language is a guide to ‘social reality.’”
(Edward Sapir, The Status of Linguistics as a Science)

“I wonder if any name in Chinese is not something special.”
(Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club)

“Of course two peoples and two languages will never be able to communicate with each other so intimately as two individuals who belong to the same nation and speak the same language.”
(Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi - The Glass Bead Game)

“… in France all cats are masculine by order of philology…"
(James Stephens, A Glass of Beer)

“Man would of his nature know all; but it is God who decrees what shall or shall not be known; and here must we resign ourselves to accept His great wisdom and mercy in such matters, which is that He deems it often best and kindest to us mortals that we shall not know all.”
(James Fowles, The Maggot)

“Ay, he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.”
(Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea)

“Language is… the most diagnostic single trait of man: all normal men have language; no other now living organisms do.”
(George Gaylord Simpson)

“One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that if children learn a second language, it will be at the expense of the first.”
(Lawrence Kutner, Misconceptions with Roots in the Old Days)

“Can you imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?”
(H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau)

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Quotes about Learning

“You’re never too old to learn.”
(Susan Hill, A Bit of Singing and Dancing)

“Learning a tune should be done through daily practice, just like learning to box.”
(Chinese saying)

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Quotes about Teachers & Teaching

“The teacher is the needle and the disciple is the thread.”
(Miyamoto Musashi)

“Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the ‘meaning,’ but do not imagine that it can be taught.”
(Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi – The Glass Bead Game)

“He learned that this power to influence others was part and parcel of the educator’s gift, and that it concealed dangers and imposed responsibility.”
(Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi – The Glass Bead Game)

“Teachers are more essential than anything else, men who can give the young the ability to judge and distinguish, who serve them as examples of the honoring of truth, obedience to the things of the spirit, respect and language.”
(Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi – The Glass Bead Game)

“For the teacher is not supposed to serve the pupil; rather, both are the servants of their culture.”
(Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi – The Glass Bead Game)

“You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands.”
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

“Nothing was ever achieved by scolding.”
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

“Some things cannot be taught; they must be learned.”
(Eric Van Lustbader)

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