Charles William Eliot Quotes

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.

I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.

Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did.

It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

When I was in Mexico and started to dream in Spanish, I knew that was a good sign that I was learning the language. It was cool.

Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English.

Take some elocution lessons; you can joke with Ebonics, but the truth is, nothing beats the King's English. Learning how to speak properly, and the art of delivery can take you very far in life!

It is not easy, but young people have to learn languages.

I regret not paying a bit more attention to Welsh lessons at school. My Welsh is pretty ropey, as back at my school, people didn't take Welsh lessons seriously. My dad can speak it, so I wish he'd taught me some growing up.

I'd love to master another language properly.

Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.

[My mother tongue is] Albanian. But, I am equally fluent in Bengali (language of Calcutta) and English.

Usage is the best language teacher.

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

I told my nephew that if he wanted to get on in motor racing, the first thing he should do was master English. Thank goodness he now speaks it.

As you can see, I speak many languages, including the language of sex.

Command of English, spoken or written, ranks at the top in business. Our main product is words, so a knowledge of their meaning and spelling and pronunciation is imperative. If a man knows the language well, he can find out about all else.

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.

I couldn't possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar!

Reading is more important than writing.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

I think people are surprised when I string two sentences together. But I had a fiercely academic upbringing.

My grandmother was an English teacher for a while. And she stressed to me the importance of reading, being able to articulate well.