
“I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.”
Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)
Correcting the Hansard proofs of his last speech to Parliament (31 March 1881), shortly before his death, cited in Harper's, Vol. 63 (1881). The quote is given in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 1 (1929) as "I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar".
1880s
“I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.”
Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 263
http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s
Context: I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. He is very articulate … but I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views — at least insofar as I understand where he now stands. I don't want to seem to sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. I don't know how he feels now, but I know that I have often wished that he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to solve our problem. And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.
As quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas, p. 226
Context: I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. I shall do nothing to create adversaries, but neither shall I do anything to turn enmities into friendships. I must endeavour to be a great artist so that I may dare to be myself and suffer for my faith. Those who feel as I do will only appreciate me more. The others will shun and hate me. I shall make no effort to appease them. On that distant day — I trust it is still very far off — when I shall no longer be a cause of strife, I shall feel bitter self-reproach. For that odious hypocrisy which enables one to please all mankind will inevitably have prevailed in those last works.
Magazine Government Executive http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0605/062305pb.htm (2005).
James Vinson & D. L. Kirkpatrick (eds.), Contemporary Novelists, 2nd edition, (London: St. James Press, 1976). http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4121/Bainbridge-Beryl-Margaret-Beryl-Bainbridge-comments.html
“When things go bad, don't go with them.”
Variant: When things go wrong, don't go with them.
Source: Elvis: Ultimate Gospel