Seven short quotes to practise with.
A quotation is a complete, natural sentence short enough to own. That is a rare shape in language practice.
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Most practice material is either too short to be natural or too long to memorise. A quotation is both at once: real word order, real vocabulary, and a sentence you can hold in your head by the end of the day.
Seven worth starting with
Language is the dress of thought. — Samuel Johnson
Know thyself. — inscribed at Delphi
It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau
Well done is better than well said. — Benjamin Franklin
To live is the rarest thing in the world. — Oscar Wilde
Lost time is never found again. — Benjamin Franklin
The loop that makes it practice
Read it, say it three times, then use one of its words in a sentence of your own the same day. Read, hear, speak, use — four passes over one short sentence is worth more than an hour of reading.
Where these come from
Each of these stands in a room in the museum next door, with what it means, where it came from, and — where the credit is uncertain — what the evidence actually says. The word list built from those lines is here on the Desk.
Frequently asked
Can quotes really improve my English? They are short enough to master completely, which is unusual. Owning one natural sentence — its vocabulary, its rhythm, its word order — is active practice; reading past twenty is not.
How many should I learn at once? One. Depth beats volume here: a single quotation fully absorbed, including the words in it, outperforms a page of them skimmed.