England Quotes

Eight years in the Wolston academy and I knew it all came down to the next 90 minutes.

Far too many people—many of them academics, many politicians—continue to jabber about a supposed 'special relationship' between our two coun

[T]he hyphenation question is, and always has been and will be, different for English immigrants. One can be an Italian-American, a Greek-American, an Irish-American and so forth. (Jews for some reason prefer the words the other way around, as in 'American Jewish Congress' or 'American Jewish Committee.') And any of those groups can and does have a 'national day' parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. But there is no such thing as an 'English-American' let alone a 'British-American,' and one can only boggle at the idea of what, if we did exist, our national day parade on Fifth Avenue might look like. One can, though, be an Englishman in America. There is a culture, even a literature, possibly a language, and certainly a diplomatic and military relationship, that can accurately be termed 'Anglo-American.' But something in the very landscape and mapping of America, with seven eastern seaboard states named for English monarchs or aristocrats and countless hamlets and cities replicated from counties and shires across the Atlantic, that makes hyphenation redundant. Hyphenation—if one may be blunt—is for latecomers.

Christopher Hitchens

But this city is a world of its own, a country within a country. People are used to taking the old and making it news; and used, too, to taking the new and making it old. Every glass of water from its taps, it is said, has passed six times through the kidneys of another, and every scrap of its land has been trodden on, fought over, dug up and broken down for centuries.

The English nation is never so great as in adversity.

Benjamin Disraeli

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

George Bernard Shaw

If I should die think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.

Oh to be in England Now that April's there.

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

In England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce.

Marquis Caraccioli

I have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat.

Winston Churchill

Be England what she will With all her faults she is my country still.

Charles Churchill

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so -bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years men will still say "This was their finest hour."

Winston Churchill

O it's a snug little island! A right little tight little island!

We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.

Benjamin Disraeli

For he might have been a Rooshian A French or Turk or Proosian Or perhaps Italian. But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations He remains an Englishman.

What have I done for you England my England? What is there I would not do England my own?

Froth at the top dregs at bottom but the middle excellent.

Voltaire

The royal throne of kings this scepter'd isle This earth of majesty this seat of Mars This other Eden demi-paradise This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war This happy breed of men this little world This precious stone set in the silver sea.

William Shakespeare

fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.

George Bernard Shaw

When Britain first at Heaven's command Arose from out the azure main This was the charter of the land And Guardian angels sung this strain "Rule Britannia! rule the waves Britons never will be slaves."

Whatever the rest of the world thinks of the English gentleman the English lady regards him apprehensively as something between God and a goat and equally formidable on both scores.

Margaret Halsey

Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen. If you find any important figures who really like change such as Bernard Shaw Keir Hardie Lloyd George Selfridge or Disraeli you will find that they are not really English at all but Irish Scotch Welsh American or Jewish. Englishmen make changes sometimes great changes. But secretly or openly they always deplore them.

Raymond Postgate

Where there is one Englishman there is a garden. Where there are two Englishmen there will be a club. But this does not mean any falling off in the number of gardens. There will be three. The club will have one too.

What should they know of England who only England know?

Rudyard Kipling

The Lord Chief Justice of England recently said that the greater part of his judicial time was spent investigating collisions between propelled vehicles each on its own side of the road each sounding its horn and each stationary.

Philip Guedalla

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British which amazes Americans who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.

The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.

Alexander Woollcott

We are articulate but we are not particularly conversational. An Englishman won't talk for the sake of talking. He doesn't mind silence. But after the silence he sometimes says something.

The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children ... we have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment of our lives.

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It seems to me that you can go sauntering along for a certain period telling the English some interesting things about themselves and then all at once it feels as if you had stepped on the prongs of a rake.

Patrick Campbell

One matter Englishmen don't think in the least funny is their happy consciousness of possessing a deep sense of humour.

Marshall McLuhan

The English may not like music but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

That typically English characteristic for which there is no English name -esprit de corps.

The British are just as keen to make money as the Americans but they prefer hypocrisy to a blatantly commercial attitude.

Nothing unites the English like war. Nothing divides them like Picasso.

The British love permanence more than they love beauty.

The British are terribly lazy about fighting. They like to get it over and done with and then set up a game of cricket.

Stephen Leacock

A Scotch mist may wet an Englishman to the skin.

English Proverb

There will always be an England While there's a country lane Wherever there's a cottage small Beside a field of grain.

Clark Ross Parker

Without class differences England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

Anthony Burgess

You must not miss Whitehall. At one end you'll find a statue of one of our kings who was beheaded at the other the monument to the man who did it. This is just an example of our attempts to be fair to everybody.

Thomas Appleton

Though I love my country I do not love my countrymen.

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

Voltaire

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

George Bernard Shaw

In England I would rather be a man a horse a dog or a woman in that order. In America I think the order would be reversed.

England is the paradise of individuality eccentricity heresy anomalies hobbies and humours.

George Santayana

Not only England but every Englishman is an island.

Novalis

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

In the end it may well be that Britain will be more honoured by the historians for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

David Ormsby Gore

Oh it's a snug little island! A right little tight little island!

I regard England as my wife and America as my mistress.

Cedric Hardwicke

The Englishman respects your opinions but he never thinks of your feelings.

Wilfrid Laurier

The Englishman has all the qualities of a poker except its occasional warmth.

Daniel O'Connell

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

Winston Churchill

Socialism has been preached for so long the British people no longer have any sense of personal responsibility.

Lord Thomson of Fleet

Britain's best bulwarks are her wooden walls.

T. Augustine Arne

Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears prejudices misconceptions - those are the peers and they are hereditary.

David Lloyd George

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