27 English Quotes

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

There is a peculiarity in the countenance, as everybody knows, which, though it cannot be described, is sure to betray the Englishman.

Sherry...a silly, sickly compound, the use of which will transform a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of sketchers, scribblers, and punsters, in fact into what Englishmen are at the present day.

Every Englishman believes that Handel now occupies an important position in heaven. If so, le bon Dieu must feel toward him very much as Louis Treize felt toward Richelieu.

All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was 'O.K., baby', the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it.

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.

Handel paralysed music in England for generations and they have not yet quite got over him.

Most English-speaking people ... will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful,' especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful that, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful... Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.

'Mustn't grumble' was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumble! Americans also boasted. 'I do some pretty incredible things' was not an English expression. 'I'm fairly keen' was not American. Americans were showoffs-it was part of our innocence-we often fell on our faces; the English seldom showed off, so they seldom looked like fools.

By hoke ne by croke.

Them's my sentiments.

Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.

O Ingles, sem cha, bate-se frouxamente.

English translation of 'God and the State' (1876)