British Quotes - Page 37

• I don't think anyone takes the deaths in Midsomer as seriously as in say Wire In The Blood or Silent Witness. We're part of the old British 'whodunnit'. We're much more gentle and the deaths are sanitised, in a sense.

  John Nettles

  Thinking, Blood, Wire

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• I think people have got to understand when a murder is committed on British soil, when innocent people have been put at risk by the method that murder is committed then we expect authorities in other parts of the world to co-operate.

  Gordon Brown

  Thinking, People, Risk

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• We British say "to put the world to rights." I've discovered that that's not the way Americans say it and people scratch their heads and say, "Funny... what does he mean by that?" It means to fix the thing, to make it all better again.

  N. T. Wright

  Mean, Rights, People

  Interview with Trevin Wax, blogs.thegospelcoalition.org. November 19, 2007.

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• If you travel to the continent you never have any problems overtaking, this is the only country I know where the outside lane is congested and the two inner lanes are empty. It drives me crazy. I'm ashamed that is so typically British.

  Martin Shaw

  Country, Crazy, Two

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Home, Thinking, Neighbor

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• They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Writing, Brass Bands, Doe

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.36, Penguin UK

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• I once found myself conspiring with a British Cabinet Minister as to how we might persuade Her Majesty's Treasury to cough up more money for the British Travel advertising in America. Said he, "Why does any American in his senses spend his vacation in the cold damp of an English summer when he could equally well bask under Italian skies? I can only suppose that your advertising is the answer." Damn right.

  David Ogilvy

  Summer, Italian, Vacation

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

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• Gandhi was only minding his own business when he took a walk to get some salt and ended up overthrowing the British Empire. You can't set out to overthrow an empire, but if you have to get some salt then get some salt.  If you have to write some independent songs that are honest, just write them.  If you have to do a day job stacking shelves, so be it.

  David Knopfler

  Song, Jobs, Writing

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• I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration.

  Michael Parkinson

  Memories, Inspiration, Brass Bands

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• Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strong, Fighting, Violence

  Speech as the official date for Indian independence approached, June 16, 1947.

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• When I'm lying drunk at an airport the press call me Irish... but when I win an Oscar, I'm classified as British.

  Brenda Fricker

  Lying, Winning, Airports

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• Maybe if I was British, a semi-final would be incredible. I'd be on the front page of the paper.

  Maria Sharapova

  Would Be, Finals, Paper

  Press conference, www.wimbledon.com. July 9, 2015.

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• Read properly, fewer books than a hundred would suffice for a liberal education. Read superficially, the British Museum Library might still leave the student a barbarian.

  Alfred Richard Orage

  Book, Museums, Library

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• You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

  John Ruskin

  Real, Book, Museums

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.297, University of Virginia Press

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• Julie Andrews has a wonderful British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.

  Moss Hart

  India, Wonder, Lost

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• Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.

  Tom Verlaine

  Creating, Style, Sake

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• The way British publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.

  Tibor Fischer

  Matter, Way, Publishing

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• A fleet of British ships at war are the best negotiators.

  Horatio Nelson

  War, Ships

  1801 Letter to Lady Hamilton, Mar, before the Battle of Copenhagen.

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• In my experience, Cupid's arrows rarely strike two people with the same definition of cleanliness. One partner usually feels like he or she is being asked to live in a furniture exhibit in the British Museum. The other partner remains convinced that he or she is forced to contend with the human version of Hurricane Gilbert.

  Margo Kaufman

  Museums, Two, Arrows

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• Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles.

  Ted Nugent

  Thinking, Guitar, Water

  "Ted Nugent & Henry Rollins: American Flag/Black Flag". Elmore Magazine Interview, www.elmoremagazine.com. November 3, 2013.

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• Growing up in Jamaica, the Pentecostal church wasn't that fiery thing you might think. It was very British, very proper. Hymns. No dancing. Very quiet. Very fundamental.

  Grace Jones

  Growing Up, Thinking, Jamaica

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• American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar, but it has its own scruffy charm.

  Stephen King

  Charm, Grammar

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

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• Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time.

  Rod Serling

  Space, Bombs, Cologne

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• It's a phenomenon that I see with young actors - a lot of American speaking parts going to British actors.

  Michael Douglas

  Actors, Young, Phenomenon

  "Jeremy Irvine's Fan Club". Interview with Michael Douglas, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 17, 2015.

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• On the whole, British actors star in theater, and I think there's something quite grounding about that.

  Jeremy Irvine

  Stars, Thinking, Actors

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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