England Quotes - Page 26

• Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hunting, America, Gentleman

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson”

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• The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of the newspapers.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Editors, Church

  1829 Signs of the Times.

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• Forbes magazine has named Mel Gibson this year's most powerful celebrity. ... Forbes' least powerful celebrity? [Miller displayed the widely circulated image from the Lynndie England photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner with wires attached to his outstretched arms] You're looking at him. Screw this guy. ... [He's a] bad guy.

  Dennis Miller

  Powerful, Years, Guy

  "The Dennis Miller Show", June 22, 2004.

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• England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.

  Lydia M. Child

  Freedom, Land, Water

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• The old laws of England they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo Liberty!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Children, Echoes, Law

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1855). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: In Three Volumes”, p.431

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• However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.

  Matthew Arnold

  Newspapers, Persons, Publication

  Matthew Arnold (1912). “Thoughts on Education: Chosen from the Writings of Matthew Arnold”

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• People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.

  Edward Elgar

  Art, Strong, People

  Letter to Canon Gorton, organizer of the Morecambe Music Festival, published in "The Musical Times", July 1903.

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• I do not want "Mormonism" to become popular; I would not, if I could, make it as popular as the Roman Catholic Church is in Italy, or as the Church of England is in England, because the wicked and ungodly would crowd into it in their sins.

  Brigham Young

  Catholic, Wicked, Church

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• a greater evil than the restoration of the Bourbons to the world in general, and England in particular, can hardly happen.

  Charles James Fox

  Evil, Restoration, World

  Charles James Fox (1970). “Memorials and correspondence”

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• Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance... to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man... The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

  James G. Frazer

  Philosophy, Men, Sight

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Silence, Tree, Healthy

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.77, OUP Oxford

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• It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the duke of Tintagil.

  Thomas Malory

  Kings, War, Book

  Sir Thomas Malory (1871). “Morte D'Arthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table”, p.25

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• We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.

  Joseph Addison

  Particular, Regard, Bashfulness

  'The Spectator' no. 458, 15 August 1712

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• I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it...

  Mark Twain

  Country, Believe, Humor

  Mark Twain's "New England Weather" speech, www.pbs.org. 1876.

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• England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box.

  George Orwell

  Country, Horse, Kings

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.275, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.

  George Orwell

  Loss, Differences, Profound

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1999). “A kind of compulsion, 1903-1936”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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• I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad euphoria. I wondered what had happened to my hard-headed friends? Almost everyone I knew was drunk on this great white hope. The next time I was in New York, no one had a good word to say about Clinton, but everyone was in love with Hillary. She was the last word. It's all so unreal. Of course, it's no different in England. Here everyone was besotted with Tony Blair. He was a new face. Do people never learn?

  Doris Lessing

  New York, White, People

  Interview with Jonah Raskin, progressive.org. June 1999.

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• Manchester, one of the greatest, if not really the greatest mere village in England.

  Daniel Defoe

  Village, Manchester, Mere

  1724-7 A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, letter10.

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• At least being prosperous set one apart in England; here it guaranteed nothing, not even taste.

  Gregory Benford

  Taste, Prosperous

  Gregory Benford (2010). “Timescape”, p.134, Spectra

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• I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England [sic] for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable.

  Enoch Powell

  Betrayal, Weakness, Depth

  "Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell" by Simon Heffer, (p. 47), 1999.

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• You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.

  Stephen Spender

  Lying, Moving, Eye

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.153, Faber & Faber

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• If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.

  Sean O'Casey

  Literature, Way, Fleas

  Sean O'Casey (1975). “The Letters of Sean O'Casey: 1910-41”, Catholic University of America Press

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• The slaving Poor are incapable of any Principles: Gentlemen may be converted to true Principles, by Time and Experience. The middling Rank of Men have Curiosity and Knowledge enough to form Principles, but not enough to form true ones, or correct any Prejudices that they may have imbib'd: And 'tis among the middling Rank, that Tory Principles do at present prevail most in England.

  David Hume

  Men, Gentleman, Curiosity

  David Hume (1826). “The philosophical works of David Hume”, p.80

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• I am conscious of having served England as I served my own country.

  Ferdinand Foch

  Country, Conscious, My Own

  Engraving on the statue of Ferdinand Foch on Grosvenor Square in London, UK.

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• I think England has been in the long-term damaged by Britishness.

  Neal Ascherson

  Thinking, Long, Term

  "Is Britishness a generous thing, or has it damaged England?". "Today" with Jim Naughtie, www.opendemocracy.net. January 17, 2012.

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