England Quotes - Page 32

• English tradition debars from dinner-table conversation almost all topics that might interest the conversers and insists upon strict adherence to banalities.

  Elspeth Huxley

  Tables, Dinner, Might

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• In England, life is a long process of composing oneself.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Long, Life Is, Process

  Shirley Hazzard (2004). “Cliffs of Fall: And Other Stories”, p.66, Macmillan

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• It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide, and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests, severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

  James F. Cooper

  War, Struggle, Book

  "The Last of the Mohicans". Book by James F. Cooper, 1826.

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• From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

  Margaret Halsey

  Oxford, Mind, Visitors

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

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• It is possible to eat English piecrust, whatever you may think at first. The English eat it, and when they stand up and walk away, they are hardly bent over at all.

  Margaret Halsey

  Food, Thinking, Firsts

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

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• There are ... other business societies - England, Holland, Belgium and France, for instance. But ours [the United States] is the only culture now extant in which business so completely dominates the national scene that sports, crime, sex, death, philanthropy and Easter Sunday are money-making propositions.

  Margaret Halsey

  Sports, Easter, Sex

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• English life is seventh-eighths below the surface, like an iceberg, and living in England for a year constitutes merely an introduction to an introduction to an introduction to it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Years, Life Is, Surface

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• In the end, in England, when you want to find out how people are feeling, you always go to the pubs.

  Martha Gellhorn

  People, Feelings, Want

  Martha Gellhorn (2015). “The View From The Ground”, p.123, Granta Books

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• the English don't go in for imagination: imagination is considered to be improper if not downright alarmist.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Imagination, Alarmists, Ifs

  Martha Gellhorn (2015). “The View From The Ground”, p.38, Granta Books

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• The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in [England] has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavor. It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad.

  Elizabeth David

  Giving, Cooking, Flavor

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• [On England:] In this country there are only two seasons, winter and winter.

  Shelagh Delaney

  Country, Winter, Two

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

  Cedric Hardwicke

  America, Wife, Mistress

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• the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.

  Ruth Rendell

  Weather, Climate, World

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• They [the English] amuse themselves sadly as in the custom of their country.
  [Fr., Ils s'amusaient tristement selon la contume de leur pays.]

  Jean Froissart

  Country, Pay, Customs

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• Poetry deserves the honor it obtains as the eldest offspring of literature, and the fairest. It is the fruitfulness of many plants growing into one flower and sowing itself over the world in shapes of beauty and color, which differ with the soil that receives and the sun that ripens the seed. In Persia, it comes up the rose of Hafiz; in England, the many-blossomed tree of Shakespeare.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Flower, Plants Growing, Color

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• Englishmen have a genius for looking uncomfortable. Their feelings are terribly mixed up with their personal appearance.

  Sara Jeannette Duncan

  Feelings, Genius, Appearance

  Sara Jeannette Duncan (2012). “A Voyage of Consolation (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An American girl in London')”, p.165, tredition

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• England that little gray island in the clouds where governments don't fall overnight and children don't sell themselves in the street and my money is safe.

  Caryl Churchill

  Children, Fall, Clouds

  Caryl Churchill (2013). “Serious Money”, p.59, A&C Black

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• The popularity of the famous device of the use of lands into England is said to be largely due to the mendicant friars of the then new Orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis, who, arriving in this country, in the first half of the thirteenth century, found themselves hampered by their own vows of poverty, no less than by the growing feeling against Mortmain in acquiring the provision of land absolutely necessary for their rapidly developing work.

  Edward Jenks

  Country, Order, Land

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• People in England who do not like gardening are very few, and of the few there are, many do not own to it, knowing that they might just as well own to having been in prison, or got drunk at Buckingham Palace.

  E. M. Delafield

  Knowing, People, Drunk

  E. M. Delafield (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated)”, p.4805, Delphi Classics

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• It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it.

  Patience Strong

  Giving, Leaving, Reason

  Patience Strong (1951). “The Glory of the Garden”

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• Machines are the opium of the masses. If all the machines in England were thrown into the North Sea tomorrow, we should be back in the Garden of Eden. And the weather would probably improve.

  Helen Cresswell

  Garden, Sea, Weather

  Helen Cresswell (1987). “Ordinary Jack: Being the First Part of the Bagthorpe Saga”, Viking Childrens Books

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• [The English] find ill-health not only interesting but respectable and often experience death in the effort to avoid a fuss.

  Pamela Frankau

  Ill Health, Interesting, Effort

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• Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn't carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles

  Dave Grohl

  Rocks, Chicago, Albums

  "Q&A: Dave Grohl on vinyl, Record Store Day". Interview with Patrick Ryan, www.usatoday.com. April 15, 2015.

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• In England they always try out new mobile phones in Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try the legalization of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens.

  Mick Jagger

  Men, Phones, Drug

  "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. May 18, 2010.

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• Since the French Revolution Englishmen are all intermeasurable one by another, certainly a happy state of agreement to which I forone do not agree.

  William Blake

  Agreement, Revolution, States

  William Blake (2008). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.783, Univ of California Press

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