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. . . ENGLAND see: "BRITAIN" see: "THE ENGLISH" (below) see: "LONDON" see: "PLACES" for other related links England is sad to me — very sad. Like you I hope she may revive, but I admit my hope is faint. The current is flowing away from her. I do not apprehend any sudden or violent change, but I fancy England will grow gradually more and more sluggish, until, at length, after our day, she will drop out of the strenuous competition of the new world which is forming. --Henry Brooks Adams (1838—1918) American historian & man of letters. To Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. [14 October 1900]. That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation. --Matthew Arnold (1822—1888) English Victorian poet and literary and social critic. _A Word About America_ [1882] The idea of a fashionable Bathing place in Mecklenburg! How can people pretend to be fashionable or to bathe out of England! --Jane Austen (1775—1817) English writer. Letter to Francis Austen [23 September 1813]. In spite of their hats being very ugly, Goddam! I love the English. --Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780—1857) French poet and songwriter. Attributed in W. Gurney Benham _A Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words_, p. 729 [1907]. This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time. --Aneurin Bevan (1897—1960) British Labour politician. Speech in Blackpool, in "Daily Herald" [25 May 1945]. If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. --Rupert Brooke (1887—1915) English poet. _The Soldier_ [1914] Oh, to be in England Now that April's there ... In England — now! --Robert Browning (1812—1889) English poet. "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" [1845] - [. . . ] Bournemouth is a very fine place. For one thing it has the sea, which will be handy if global warming ever reaches its full potential, though I can't see much use for it at present, and there are the sinuous parks, collectively known as the Pleasure Gardens, that neatly divide the two halves of the town center and provide shoppers with a tranquil green place to rest on their long slog from one side of the town to the other — though, of course, if it weren't for the parks there wouldn't be the long slog. Such is life. The parks used to be described on maps as the Upper Pleasure Gardens and the Lower Pleasure Gardens, but some councillor or other force for good realized the profound and unhealthy implications of placing 'lower' and 'pleasure' in such immediate proximity and successfully lobbied to have Lower removed from the title, so now you have the Upper Pleasure Gardens and the mere Pleasure Gardens, and lexical perverts have been banished to the beaches where they must find such gratification as they can by rubbing themselves on the groynes. Anyway, that's the kind of place Bournemouth is — genteel to a fault and proud of it. [. . . ] One of the charms of the British is that they have so little idea of their own virtues, and nowhere is this more true than with their happiness. You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the happiest people on earth. Honestly. Watch any two Britons in conversation and see how long it is before they smile or laugh over some joke or pleasantry. It won't be more than a few seconds. I once shared a railway compartment between Dunkirk and Brussels with two French-speaking businessmen who were obviously old friends or colleagues. They talked genially the whole journey, but not once in two hours did I see either of them raise a flicker of a smile. You could imagine the same thing with Germans or Swiss or Spaniards or even Italians, but with Britons - never. And the British are so easy to please. It is the most extraodinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why so many of their treats — tea cakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, rich tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys - are so cautiously flavorful. They are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake. Offer them something genuinely tempting — a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box — and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive, as if any pleasure beyond a very modest threshold is vaguely unseemly. "Oh, I shouldn't really," they say. "Oh, go on," you prod encouragingly. "Well, just a small one then," they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish. All this is completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright. I used to be puzzled by the curious attitude of the British to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies -"Mustn't grumble," "It makes a change," "You could do worse," "It's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful," "Well, it was quite nice," — but gradually I came around to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier. I remember finding myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold cafe on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented with a cup of tea and a tea cake and going, "Ooh, lovely!" and I knew then that the process had started. Before long I came to regard all kinds of activities — asking for more toast in a hotel, buying wool-rich socks at Marks & Spencer, getting two pairs of pants when I really needed only one — as something daring, very nearly illicit. My life became immensely richer. --Bill Bryson (b. 1951) American writer of humorous travel books. _Notes From a Small Island_ [1996] - The English winter — ending in July, To recommence in August. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (1788—1824) English Romantic poet and satirist. _Don Juan_ [1819-1824] You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that. --Charles, Prince of Wales (b. 1948) British prince. Speech at Mansion House, London [1 December 1987]. Be England what she will, With all her faults, she is my country still. --Charles Churchill (1731—1764) English poet. "The Farewell" l. 27 [1764] The British nation is unique in this respect: they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst. --Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. Reporting on the war to the House of Commons [10 June 1941]. And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains. --John Drinkwater (1882—1937) English poet and dramatist. "Cotswold Love" England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) American philosopher and poet. _English Traits_[1857], "Stonehenge" My father used to say that the reason the sun never set on the British Empire is because God would never trust the British in the dark. --George Galloway (b. 1954) Scottish politician. "Glasgow Herald" [April 2000] No British politician has much future these days unless he pays lip service at least to the principles of the welfare state. --John Gunther (1901—1970) American author. _Inside Europe Today_ [1961] - The stately homes of England, How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land. --Felicia Hemans (1793—1835) English poet. "The Homes of England" [1849] and note: The Stately Homes of England How beautiful they stand, To prove the upper classes Have still the upper hand. --Noël Coward (1899—1973) English playwright, actor, and composer. "The Stately Homes of England" [1938 song] - - The sun of her glory is fast descending to the horizon. --Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826) American statesman and president [1801—1809]. On Great Britain, in _Notes on the State of Virginia_ [1784]. I consider the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive domination of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep- routed hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. --Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826) American statesman and president [1801—1809]. Letter to Thomas Leiper [June 1815]. - - Harris asked me if I’d ever been in the maze at Hampton Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish – hardly worth the twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn’t a bit like the real thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris took in. He said: “We’ll just go in here, so that you can say you’ve been, but it’s very simple. It’s absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We’ll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get some lunch.” They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very kind of him, and fell behind, and followed. They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him. Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze. “Oh, one of the largest in Europe,” said Harris. “Yes, it must be,” replied the cousin, “because we’ve walked a good two miles already.” Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris’s cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: “Oh, impossible!” but the woman with the baby said, “Not at all,” as she herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory. “The map may be all right enough,” said one of the party, “if you know whereabouts in it we are now.” Harris didn’t know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again part of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. About ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre. Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as an accident. Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did know where they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemed simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time. And three minutes later they were back in the centre again. After that, they simply couldn’t get anywhere else. Whatever way they turned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at length, that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to take a walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again, after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told him to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn’t help feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular. They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man came and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them. But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl that they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to stop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together, and waited; and he climbed down, and came in. He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business; and when he got in, he couldn’t find them, and he wandered about, trying to get to them, and then he got lost. They caught sight of him, every now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and ask them where they had been. They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinner before they got out. --Jerome K. Jerome (1859—1927) English novelist and playwright. _Three Men in a Boat_, ch. 6 [1889] - My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time. --Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American writer and radio host. Quoted in "N.Y. Times" [30 March 1990]. - To me the very shape of England on the map is significant, and it brings to my mind pell-mell a hundred impressions, the white cliffs of Dover and the tawny sea, the pleasant winding roads of Kent and the Sussex downs, St. Paul's and the Pool of London; scraps of poetry, the noble ode of Collins and Matthew Arnold's Scholar Gipsy and Keats' Nightingale, stray lines of Shakespeare's and the pages out of English history, Drake with his ships, and Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth; Tom Jones and Dr. Johnson; and all my friends and the posters at Victoria station; then some vague feeling of majesty and power and continuity; and then, heaven knows why, the thought of a barque in full sail going down the Channel — Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding — while the setting sun hangs redly on the edge of the horizon. These feelings and a hundred others make up an emotion which makes sacrifice easy. It is an emotion compact of pride and longing and love, but it is humble rather than conceited, and it does not preclude a sense of humour. --W. Somerset Maugham (1874—1965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _A Writer's Notebook_, p. 137 [1949] The only way to eat well in England is to have breakfast three times a day. --attributed to W. Somerset Maugham (1874—1965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. - I am American bred, I have seen much to hate here — much to forgive, But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live. --Alice Duer Miller (1874—1942) American writer and poet. _The White Cliffs_ [1940] And then England — southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don't worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow- moving streams bordered by willows, the green blossoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalger Square, the red buses, the blue policemen — all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950) English novelist. _Homage to Catalonia_ [1938] There'll always be an England While there's a country lane, Wherever there's a cottage small Beside a field of grain. --Ross Parker (1914-1974) & Hughie Charles (1907-1995) British songwriters, "There'll Always be an England" [1939 song] Gentlemen, I think it is about time we 'pulled our fingers out' . . . If we want to be more prosperous we've simply got to get down to it and work for it. The rest of the world does not owe us a living. --Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (b. 1921) Consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Speech in London [17 October 1961]. - This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, . . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _King Richard II_, II, i [1595] This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _King John_, V, vii [c. 1596] - England and America are two countries separated by the same language. --George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish dramatist and critic. Attributed in "Reader's Digest" [November 1942]. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves. --James Thomson (1700—1748) Scottish poet. _Alfred_ (a masque) [1740] I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. Attributed in John P. Holms & Karin Baji (comps.) _Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend_ [1998]. Any one who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. --Evelyn Waugh (1903—1966) English novelist. _Decline and Fall_, pt. 3, ch. 4 [1928] I traveled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea: Nor England! Did I know till then What love I bore to thee. --William Wordsworth (1770—1850) English poet. "I Traveled Among Unknown Men", st. 1 [1807] - Lisa, hello! How are you doing in England? Remember, an elevator is called a 'lift', a mile is called a 'kilometer' and botulism is called 'steak and kidney pie' --Greg Daniels, dialogue, 'Lisa's Wedding', _The Simpsons_, Fox TV [1995] -- England — A Walk Across When an English accountant named Alfred Wainwright first went to the lonely hills of northern England in 1930, he was a lonely man. But the cool, empty vistas of moor and mountain must have soaked up his own emptiness like a sponge, because the hills were where he found love. Today, many people walk in the footsteps of Alfred Wainwright, whose passion for the mountains turned him from accountant into author. The reason is simple: Wainwright, who died at age 84 in 1991, wrote a series of guidebooks to walks through the wildest landscapes in Britain. One book in particular created a now- famous route through heather and woods, over stiles, past lakes, among sheep and across ridges in the face of horizontal rain, from one coast of England to the other. The route is called the Coast to Coast. It's a walk through history and time, across an England that seems not to have changed in hundreds of years. [ . . . ] Recently, my wife, Suzanne, and I decided to follow in his footsteps. As it was for Wainwright, it was a map that first intrigued us. "Give me a map of country I do not know," he wrote, "and it has the power to thrill and excite me." The maps he made of the Coast to Coast walk are wonderfully appealing, with intricate dotted route and contour lines, bushy marks for bogs, notes for gates and barns, alternate routes to mountains (called fells), and drawings of outcrops, tarns (lakes) and waterfalls. [ . . . ] As we looked at the maps at home, they showed a long wriggle of a route, starting in northwest England at the village of St. Bees on the Irish Sea and leading out into delightful imaginary distances, through three of Britain's finest national parks, to the village of Robin Hood's Bay, 190 miles away on the North Sea. But at the start of our walk, on a cool morning under a gathering overcast, the maps suddenly turned real and the distances long. We began, as most walkers do, in St. Bees. We had been planning the trip for more than a year, delayed by the scourge of foot-and-mouth disease, which roared like wildfire through this part of Britain, closing trails and leaving farm and tourist economies in shambles. But now the fields were clean and the gates were open. We stood on an expanse of low-tide beach and, as Coast to Coast tradition demands, let gentle little Irish Sea waves wet the soles of our boots. After a magnificent first five miles along sea cliffs, among sounds of waves and gulls, we walked up a quiet lane into the village of Sandwith. It was like many of the villages we would soon encounter: a cluster of white cottages, two pubs, a patch of green with a picnic table, and a farm road leading east. It felt as if we had already shed the hasty part of time and were immersed in Britain's ancient, slower flow of days and hours in which all travel moved at the pace of feet or hooves, and the space between villages was set by the distance a person could walk in a day. "Coast to coast, are ye?" said an elderly man with a cane and a collie as we walked into Sandwith. "Going to do it all?" "Yes," we answered. "Oh," he said, shaking his head. "You'll be tired." He reached into his pocket and gave us a roll of mints. Both sobered and fortified, we set off toward green hillsides, now shrouded in rain, and started uphill. Soon it became steep and slippery. "Never believe Wainwright when he says 'gentle climb,'" another walker wrote in a guest book we saw later in a hotel in Robin Hood's Bay. [ . . . ] The trails of the Coast to Coast run through private land as well as public parks, following back roads, rights-of-way across fields, and ancient footpaths between towns. This access is jealously guarded by several organizations, including the Ramblers' Association, which recently helped push through a national law to open millions of acres to walkers by establishing new rights of access to uncultivated land. [ . . . ] By the time (three days and 38 miles into the walk) we got to Wordsworth's "dear vale" of Grasmere, the town where the poet lived for 14 years, blisters and knee pains from steep descents had made the journey less enchanting. We each bought blister remedies by the boxload and a pair of lightweight hiking poles and set off again. [ . . . ] We were walking ever deeper into British history, surrounded by prehistoric standing stones; Roman forts; names like gill (which means ravine or stream) and fell, both left by the Vikings; and stone fences from the 18th century. A framework of the walker's old-fashioned kind of time settled around us, made of barriers as solid as the fences: limits of distance, stamina, energy, daylight, weather and knowledge of terrain. In this mood we came upon a long straight path on a ridge. It was the remains of a Roman road now called High Street, which lies along a broad-backed mountain of the same name. The road was probably built in the first century A.D., and even after 2,000 years it retained the authority of empire. We might have imagined joining a clanking company of Roman soldiers, except they'd have shamed us. Their rate of march even in the mountains is said to have been about I8 miles in five hours. We, on the other hand, were hard pressed to go half that speed. [ . . . ] [In the Yorkshire Dales National Park] trails and country lanes led between deep green pastures and along streams in the shadows of oak trees, and after the climbs and descents of the mountains, the gentleness of terrain turned us from hikers back into walkers. The terrain was gentle, but the history was not. The human presence here goes back at least 11,000 years, and the oldest known artifact is a harpoon. Shapes in the hills reveal forts and graves. Power ebbed and flowed through the centuries, from the warlike tribes called the Brigantes, to the Romans who fought them, then later to the Danes and Vikings. When the Normans arrived in 1066, they engaged in what is now described as ethnic cleansing. Later, they gave vast estates to the church, in order, one author writes, to ensure "a safe passage, after a sinful life, to heaven." So wealth and power came to be vested in churchmen, who built farms and estates centered around abbeys. [ . . . ] The next day we hoofed it hard for 23 miles to the town of Grosmont, and the following day crossed the last 15 1/2 miles. In late afternoon, 16 days after we began our journey, we walked down a steep cobbled street in Robin Hood's Bay and heard again the sound of waves and gulls. The North Sea tide was high, and the water was more restless than on the other side of England. It surged hungrily against the cobbles, and a big sign warned: "Extreme danger on this slipway at high tide." Ignoring the sign, we walked into the water and let the North Sea wash our tired legs. [ . . . ] --Michael Parfit "A Walk Across England" _Smithsonian_ [September 2003] ^ It is likewise commanded that the highways from market towns to other market towns be widened where there are woods or hedges or ditches, so that there may be no ditch, underwood or bushes where one could hide with evil intent within two hundred feet of the road on one side or the other, provided that this statute extends not to oaks or to large trees so long as it is clear underneath. And if by the default of a lord, who will not fill up a ditch or level underwood or bushes in the manner aforesaid, robberies are committed, the lord shall be answerable. --_Statutes of Winchester_ [1285] in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 244 [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: The massive Statutes of Westminster (beginning in 1275) were inaugurated immediately after his coronation by Edward I's first London Parliament, and they covered a vast range of practical matters. The king's aim was to bring clarity, efficiency, and system to the existing law, not the imposition of revolutionary new principles. On them is largely founded his later reputation as 'the English Justinian'. There was a young lady, Christine, Who upset the party machine. They knew it was lewd To lie in the nude, But to lie in the House is obscene. --anon. (Referring to the Profumo scandal. The "House" is, of course, the House of Commons.)  . . see: "PEOPLE" for related links The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it. --James Agate (1877—1947) British drama critic and novelist. Quoted in "The British Magazine" [1946]. The young [among] the poorly paid English labourers, the product of long centuries of oppression and neglect, look forward to the moment of their abandonment of field labour for the more lucrative work on railways or in the mine. I well remember the little group in a Yorkshire village who would frequently walk a couple of miles to watch the express dash through the small station in the darkness. --E. N. Bennett, _Problems of Village Life_ [1914], quoted in Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_ [2000]. Every Englishman wears a mackintosh, and has a cap on his head and a newspaper in his hand. As for the Englishwoman, she carries a mackintosh or a tennis racket. Nature here has a propensity for unusual shagginess ... and all kinds of hair; English horses, for example, have regular tufts and tassels of hair on their legs, and English dogs are nothing more nor less than absurd bundles of forelocks. Only the English lawn and the English gentleman are shaved every day. --Karel Capek (1890—1938) Czech novelist. _Letters from England_ [1927] As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908—2004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _American Way_ [March 1975] For every £3 of consumer spending in Britain only 1 p goes on books—12 times as much goes on beer. _The Economist_ [27 April 1985] - The air is soft and delicious. The men are sensible and intelligent. Many of them are even learned, and not superficially either. They know their classics, and so accurately that I have lost little in not going to Italy. --Desiderius Erasmus (1469—1536) Dutch humanist and theologian. Letter to Robert Fisher, quoted in James Anthony Froude _Life and Letters of Erasmus_ [1894]. The English girls are divinely pretty and they have one custom which cannot be too much admired. When you go anywhere on a visit, the girls kiss you. They kiss you when you arrive. They kiss you when you go away. They kiss you when you return. Once you have tasted how soft and fragrant those lips are, you could spend your life here. --Desiderius Erasmus (1469—1536) Dutch humanist and theologian. Letter to Faustus Anderlin, quoted in James Anthony Froude _Life and Letters of Erasmus_ [1894]. - And crossing the Channel one cannot say much, For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch. The Germans are German, the Russians are red, And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed. The English are moral.The English are good, And clever and modest and missunderstood. [. . . ] The English, the English, the English are best. I wouldn't give a tuppence for all of the rest. --Flanders & Swann Musical duo who performed comic and satirical songs. "Song of Patriotic Pejudice" It is not that the Englishman can't feel — it is that he is afraid to feel ... He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks — his pipe might fall out if he did. --E.M. [Edward Morgan] Forster (1879—1970) English novelist. "Notes on the English Character" in _The Atlantic Monthly_ [1926]. It takes a great deal to produce ennui in an Englishman, and if you do, he only takes it as convincing proof that you are well-bred. --Margaret Halsey (1910—1997) American author. _With Malice Toward Some_ [1938] The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englisman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English. --William Hazlitt (1778—1830) English essayist. _Characteristics in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims_, CCCXXXIV [1823] A single Norwegian, worthy of eternal fame, resisted on the bridge, and felling more than forty Englishmen with his trusty axe, he alone held up the entire English army until three o'clock in the afternoon. At length someone came up in a boat and through the openings of the bridge struck him in the private parts with a spear. --Henry of Huntingdon (1080?—1155) English historian. _History of the English People_ [c. 1130; 1996 trans.] When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In "The Idler" [24 June 1758]. The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do. --attributed to Henry Alfred Kissinger (b. 1923) German-born American diplomat. - An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one. --George Mikes (1912—1987) Hungarian-born British author. _How to be an Alien_ [1946] On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners. --George Mikes (1912—1987) Hungarian-born British author. _How to Be an Alien_ [1946] - The English, of all ranks and classes, are at bottom, in all their feelings, aristocrats. They have some concept of liberty, and set some value on it, but the very idea of equality is strange and offensive to them. They do not dislike to have many people above them as long as they have some below them. --John Stuart Mill (1806—1873) English philosopher and social reformer. Letter to Mazzini [15 April 1858], Collected Works, xv, p.553. The English have this extraordinary respect for longevity. The best example of this was Queen Victoria, a most unpleasant woman who achieved a sort of public affection simply by living to be an enormous age. --Malcolm Muggeridge (1903—1990) British writer, broadcaster, and journalist. Quoted in Miriam Ringo (comp.) _Nobody Said it Better! - 2700 Wise & Witty Quotations_ [1980]. The English have only recently become foreigners and aren't very good at it yet. This is why they make such lousy gigolos. This is also why they expect to be regarded as equals. Therefore, treat them as you would any American with a severe speech defect. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Modern Manners_ [1983], "Travel Etiquette" The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad. --attributed to George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950) English novelist. - They have only three vegetables and two of them are cabbage. --Walter Hines Page (1855—1918) American Ambassador to the Court of St James. _On British Cuisine_ I suppose a thousand English women have been to see me — as a last hope — to ask me to have enquiries made in Germany about their 'missing' sons or husbands, generally sons. They are of every class and rank, from Marchioness to scrub-woman. Every one tells her story with the same dignity of grief, the same marvellous self- restraint, the same courtesy and deference and sorrowful pride. Not one has whimpered ... It's the breed .... They never weep; their voices do not falter. Not a tear have I seen yet. They take it as part of the price of greatness and empire. You guess at their grief only by their reticence. They use as few words as possible and then courteously take themselves away. It isn't an accident that these people own a fifth of the world. Utterly unwarlike, they outlast anybody else when war comes. --Walter Hines Page (1855—1918) American Ambassador to the Court of St James. Quoted in Andrew Roberts _A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900_ [2006]. - [At his hanging the Reverend William Dodd mounted the scaffold with a faint smile:] The English know how to die! --a Prussian traveler named Archenholtz, to his friend, as quoted in W. Jackson Bate _Samuel Johnson_ [1975]. Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery. --Cecil Rhodes (1853—1902) South African statesman. Attributed in Peter Ustinov _Dear Me_ [1977]. What governs the Englishman is his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. Instinctively the Englishman is no missionary, no conqueror. He prefers the country to the town, and home to foreign parts. He is rather glad and relieved if only natives will remain natives and strangers, and at a comfortable distance from himself. Yet outwardly he is most hospitable and accepts almost anybody for the time being; he travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him. --George Santayana (1863—1952) Spanish-born philosopher and critic. "The British Character", in _Soliloquies in England_ [1922]. - There is nothing so bad or good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles. --George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _The Man of Destiny_ [1898] If the British can survive their meals, they can survive anything. --George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish dramatist and critic. Quoted in Stephen Winsten _Days with Bernard Shaw_ [1949]. - This Englishwoman is so refined She has no bosom and no behind. --Stevie [Florence Margaret] Smith (1902—1971) English poet and novelist. "The Englishwoman", l. I [1937] The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the fatuity of idiots. --Sydney Smith (1771—1845) English clergyman and essayist, in 1802 cofounded "The Edinburgh Review." _Letters of Peter Plymley_, letter 2 [1807] All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people, such as the English, whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half starved commonalty of other countries. --Sir William Temple (1628—1699) English statesman and diplomat. Attributed in John Timbs _Laconics: Or, The Best Words of the Best Authors_, p. 37 [1829]. - It was an observation of Voltaire, that the English people were, like their butts of beer, froth at top, dregs at bottom— in the middle, excellent. --Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) (1694—1778) French writer and philosopher. In "The Friend" [7 December 1831]. Voltaire was visiting London one fine day (one of the few) — in the midst of a war between France and England no less. As he walked the streets, an angry mob of Londoners spotted him as a Frenchman (by his clothes no doubt) and started yelling for his blood, "Kill the frog! Kill the frog!!" Voltaire, being no fool, ran. After a while, however, he realized he could not outrun them and turned to face the pack of wild Limeys. "My friends! er. My enemies! You wish to kill me because I am French, but am I not punished enough by not being English?" The mob stopped, applauded and let him go. --_The Times_ (London) [1950] - If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Irish how to listen, society would be quite civilized. --Oscar Wilde (1854—1900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. _Epigrams & Aphorisms_ [pub. John W. Luce, Boston, 1905] - The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm. --Alexander Woollcott (1887—1943) American dramatic and literary critic. Quoted in "Reader's Digest", vol. 27 [1935]. Case in point - note the reaction after the London bombings of July 2005: Here's one cultural difference between Brits and Americans. Brits regard the best response to outrage to carry on as if nothing has happened. Yes, they will fight back. But first, they will just carry on as normal. Right now, a million kettles are boiling. "Is that the best you can do?" will be a typical response. Stoicism is not an American virtue. Apart from a sense of humor, it is the ultimate British one. [...] Do not mistake this attitude for indifference. It's a very English form of determination. --Andrew Sullivan (b. 1963) Anglo-American journalist. [8 July 2005] & note: [During the London riots of 2011:] A wry sign posted yesterday afternoon in the window of a branch of Subway reads: "Due to the imminent collapse of society, we regret to announce we are closing at 6pm tonight." - end page | EARS - ECONOMY (THE) | EDUCATION | EFFORT - ELEPHANTS | ELOQUENCE - EMOTION | EMOTIONS & FEELINGS | EMPIRE - ENERGY | ENGLAND - ENGLISH (THE) | ENGLISH (LANGUAGE) | ENLIGHTENMENT - ENVY | ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES | EPITAPHS - EQUAL RIGHTS | ERROR - EVIDENCE | EVIL - EXECUTIONS | EXERCISE - EYES | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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