Anthony Burgess - British Quotes

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The British... used to regard foreigners as either a comic turn or a sexual menace. To learn a European language... was, at best, to seek to acquire a sort of girls'-finishing-school ornament, at worst, to capitulate feebly to the enemy.

Anthony Burgess

There is a profound middle-class nostalgia for the days of British protection.

Anthony Burgess

Sultan Aladdin... had few illusions about his own people: amiable, well-favoured, courteous, they loved rest better than industry,... their function was to remind the toiling Chinese, Indians and British of the ultimate vanity of labour.

Anthony Burgess

'Ass' for 'arse' does not seem to represent a willingness, on British lines, to make the word arhotic; rather it is a puritanical substitution which forces a real ass to become a donkey or burro.

Anthony Burgess

Any kind of discourse which has a flavour of the British ruling class, so powerful is ancestral memory, must be strenuously avoided.

Anthony Burgess