England Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption.

An arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in France, or in England.

William Shakespeare

England, unlike in 1914, will not allow herself to blunder into a war lasting for years.... Such is the fate of rich countries...Not even England has the money nowadays to fight a world war. What should England fight for? You don't get yourself killed over an ally.

England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.

But are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid? [Referring to Gothic novels, fashionable in England at the beginning of the 19th century, but frowned upon in polite society.]

Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out — they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less.

England's on the anvil—hear the hammers ring—
Clanging from the Severn to the Tyne!
Never was a blacksmith like our Norman King—
England's being hammered, hammered, hammered into line!

Rudyard Kipling

England will still be England, an everlasting animal, stretching into the future and the past and like all living things having the power to change out of all recognition and yet remain the same.

Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.

I have already joined myself in marriage to a husband, namely the kingdom of England.

Elizabeth I of England

That island of England breeds very valiant creatures: their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

William Shakespeare

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.

Stay, my lord, And let your reason with your choler question What 'tis you go about: to climb steep hills Requires slow pace at first: anger is like A full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way, Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England Can advise me like you: be to yourself As you would to your friend.

William Shakespeare

In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.

Rudyard Kipling

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit

George Bernard Shaw

If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.

The continued lynchings and other crimes against negroes, whether in New England or the South, and unspeakable political exponents of white supremacy, according to all recorded history, augur ill for America's future.

The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.

For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
And never lost an English gun.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Anthony Crosland

Must stay there and also foment war and revolt against England. Doesn't he yet know of the intended alliance, under which he is to be Commander in Chief?!

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

William Wordsworth

Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.