Quotes about british

Janine di Giovanni -

There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.

Jean-Michel Jarre -

In my opinion, British women are more romantic than French ones.

Bear Grylls -

In the British Special Air Service, combat fitness is all about running.

scott mcgoldrick -

I had zero idea of what I was doing.. I honestly had no idea where to start. All I knew was I had something I craved to say.. I wanted to create art that lived on longer than I do. Perseverance and teaching yourself, every day through stress and hard work proves shit really does progress without you realizing. One minute you're an amateur, knowing nothing, not even the basics. The next you can put pen to paper, write a song, and create art in such little time! It's crazy beautiful.

Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Triumph

A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here.

Cora Carmack - Losing It

Then, slowly, like the sunrise peeking over the horizon, she smiled.She snapped the box closed.She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She didn’t faint.There might have been a little crying.But mostly… she danced.

Ian McEwan - Amsterdam

When she found a place of her ownand packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear,"He married a woman to stop her getting away, Now she’s there all day.

William Dalrymple - White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

But Khair did not need such proof of her husband's love for her. Over and over again,James had risked everything for her. Most relationships in life can survive - or not - without being put to any really crucial, fundamental test. It was James's fate for his love to be tested not once, but four times....At each stage he could easily have washed his hands off his teenage lover. Each time he chose to remain true to her.That, not the words of any will, was the evidence she could cling onto.

Antony Jay - Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker

Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another*

Mark Gevisser -

This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going

Tony McMahon - Sara Khan

Identity politics is killings free speech on campus, silencing Muslim women struggle, boosting both Islamism and the far Right and pushing reconciled Muslim voices to the fringes. It makes implicit assumptions about Islam - from an Islamist, Left or Right- perspective - and insists all Muslims must adhere to that definition or be regarded not truly Muslim. It ignores the fact that most ordinary Muslims are not in favour of a violent and that in surveys and polls they support British values more

Ben Aaronovitch - Whispers Under Ground

I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they're that strung out.

George Mikes - How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils

Q. Why don't the British panic?A. They do, but very quietly. It is impossible for the naked eye to tell their panic from their ecstasy.

Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.

Kevin Hearne - Hounded

Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.

Shane MacGowan -

I'm not singing for the future I'm not dreaming of the past I'm not talking of the fist time I never think about the last

Winston S. Churchill - The Story of the Malakand Field Force

...But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis

scott mcgoldrick -

If you can't tell from my rap lyrics already, yes I am a feminist. And when I'm saying "hoe" or "bitch" I am actually referring to men. ...That sounded bad, in someway. But at the end of the day, I'm sick of rappers using "bitches" and "hoes" as terms towards women. Feminists are NOT a hate group. Feminists are not all female. Nor has it got an anti-male agenda. It's about equality! I've had a weird, special bond with women since I was a kid. And it's just a shame really that I'm gay.

Caitlin Moran - How to Be a Woman

But, of course, you might be asking yourself, 'Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don't know! I still don't know what it is! I'm too knackered and confused to work it out. That curtain pole really still isn't up! I don't have time to work out if I am a women's libber! There seems to be a lot to it. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?'I understand. So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.a) Do you have a vagina? andb) Do you want to be in charge of it?If you said

Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

Mircea Popister -

They say watch the breathing, watch the diet and for God’s sake make that kid go quiet. But they never say: “I am wrong and you are right”, because the self –pride they always want to hide! But in time, like the truth it shall come to surface and all those lies, that awful misery they always boast about will be extinct, whilst their conscience filled with guilt.

Quentin Crisp -

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

Holly Smale - Model Misfit

1. You left a multipack of Mars Bars on top of your wardrobe. Can I have one? Dad x2. I had three. Hope that's OK. Dad x3. I'm just going to have one more. Dad x4. Harriet, your Dad's made himself sick on an entire multipack of Mars Bars again. Please don't leave sweets where we can find them. A x

Stephen Clarke - A Year in the Merde

If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.

Ron Chernow - Alexander Hamilton

The British were unhinged by the colonists' unorthodox fighting style and shocking failure to abide by gentlemanly rules of engagement. One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen 'conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them – for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn’t entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between people.

Suzy Kassem -

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killi

John le Carré - Spy

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

Amanda Craig - Hearts and Minds

You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? ‘Never complain, never explain.

Dylan Moran -

He looks like a horse in a man costume!

Anne Rice - The Queen of the Damned

Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely.

Matthew Crow - In Bloom

Grandma's house had the atmosphere of a Tupperware box left out in the sun. Like a tropical flower, she had to be kept warm and moist at all times, or she would wilt and die.

Phoebe Stone - Romeo Blue

I would never advise shooing away a good idea.

Thomas de Quincey -

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)’ Humbly to expressA penitential loneliness.

Helene Hanff - Charing Cross Road

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

Deirdre Riordan Hall - In the Desert

Who am I?" She whispered. Alex opened his mouth as if to correct her, but then he said, "You are my love.

Sara Sheridan - On Starlit Seas

It often horrified the English community that she spent her time with local farmers and horse traders, eccentrics and mystics, but she valued expertise over convention and had long believed if you were going to make discoveries in the world you must first quit your Englishness and open your eyes.

Sara Sheridan - British Bulldog

Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

Damon Galgut - Arctic Summer

The Indians were inside their bodies, he decided, in a way that the British were not. His own flesh impeded his spirit.

Christopher Fowler - Ten Second Staircase

Statistics show that the nature of English crime is reverting to its oldest habits. In a country where so many desire status and wealth, petty annoyances can spark disproportionately violent behaviour. We become frustrated because we feel powerless, invisible, unheard. We crave celebrity, but that’s not easy to come by, so we settle for notoriety. Envy and bitterness drive a new breed of lawbreakers, replacing the old motives of poverty and the need for escape. But how do you solve crimes which

Lisa M. Prysock - To Find a Duchess

It was William who would climb out of his carriage unafraid and help a farmer drive a herd of cattle or sheep across a road when necessary.

P.B. North - GIRL IN THE PICTURE

One morning, as he sat at his desk, he heard the sound of a horse's hooves on the path outside his house. He stepped out on to the verandah. There, on a tall grey horse, sat Morgane. 'I've come to have my picture painted,' she said. She took off her hat and her long black hair cascaded below her shoulders. 'You said you would,' she added, before dismounting. She wore a pair of moleskin jodhpurs and a white shirt, open at the neck. Her skin was radiant from the African sun.

Nina Jon -

A selection of quotes from The Night of Harrison Monk’s Death (Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection: 1)"Is this one of the more unusual cases of safe-breaking you've been asked to investigate, Mrs Hetherington?""Remember your private detective wants to be able to sleep soundly at night and in their own bed, not one supplied as her Majesty's pleasure.""It seems to be an open and shut case doesn't it? But it's not you know? How do you know if anything is what it seems?""But where is Cheung

Ruth Rendell - Two Down

We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.

Rick Yancey - The Isle of Blood

Ah. And then you kill him.""No," Arkwright replied patiently. "We are British. We avoid murder if we can help it.{...}

Spiros Doikas - We're Brutish!: The Exploits of a Greek Student in Britain

I remember the very day, sometime during the first two weeks of my five-year amorous sojourn in Brutland, when I was made privy to one of the most arcane of their utterings. The time was ripe for that major epiphany, my initiation into the sacred knowledge—or should I say gnosis?—of that all-important, quintessentially Brutish slang term, the word that endless hours of scholastic education by renowned mentors, plus years of scrupulous scrutiny into scrofulous texts, had disappointingly failed to

Stephen Fry - Revenge

There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip.

Ben Aaronovitch - Whispers Under Ground

The British have always been madly overambitious, and from one angle it can seem like bravery, but from another it looks suspiciously like a lack of foresight.

Constance Briscoe - Ugly

Do your parents know you’re here?' asked the lady at social Services. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I want to know about children’s homes.’ I had to stand on my toes to see over the reception desk.

Noel Coward Sir -

Judith (sadly): A change has come over my children of late. I have tried to shut my eyes to it, but in vain. At my time of life one must face bitter facts!

P.G. Wodehouse - Doctor Sally

Excuse me, I must go and putt

P.G. Wodehouse -

Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.

Simon Van Booy - Everything Beautiful Began After

Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

Robert Winder - Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

Robert Winder - Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain

Other unsolved murders or untimely deaths were readily blamed on the supposedly sinister Jews: If a Jewish doctor failed to save a life, the whole Jewish community might be attacked and fined.

Virchand Gandhi - The Monist

My brothers and sisters of America, there is not the least shadow of hope that India can ever be Christianised. After two hundred years of vain efforts and of spending millions of dollars with the prestige of the conqueror and backed by British bayonets, Christianity is not supported by the converts themselves. Every bit of Protestant Christianity in India is maintained partly by the money flowing from England and America, and partly by taxes imposed upon the Hindus against their will, which mus

David Mazzucchelli - Asterios Polyp

Yes here's to the founding fathers—slave-owners, British citizens who didn't want to pay taxes...

David Videcette - The Theseus Paradox

To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy - and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...

Verghese Kurien - I Too Had a Dream

In India, all along, development as a process was always affected from the top down style of functioning. Naturally, because along with our freedom we had inherited a bureaucracy, which was designed by the British to rule, not to serve. The British way of doing things had always been to get things done through a government department and after independence we Indians merely continued this system.

Nayana Currimbhoy - Miss Timmins' School for Girls

I really knew nothing about the dancing habits of the Scottish. But I wanted to help. "I could teach them Indian folk dances," I offered, scrounging my mind for school dances in gaudy garments."Well, I'm not sure that they would be complex enough for competitions," she said. Pursing her lips, she blushed a dark, deep red. I knew I had said something wrong, but it took me a few days to understand the reason for Miss Manson's disapproval and discomfort. She blushed a beetroot red because I had unw

Harold Nicholson -

The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional fo

Jennifer Harrison - Perverse Wonderland

The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact.

Holly Bourne - How Hard Can Love Be?

Yes, well, rein it in, Prom King. British people have been successfully repressing our emotions since before your country was even a thing.

Eric Weiner - The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy until I reached a kind of orgasm of negativity.'... The Brits don't merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.

Cy Curnin The Fixx -

Should have taken warning it's justPeople mourningRunning, hiding, lostYou can't find, find a place to go, so it'sRed skies at nightRed skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh... red skies at night, red skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh...Someone's taking over, and it look like they're aiming right at you...Someone said we'll be dead by morning...Someone cries, leaving... red skies at night, whoa oh-h-h

Stephen Fry -

I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.

Beck -

I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.

Rod Stewart -

I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.

Maren Morris -

I love dry British humor. I love to sketch in my off time. I love tequila.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

Anthony Hopkins -

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

Maajid Nawaz -

The British state already invests in early intervention campaigns in drug abuse and sexual health. Challenging extremism should be no less of a priority.

Henry James -

However British you may be, I am more British still.

Christopher Gadsden -

I gave my parole once, and it has been shamefully violated by the British Government; I shall not give another to people on whom no faith can be reposed.

Tom Paulin -

This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat.

Richard Baker -

The British may not know much about music, but they certainly loves the noise it makes.

Martin Fleischmann -

American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been.

Andrew-Lee Potts -

It was Nick Willing's intention to make 'Hatter' as sarcastically British funny as he could.

Pankaj Mishra -

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.

Gerry Adams -

For over 30 years, the IRA showed that the British government could not rule Ireland on its own terms.

Nelson Mandela -

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

Samuel P. Huntington -

The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration.

Richard Perle -

We must do our utmost to preserve our British ally's strategic independence from Europe.

Roland Joffe -

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.

James Fox - White Mischief

Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day.

Ida Cook - Safe Passage

Then one woman looked directly at her husband. "Is our place gone?" "I'm afraid so, girl," he said. "There isn't much left up there. But we're alive. We're all lucky to be alive. We'd have been dead if we'd stayed up above." "Oh, what a mercy we didn't!" she exclaimed. "How lucky we are!" Incredible though it sounds, within a few moments, a whole lot of people were congratulating each other on their extraordinary good fortune in only having lost all their worldy posessions.

Megan Frazer Blakemore - The Friendship Riddle

Don't you love those crazy Brits?Jumpers for sweaters and spots for zits.And when they want to change their suits,It's in a box, not a booth.Be a hero, make a call.Steepest streets might make you fall.

Gregory Figg -

The tall, thin serious man strode in, his dark cloak billowing so dramatically it threatened to extinguish the lamp flame with its draught. He advanced like a malevolent shadow consuming the dim orange light, filling the room with a presence almost more than human.

George Orwell - A Nice Cup Of Tea

Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.

Monica Dickens -

People were kind and friendly and amusing, but they thought that companionship and conversation were synonymous, and some of them had voices that jarred in your head. There was a lot to be said for dogs. They understood without telling you so, and they were always pleasing to look at, awake or asleep, like Bingo. He slept now, with little whistling snores, in his basket at the side of the fire, his stubby legs and one whiskery eyebrow twitching to the fitful tempo of his dreams.

W. Somerset Maugham - Cakes and Ale

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

Charlotte Fallowfield - Until We Collide

Some people just don’t find their Prince Charming straight away, they have to search for him.

Charlotte Fallowfield - Until We Collide

My mouth went dry as I tried to remember all of Poppie’s tips for kissing over the years. She told me no guy wanted a girl with a mouth as wide as a guppy, who sucked his tongue with the force of a Dyson vacuum cleaner first time, or licked him to death like an overeager puppy. She’d told me to just purse my lips and let him lead and take control. Don’t slobber, don’t slobber, don’t slobber, I chanted to myself as he got closer and closer

Deyth Banger -

I can't get it why did I name my book series, I'm talking about "The Life Of One kid". I'm talking about the last word "Kid"?? Aren't your curious I'm with British Accent and putting "Kid" the American word for child the last? I'm also curious I still don't know, I really don't know why. Child sounds like a baby maybe that's all, kid sounds like a child in aobut 7-8 years old!

Anya Wylde - Penelope

Londoners, with their noses pressed to cold windows, smiled, for a mid-summer storm was raging across England. Zues had blessed their land, taking away the bright happy sun and replacing it with gusty winds, lashing rain and utter misery.

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