British Quotes
76 quotes
"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"
"Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around."
"If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be."
"I inherited a pound from my British uncle. I’d have rather gotten a dollar, because what do I want with an animal shelter?"
"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"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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"
"Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty."
"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!"
"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, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"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."
"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."
George Mikes, How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils
"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."
"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."
William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
"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."
"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."
"A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The Indians were inside their bodies, he decided, in a way that the British were not. His own flesh impeded his spirit."
"We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real."
"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."
"I would never advise shooing away a good idea."
"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."
"If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."
"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."
"Who am I?" She whispered. Alex opened his mouth as if to correct her, but then he said, "You are my love."
"Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely."
"You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? ‘Never complain, never explain."
"He looks like a horse in a man costume!"
"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."
"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."
"Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring."
"The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact."
"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."
"Yes, well, rein it in, Prom King. British people have been successfully repressing our emotions since before your country was even a thing."
"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!"
"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."
"Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day."
"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."
Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
"The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated."
"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"
"I love dry British humor. I love to sketch in my off time. I love tequila."
"American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been."
"The British may not know much about music, but they certainly loves the noise it makes."
"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."
"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."
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