England Quotes - Page 6

• The people have no ear, either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for pianoforte playing and singing is thus all the more repulsive. There is nothing on earth more terrible than English music, except English painting.

  Heinrich Heine

  Passion, People, Insulting

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• England has become a squalid, uncomfortable, ugly place ... an intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian, rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded, materialistic philistines.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Running, Insulting, Racist

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• The English people on the whole are surely the nicest people in the world, and everybody makes everything so easy for everyone else, that there is almost nothing to resist at all.

  D. H. Lawrence

  People, Insulting, World

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• England is, after all, the land where children are beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss Lash ply their trade as nowhere else in the western world.

  Colin MacInnes

  Football, Baby, Sweet

  "Out of the way: later essays".

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• The English, who eat their meat red and bloody, show the savagery that goes with such food.

  Julien Offray de La Mettrie

  Insulting, Meat, Red

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• A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  School, Mean, Simple

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.40, Regent College Publishing

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• The people of England are never so happy as when you tell them they are ruined.

  Arthur Murray

  People, Insulting, Ruined

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• The English are the people of consummate cant.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  People, Insulting, Cant

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “Twilight of the Idols”, p.62, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• A nation of ants, morose, frigid, and still preserving the same dread of happiness and joy as in the days of John Knox.

  Max O'Rell

  Joy, Insulting, Ants

  Max O'Rell (1893). “John Bull and His Daughters”

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• FAY: The British police force used to be run by men of integrity. TRUSCOTT: That is a mistake which has been rectified.

  Joe Orton

  Running, Integrity, Mistake

  Joe Orton (2014). “Orton Complete Plays: Entertaining Mr Sloane; Loot; What the Butler; Ruffian; Erpingham Camp; Funeral Games; Good & ...”, p.255, A&C Black

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• ... where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

  Thomas Love Peacock

  Greek, Humanity, Insulting

  'Crotchet Castle' (1831) ch. 7

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• The perfidious, savage, disdainful, stupid, slothful, inhospitable, stupid English.

  Julius Caesar Scaliger

  Stupid, Insulting, Savages

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• London, black as crows and noisy as ducks, prudish with all the vices in evidence, everlastingly drunk, in spite of ridiculous laws about drunkenness, immense, though it is really basically only a collection of scandal-mongering boroughs, vying with each other, ugly and dull, without any monuments except interminable docks.

  Paul Verlaine

  Law, Ducks, Drunk

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• The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

  Auberon Waugh

  Two Sides, Insulting, Loathing

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• In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Men, Rights

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1583, Delphi Classics

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• The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Insulting, Interest

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Miscellanies”, p.135, Oscar Wilde

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• I have never had the opportunity to play in England, so I know little about it.

  Zinedine Zidane

  Opportunity, Play, Littles

  "ZZ top". Interview With Andrew Hussey, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2004.

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• Well I grew up in England, and I was in the London police.

  Tony Greig

  Police, London, Grew

  "Investigator details charges". "NBC News Investigates", www.nbcnews.com. December 2, 2004.

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• Pakistan would be confident after their series win over England. The series will be a very close and good contest and if all the players play to their potential we're in for some wonderful cricket.

  Greg Chappell

  Winning, Player, Would Be

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• All people seem to want to talk about is the current Ashes series, and whether England are going to reverse the trend of recent series.

  Ian Botham

  People, Ashes, Trends

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• A few years ago England would have struggled to beat the Eskimos

  Ian Botham

  Years, Years Ago, Beats

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• I think we are going to see exciting cricket all the way. We are watching the two best teams in the world-and I think England will eventually go on to pip Australia by a single Test

  Ian Botham

  Team, Thinking, Two

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• There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.

  Washington Irving

  Morning, Book, Home

  Washington Irving (1843). “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq. (Wasington Irving)”, p.172

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• In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Disappointment, Crazy, Exercise

  Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland (2003). “Collins complete works of Oscar Wilde”, HarperCollins UK

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• A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster

  Mark Knopfler

  Music, Guitar, Play

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