British Quotes

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“...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—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.”
― Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force

“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? and
b) Do you want to be in charge of it?

If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.”
― Kevin Hearne, Hounded

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

“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.”
― Stephen Fry, Revenge

“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 killing their own people - and people of other nations - 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 brothers.”
― Suzy Kassem

“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.”
― Cora Carmack, Losing It

“Fo' shiz.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“1. You left a multipack of Mars Bars on top of your wardrobe. Can I have one? Dad x

2. I had three. Hope that's OK. Dad x

3. I'm just going to have one more. Dad x

4. 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”
― Holly Smale, Model Misfit

“My mind may be American but my heart is British.”
― T. S. Eliot

“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.”
― Quentin Crisp

“The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.”
― Shashi Tharoor

“The British nation is unique in this respect: they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Other countries, whatever title is actually used, have only manservants. I tend to believe this is true. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of. Continentals - and by and large the Celts, as you will no doubt agree - are as a rule unable to control themselves in moments of a strong emotion, and are thus unable to maintain a professional demeanour other than in the least challenging of situations. If I may return to my earlier metaphor - you will excuse my putting it so coarsely - they are like a man who will, at the slightest provocation, tear off his suit and his shirt and run about screaming. In a word, "dignity" is beyond such persons. We English have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect and it is for this reason that when you think of a great butler, he is bound, almost by definition, to be an Englishman.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

“Man is a bad animal....”
― Brion Gysin, Here to Go: Planet R-101

“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.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground

“London on a gloomy and rainy day is still better than Paris on a bright and sunny day.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Everything in London is great and adorable,
apart from the weather which is so unpredictable.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“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

“I can smell the smoke now. I can see tendrils of it comin' up between the cracks in the shrikin' floorboards. There she is, calmly taking down the framed examples of fine embroideries, samplers, and needlework from teh hallway wall and tucking them under her arm.
"Mistress! Come on! You've got to leave!"
She calmly turns and faces me. "Why?" she asks. "The British are coming?"
"Only one, Mistress," I say”
― L.A. Meyer, Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady

“Bicky rocked, like a jelly in a high wind.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariable delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaint department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Some people just don’t find their Prince Charming straight away, they have to search for him.”
― Charlotte Fallowfield, Until We Collide

“True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.”
― Edward Rutherfurd, The Rebels of Ireland

“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* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"

"Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.”
― Antony Jay, Yes Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The British are coming.”
― Paul Revere