Best 390 quotes in «british quotes» category

We were German-Americans in a British colony, so we were outsiders.

What? Don't British women know how to use their knees?

What I hope is in five years' time, I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked, but it has worked.

When I drove for British teams... they called me The Tadpole because I was too small to be a frog.

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

When I'm just walking around, I swap between the British and the American, and when I'm with my family I'm with my Nigerian accent.

When I was a child we were sufficiently well off for me to be a picky eater and I still cannot eat vegetables cooked in the traditional British manner.

When we strengthen our relations with the Gulf states, when we cooperate with the Arabs, everybody asks if we are looking for a new geopolitical place. But in the Middle East and the Gulf, you can find German, French and British goods everywhere. German relations to these states are very good, as are English and French relations. Does this make them Arab-oriented?

With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better.

You know what? I'm really attracted to British women, there's something innately proper about them. However badly they behave their accent is so cute that it makes up for everything!

Cavendish was a great Man with extraordinary singularities—His voice was squeaking his manner nervous He was afraid of strangers & seemed when embarrassed to articulate with difficulty—He wore the costume of our grandfathers. Was enormously rich but made no use of his wealth... Cavendish lived latterly the life of a solitary, came to the Club dinner & to the Royal Society: but received nobody at his home. He was acute sagacious & profound & I think the most accomplished British Philosopher of his time.

When the weather's good, there's no better place to be than the British countryside.

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

Winston Churchill was not entirely British. His mother was American, making Sir Winston part Iroquois Indian.

You hear entertainers all the time, saying, 'If I couldn't get paid for this, I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say, 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I'd do it for free'?

You know, not even your British Queen is called just Elizabeth - she's Elizabeth the Second. There's only one Imelda.

According to them, everyone wants to be English. Being English is the best thing in the world. (Far behind, the second best thing is being God himself.)

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.

His work was so great that it cannot be compassed in a few words. His death is one of the greatest losses ever to occur to British science. {Describing Ernest Rutherford upon his death at age 66. Thomson, then 80 years old, was once his teacher.}

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

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.

Am I bothered? Am I bothered though. I ain't doing nothing cause I ain't bothered.

Americans had endured centuries of patronization by the British. One became inured to it after a while.

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

As a British person living in the USA, I keep a low profile on Independence Day, July 4th.

As a rule the Holloywood pattern for English actors is simple. They are delighted to go, they are told there is a lot of work for them if they stick it out, they tell everyone how fabulous it is, they spend all their money - and then they come home. It seems to take from two to six years.

As a measure of our consternation, one or two people nearly put down their cups of tea.

At no point during the making of this book have I inverted my penis although I did go to Blackpool which turned out to be almost as painful.

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 kin?" "When I first set eyes on your father, he was spying on a man from between two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." "I don't think I need say more." "On the contrary, if you want me to have any idea what you're talking about, I think you do." "Why don't you report it to the police?" "Because I stole it in the first place didn't I?" "It's something of a mystery, I admit." "Vanished into thin air!" "You sound so sensible Mrs Hetherington. Please help us get to the bottom of this." Ah, thought Jane – the old story. "No body was found?" "Shall I put the kettle on?" "Only if you fill it with whiskey." "The course of true love didn't run smoothly for me either, you know." "Life has its tragedies for sure." "… What do I want? I want money that's what I want. I want money." She was even more horrified by the words she heard next. Callum MacCallum knew what it was like to be an outsider.

But for the most part, people - of the right kind - are good. For them I put on my corset of cheerfulness, a solid serviceable garment. It holds in the bulgings and oozings of emotion, and soon I find they are, temporarily, stilled.

Boasting about modesty is typical of the English.

Britain: the land of embarrassment and breakfast.

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.

Cultivate an environment fertile for good habits to flourish

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 reationshps in life can survive - or not - without being put to any real 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 to.

By now there were whole new Industrial Revolutions going on in the Low Earths; the British seemed to have the building of steam engines and railways in their genes.

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.

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.

Did you know the Brits have a dish called “neeps and tatties” and not a single one of the four British people I polled has ever thought to call it “nips and titties”? Seriously, how do you miss an opportunity to call something nips and titties! I don’t care how blue your blood is, no one is so important that a solid dick joke is beneath them. (See how that works, your majesty?)

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

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.

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.

Eyes shining, mouths open, triumphant, they savored the right of domination. They were lifted up: were friends.

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.

Fo' shiz.

His face was the sort of British face from which emotion has been so carefully banished that a foreigner is apt to think the wearer of the face incapable of any sort of feeling; the kind of face which, if it has any expression at all, expresses principally the resolution to go through the world decorously, without intruding upon or annoying anyone.

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 express A penitential loneliness.

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.

He looks like a horse in a man costume!

He looks at me, the circle, then me again. “It’s really you, right? I didn’t create some simulacrum that was inhabited by a demon? Prove it’s you. Say something only Spencer would say.” “Like what?” “Say something annoying.” I think about it. “Well, you claim to be British, there’s really only one thing I can think of.” “That being?” I lean in close, my lips gently brushing his ear. “Soccer.” He shoves me away. “Fuck. You. It’s foot… Yeah, it’s you.