England

England is a country which is part of the United Kingdom. It is situated on the island of Great Britain and located in the northwest Europe. The capital city of England is London. The population of the area, the English people, number around 51 million making up the bulk of the United Kingdom's populace. The English language is the primary language of most inhabitants.

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• This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle
  This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
  This other Eden, demi-paradise,
  This fortress built by Nature for herself
  Against infection and the hand of war,
  This happy breed of men, this little world,
  This precious stone set in the silver sea,
  Which serves it in the office of a wall
  Or as a moat defensive to a house,
  Against the envy of less happier lands,—
  This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (1595) Act 2, Scene 1

• Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that humane capacity can soar to.
  • John Milton, Aeropagitica, 1644.

• I hope for nothing in this world so ardently as once again to see that paradise called England. I long to embrace again all my old friends there.
  • Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Quoted in The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbet, page 292.

• I am American bred; I have seen much to hate here - much to forgive. But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.
  • Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs, 1940

• Non Angli sed Angeli (Not Angles but Angels).
  • Pope Gregory I, commenting on the beauty of English captives exposed for sale in Rome

• There'll always be an England, while there's a country lane. Wherever there's a cottage small, beside a field of grain
  • Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, Song, 1939

• I know an Englishman. Being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.
  • George Chapman, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany before 1636

• An Englishman's home is his castle.
  • Proverb, seventeenth century.

• Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid, but exquisitely beautiful wife.
  • Margaret Halsey, With Malice Toward Some, 1938

• The south-west wind roaring in from the Atlantic.... is, I think the presiding genius of England.
  • Hilaire Belloc, Places, 1940

• We shall treat England like a beautiful flower, but we shan't water the pot.
  • Hermann Goering, 1940. Quoted by Cyril Connolly, Ideas and Places.

• The strangest country I ever visited was England; but I visited it at a very early age, and so became a little queer myself. England is extremely subtle; and about the best of it there is something almost secretive; it is an amateur even more than aristocratic in tradition; it is never official.
  • G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography, 1936

• I think England is the very place for a fluent and firey writer. The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark. I like the grey country. A bucket of Greek sun would drown in one colour the crowds of colour I like trying to mix for myself out of grey flat insular mud.
  • Dylan Thomas, Letter to Lawrence Durrell, December 1938

• I will not cease from mental fight, not shall my sword sleep in my hand. Till we have built Jerusalem, in England's green and pleasant land.
  • William Blake, From "Milton" - Preface, 1804

• I travelled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea; nor, England! did I know till then, what love I bore to three.
  • William Wordsworth, composed 1801.

• England expects every man to do his duty.
  • Lord Nelson, Signal to the Fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805.

• England has saved herself by her exetions, and will, I trust, save Europe by herself.
  • William Pitt, speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet at Buildhall, 1805.

• Hail England, dear England, true Queen of the West. With thy fair swelling bosom and ever-green vest. How nobly thou sittst in thine own steady light, on the left of thee Freedom, and Truth on the right. While the clouds at thy smile, break apart and turn bright! The Muses, full voiced, half encircle the seat, and Ocean comes kissing thy princely white feet. All hail! All hail! All hail to the beauty immortal and free. The only true goddess that rose from the sea.
  • Leigh Hunt, National Song in the Examiner, 1815

• The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created
  • Walter Bagehot, Lord Althorpe and the Great Reform Act of 1832, 1876

• England's innermost truth and at the same time her most valuable contribution to the assets of the human family is the "gentleman", rescued from the dusty chivalry of the early Middle Ages and now penetrating into the remotest corner of modern English life. It is an ultimate principle hat never fails to carry conviction, the shining armour of the perfect knight in soul and body, and the miserable coffin of poor natural feelings.
  • C.G. Jung, The Complications of American Psychology, 1930

• Whenever I think of Hell I cannot visualise it as a place of eternal fire, but as one of your English industrial towns on a day when the rain is pattering on the slate roofs and the wind is moaning up the street; a place where the horizon is bounded by dark factory chimneys, with crowds of women muffled up in waterproofs slipping in the puddles in their galoshes, with red noses peering out of heavy mufflers.
  • Colonel Bertolini, The Waveless Plain, 1938

• The real tragedy of England as I see it, is the tragedy of ugliness. The country is so lovely: the man-made England is so vile.
  • D.H. Lawrence, Nottingham and the Mining Countryside, 1936.

• Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.
  • George Borrow, Lavengro, 1851.

• The pleasantness of the Engligh... comes in great measure from the fact of their each having been dipped into the crucible, which gives them a sort of coating of comely varnish and colour. They have been smoothed and polished by mutual social attrition. You see Englishmen here in Italy to particularly good advantage. In the midst of these false and beautiful Italians they glow with the light of the great fact, that after all they love a bathtub and hate a lie.
  • Henry James, Letter to Mrs Henry James Sr, 1869

• He spoke of the English, a noble race, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster, silent as deathless gods.
  • James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

• You often hear that the English climate has had a profound effect upon the English temperament. I don't believe it. I believe they were always like that.
  • Will Cuppy in W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish and Other Country Bumps (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937)

• The English take their pleasures sadly after the fashion of their country.
  • Maximillian, Duc de Sully, (1559-1641), Memoirs.

• To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
  • Ogden Nash, England Expects.

• Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.
  • George Mikes, How to be an Alien.

• England is a nation of shopkeepers.
  • Napoleon, (quoting Adam Smith) from Napoleon at St Helena by O'Meara.

• A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth--science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
  • Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, (1865-1869). Book 9, Chapter 10.

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• Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life
  • Cecil Rhodes (attributed)

• England has three great things: tea, that comes from India, and Oscar Wilde and me, who are Irishmen.
  • George Bernard Shaw

• The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.
  • James Agate (attributed)

• I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.
  • Malcolm Bradbury

• In England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce.
  • Francesco Caracciolo

• Not to be English was for my family so terrible a handicap as almost to place the sufferer in the permanent invalid class.
  • Osbert Lancaster

• We do not regard Englishmen as foreigners. We look on them only as rather mad Norwegians.
  • Halvard Lange

• England is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than sex.
  • Jackie Mason

• An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
  • George Mikes

• Humour is practically the only thing about which the English are utterly serious.
  • Malcolm Muggeridge

• In left-wing circles it is always always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God save the King' than of stealing from a poor box.
  • George Orwell

• In England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
  • Oscar Wilde

• You should study the Peerage.... It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
  • Oscar Wilde

• On the Continent, people have good food; in England, people have good table manners.
  • George Mikes

• Many continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.
  • George Mikes

• Do not be misled by memories of your youth when, on the Continent, wanting to describe someone as exceptionally dull, you remarked: 'He is the type who would discuss the weather with you.' In England this is an ever-interesting, even thrilling topic, and you must be good at discussing the weather.
  • George Mikes