"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."
— Robert Frost

"if it means something, take it to heart. if it means nothing, its nothing. let it go."
— Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl)

"I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, 'Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!' Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that."
— Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island)

"Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so."
— Robert Frost

"He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly."
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore."
— Alan Moore

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptered 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."
— William Shakespeare

"England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England."
— Victor Hugo

"As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler."
— Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation)

""You are far more likely to be devoured than empowered by your sense of romance." "
— The Cribs

"If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism."

(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)"
— Winston S. Churchill

"I took her outside on to a little roof terrace that looked like it never got the sun at nay time of the day r year, but there was a picnic table and a grill out there anyway. Those little grills are everywhere in England, right? To me they've come to represent the trumph of hope over circumstance, seeing as all you can do is peer at them out the window through the pissing rain."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

""Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...""
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
— Mahatma Gandhi

""Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. 'The evening stretches before us,' Viola said gloomily."
"
— Barbara Pym (No Fond Return of Love)

"Bailing the center of a spot and not having an embankment is not the only way to flirt. So soon, so left without a spoon, so august and so strange and taller than every other, it is not astonishing that someone is older."
— Gertrude Stein (Geography and Plays)

"Слънцето трябва да залезе и да се издигне месецът, докато Кайро се отвори като мида и се разкире красотата му в силуетите."
...
"Някои палми накланят глави сред вятъра, нощта е чудна във всеки отрязък, благодарение на собствените и на чуждите духове,а той, самотният пътешественик, не може да си представи мръсния, припрян, пронизителен и потискащ живот през деня."
...
"Понякога напращелият град се уригваше. Всичко миришеше на разложения от стомашни сокове. Накрая на улицата лежеше полусмялно слепоочие, което щеше скоро да се разтече. Една лъжица загребваше от месестата част на презряла папая, на връщане от пазара петите не излъхваха пот,а кориандър. Той не знаеше какво го отвращаваше повече, морският бриз, по време на отлива, носещ гнилия дъх на водорасли и плажни медузи, или уханията на мюсюлманската закуска от вътрешности на коза, запържвани върху малки печки. Пътеката на човечеството бе постлана с коварни изкушения."
...
"Най-непоносими са шумовете: гукащите гълъби в отворения шкаф, дрезгавогласни и свадливи от любовно усърдие, огромните котки, които минават през скелето на покрива и ридаят от ненаситна разгоненост."
...
"Те рецитираха първата сура, фатихах, насочили длани към небето, сякаш искаха да уловят някакво благословение, което слизаше от небето върху кораба."
...
"Ричард Франсис Бъртън умря рано сутринта, когато нишките бяло и черно бяха неразличими. Над главата му висеше една персийска калиграфия на която пишеше:
И това ще отмине."
— Ilija Trojanow (Der Weltensammler.)

"A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses."
— George Orwell

"The first years of my life are of no imprtance. At the age of nine, I was packed off to a preparatory school in the South of England, and for the next four years led the usual life of a preparatory-school boy. I indulged in midnight feasts and was periodically beaten."
— Ludovic Kennedy

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. "
— Queen Elizabeth I

"Some people believe that when death has taken possession of you all is over, and you are just part of the earth. Well, if that is true, there is no need to fear; for in the earth there is quiet and peace-and perhaps you may be a part of the earth which is covered with wild roses in the spring, and wild thyme in the summer. Or near the sea, which thunders and roars in the winter, and comes in softly and gently when the skies are blue, and the sun is warm..."
— Annie Kenny

"If nature abhors a vacuum, historiography loves a void because it can be filled with any number of plausible accounts;
Howe, Nicholas, Anglo-Saxon England and the postcolonial void"
— Deanne Williams (Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages : Translating Cultures)

"Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
— Samuel Johnson

"BOSWELL: I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it . . . JOHNSON: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.”"
— James Boswell Samuel Johnson

"New England, with its Humid Continental climate, its cool, short summers and stony, glaciated crystalline land...."
— Loyal Durand, Jr.

"They bade each other goodbye and returned to their homes where they would drink a cup of English tea even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a tea tree grew in England and later that night before they went to bed they would drink a cup of English cocoa even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a cocoa tree grew in England."
— Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother)

"They bade each other goodbye and returned to their homes, where they would drink a cup of English tea, even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a tea tree grew in England, and later that night, before they went to bed, they would drink a cup of English cocoa, even though they were quite aware that no such thing as a cocoa tree grew in England."
— Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother)