Top 100 English Country Quotes
#1. The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
Lev Grossman
#2. English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
Jane Gardam
#3. One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.
Oscar Wilde
#4. I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.
Lev Grossman
#5. The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.
Julian Fellowes
#6. One need not be a rabid Anglican to be extremely sensible to the charm of an English country church ...
Henry James
#7. All that gleaming leather and gold stamping and beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English country home; it wants to be read by the fire in a gentleman's leather easy chair--not on a secondhand studio couch in a one-room hovel in a broken-down brownstone front.
Helene Hanff
#8. And so you paint pagodas and carp and phoenixes, but you also paint English country houses, and churches and coats of arms, the crucifixion, inscriptions in Persian and Arabic, carnations and tulips, mottos in Latin and knights in armour and Andromeda. v
Edmund De Waal
#9. I visit English country churchyards where historical figures are buried.
Robin Gibb
#10. Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it.
Michael Apted
#11. If I had my way books would not be written in English but in an exceedingly difficult secret language ... This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors ... who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.
Robertson Davies
#12. Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud's psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around the country as a tool for interpreting literary texts but has rarely, if ever, been discussed in science departments.
Siri Hustvedt
#13. All of us together were of a generation born of old country people who spoke English with an accent and prayed in another language, who drank red wine and cooked their food in the old country way, and peeled apples and pears after dinner.
Robert Laxalt
#14. Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.
Aravind Adiga
#15. We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond. They're never really at ease when they're out of it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#16. The mass migration of the poorest of the poor to America is bad for the whole country, but it's fantastic for Democrats. Ask yourself: Which party benefits from illiterate non-English speakers who have absolutely no idea what they're voting for, but can be instructed to learn certain symbols?
Ann Coulter
#17. Many European guys go to the N.H.L. at a young age, even without knowing English. But they quickly adapt to new conditions, another game, a new country. They are also young, receptive, can move mountains.
Jaromir Jagr
#18. March brought the news of Frederick's marriage. He and Dolores wrote; she in Spanish-English, as was but natural, and he with little turns and inversions of words which proved how far the idioms of his bride's country were infecting him.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#19. The question now was ... whether that beautiful fabric [the English constitution] ... was to be maintained in that freedom ... for which blood had been spilt; or whether we were to submit to that system of despotism, which had so many advocates in this country.
Charles James Fox
#20. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They
Mahatma Gandhi
#21. We have to be concerned about the gun killing that people who are Americans, who are Irish, and who are English, who are all around the country.
Dalia Mogahed
#22. Country music ... doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.
Mick Jagger
#23. The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his brother's remark, There's more Arabs in this country than there is Jews! Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
Jimmy Carter
#24. In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her.
Yayoi Kusama
#25. At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#26. Ludicrous concepts ... like the whole idea of a war on terrorism. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?
Terry Jones
#27. I think as English people, we don't want to be reminded that at one point we ruled three-quarters of the globe, and now we're a very small country that doesn't own three-quarters of the globe.
Jamie Bell
#28. The Duke of York remarked that King Ferdinand of Spain had sent a letter to the Prince Regent complaining that many parts of his kingdom had been rendered entirely unrecognizable by the English magician and demanding that Mr Strange return and restore the country to its original form.
Susanna Clarke
#29. I used to hate England because they ruled my country but I am happy they gave us the game of cricket, which they can't play very well, and the English language, which I can't speak very well,
Kapil Dev
#30. But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for, Is their monument to-day, and for aye.
Thomas Dunn English
#31. At the English Revolution, when William of Orange came to the throne, the introduction of French wines into the country was prohibited, and this gave a great impetus to the manufacture of cyder and care in the production of cyder of the best description.
Sabine Baring-Gould
#32. England with all thy faults, I love thee still
My country! and, while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrained to love thee.
William Cowper
#33. It was again raining when we started the next morning; indeed, it seemed a long time since I had felt really dry, but the grey day harmonized perfectly with the soft English beauty of the country
Elizabeth Kimball Kendall
#34. I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.
Robert Rodriguez
#35. It is in that English Parliament the chains for Ireland are forged, and any Irish patriot who goes into that forge to free Ireland will soon find himself welded into the agency of his country's subjection to England.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
#36. I won't lie!
Probably from books you have saw that I'm not good at English, probably because I don't live in such country which this language is important or let's say to be native. But as for now I can't do a lot of for that!
Deyth Banger
#37. Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.
Anthony Trollope
#38. In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay.
Richard Rodriguez
#39. Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.
John Acton
#40. She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I amwithout adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.
Sharon Maas
#41. Hockey historians say the handshake dates to English settlers in Canada, who preached an upper-class version of sportsmanship in the 19th century. Soon, tough kids in urban and prairie rinks began imitating imagined dukes and earls of the old country.
George Vecsey
#42. An Indian child is brought up in England, and he will speak both English and Hindi very well. English in school and Hindi at home. But here it's English both in schools and at home. Why can't you speak Swahili with your child at home? If this continues we will turn into an English speaking country.
Enock Maregesi
#43. I'm proud I'm English and I'm passionate about my country.
Wayne Rooney
#44. When I began to travel around the country, I would notice in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and even Texas that Latinos didn't want to speak Spanish. You would ask a question, only to be answered in English.
Raul De Molina
#45. Our parents taught us to love God, love our family and love our country. Their own grandparents were immigrants. Their first language may not have been English, but the hopes and dreams they had for their children were purely American.
Martin O'Malley
#46. It was in the beginning of the month of November, 17
, when a young English gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the liberty afforded him, to visit some parts of the north of England; and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister country.
Walter Scott
#47. I think in some parts of our English history we've had huge amounts of almost too much great comedy. You kind of wonder how so much great work could come out of one country.
Kate Bush
#48. In English-speaking countries, the connection between heresy and homosexuality is expressed through the use of a single word to denote both concepts: buggery ... Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (Third Edition) defines "buggery" as "heresy, sodomy.
Thomas Szasz
#49. The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.
William Hazlitt
#50. A lot of country making films in English, but in Japan we are very shy to speak English.
Hiroyuki Sanada
#51. It's my country but I don't want to know about France - I was born there but I feel English.
Eric Cantona
#52. In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. It doesn't make any difference if, like me, you couldn't even speak English until you were in your twenties.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#53. No. I am not a royalist. Not at all. I am definitely a republican in the British sense of the word. I just don't see the use of the monarchy though I'm fierce patriot. I'm proud proud proud of being English, but I think the monarchy symbolizes a lot of what was wrong with the country.
Daniel Radcliffe
#54. When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film abroad.
Carice Van Houten
#55. You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? 'Never complain, never explain.
Amanda Craig
#56. Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.
Matthew Yglesias
#57. This is the Southland burr, the only distinctive regional accent in the country. It's a soft appealing noise, deriving, I presume, from the Sottish settlers, but resembling no known Scottish accent. It's simply Kiwi English with added r's.
Joe Bennett
#58. As a player it is great to experience many other ways of playing, other tactics and other mentalities. I have played in several countries and because of that I know without any doubt that the English league is the one for me.
Djibril Cisse
#59. Apparently Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.
Conan O'Brien
#60. The first country that I went to outside of America was Japan and I was completely shocked - especially since I was 16 and over there by myself. I was like: "I don't get it; there's nothing in English!"
Cameron Diaz
#61. While traveling in this highly idiosyncratic country, it became clear to me that the Scots did not like the English.
Joe Queenan
#62. If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
Winston Churchill
#63. Meet Matt. He's the new 'it' guy. He's from a foreign country, doesn't speak English, and the ladies can't keep their eyes off of him." "Dude. I'm from Canada." Matt sighed.
Brittainy C. Cherry
#64. For the people of my country," Renato said, "water is everything: love, life, religion ... even God."
"It is like that for me too," I said. "In English we call that a metaphor."
"Of course," said Renato, "and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.
Pam Houston
#65. I live in a small country in Europe - Finland - and I don't speak English well and I had nothing to do with publishing houses in the West. I lived in complete isolation.
Hassan Blasim
#66. Was there ever a sillier thing before in the world than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right.
Swami Vivekananda
#67. I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.
Martin Parr
#68. They [the English] amuse themselves sadly as in the custom of their country.
[Fr., Ils s'amusaient tristement selon la contume de leur pays.]
Jean Froissart
#69. I swear on Peter Stuyvesant's peg leg that the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors.
Sarah Vowell
#70. The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?
John Rocker
#71. Seriously, you don't have to know English. It'd be nice, a nice little plus. We don't want miracles. You don't have to know the country's language. But just some shapes, that's all. A square. A little geometry.
David Spade
#72. We French-Canadians belong to one country, Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries, one here and one across the sea.
Wilfrid Laurier
#73. But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail.
Aporva Kala
#75. The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
Colin Firth
#76. Sitting here now today, I can forgive a lot of the English people because it only takes a hand full of bad people to do something stupid like that and it can make the whole country look bad.
Marvin Hagler
#77. You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?
Theresa May
#78. It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers.
Washington Irving
#79. I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me ... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends.
Juanes
#80. In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought ... A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.
John Desmond Bernal
#81. Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.
Ann Patchett
#82. We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.
Newt Gingrich
#83. 'English Rose' - what does that actually mean? That I am pale? That I am English, maybe? They are going to say that about any actress from this country!
Rachel Hurd-Wood
#84. The British invented the classic look. Men's apparel was created in London, the great English style. You have to respect this country's suits, shirts, shoes, luggage.
Mickey Drexler
#85. I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.
Daniel Day-Lewis
#86. Oh, Syd wants me. She's just being English...We totally told her country to go fuck themselves, don't tell me the fact we're American isn't the reason she's blowing me off."
"Dan, I seriously doubt the Declaration of Independence has anything to do with her disinterest in you.
T. Gephart
#87. When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.
Wilmer Valderrama
#88. I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I grew up moving from country to country due to political, governmental, and social issues and just family atmosphere that wasn't right to bring up your kid in a country where there's a dictatorship or a communist type sense, so I incorporate that int music.
Cristian Machado
#89. I didn't know the English were good at swimming. I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool.
Arsene Wenger
#90. The French are a logical people, which is one reason the English dislike them so intensely. The other is that they own France, a country which we have always judged to be much too good for them.
Robert Morley
#91. They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It's so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#92. I spotted Dray standing to one side of the room and made my way to him. A mime accosted me along the way, but I did my best Russian-accented English and said, "In my country, we shoot mimes on the spot." The poor guy blanched beneath his white make up and backed away.
Kate Evangelista
#93. I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second language is German. And when I went to school, I had a lot of classes in English.
Edgar Ramirez
#94. In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country.
Robert Burchfield
#95. The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.
Bernard Pivot
#96. Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
Thornton Wilder
#97. All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work.
Deborah Smith
#98. Fraud, robbery, and murder have characterized the English usurpation of the government of our country. Why, for the last fifty years we have been robbed in the matter of taxes of hundreds of millions.
John Edward Redmond
#99. It is always a taut moment in a foreign country waiting to see if your English-speaking guide speaks English ...
Peg Bracken
#100. It's just incredible. When you're French, coming from a non-English language country, you don't even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It's just beyond the dream. It's something very, very special and unique. It's the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of.
Michel Hazanavicius
