English Historical Sayings

#1. Kieran unfolded the letter and scanned the scrawled message....
'Beware an English assassin.'
He knew exactly what this meant.

Madeline Martin

#2. I visit English country churchyards where historical figures are buried.

Robin Gibb

#3. I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

Homer

#4. I nursed a worthless, pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking, daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I'd never marry one. And then I did.

Kathryn Stockett

#5. The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.

Peter Ackroyd

#6. To seek contentment is to release the novelty that lies within monotony

Ilyas Kassam

#7. Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school.

Georg Brandes

#8. Hocus was an old cunning attorney. The words of consecration, "Hoc est corpus," were travestied into a nickname for jugglery, as "Hocus-pocus." - John Richard Green, A Short History of the English People, 1874. see Charles Macklin.

John Arbuthnot

#9. This very individualistic form of Protestant Christianity that became so basic in English and then American life is to a large degree responsible for the historical success of Britain and America.

Walter Russell Mead

#10. This book was written using 100% recycled words.

Terry Pratchett

#11. It is meaningless to do the work of God without putting the love of God in it.

Sunday Adelaja

#12. I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.

Samantha Shannon

#13. As historical texts become rich and conceptually dense, readers may slow down not because they fail to comprehend, but because the very act of comprehension demands that they stop to TALK with their texts. In plain English, they pretend to deliberate with others by talking to themselves.

Sam Wineburg

#14. I was too far away to hear what was said but I saw in Val's eyes the same fear that I had once known and could well guess at Lucas' unthinking remark.

Julia Lee Dean

#15. On suicide:
Those are vanities, child. They cause immeasurable suffering in this life and all future lives. Who knows, perhaps you have been given this harsh portion because of misdeeds in some past life.

John Speed

#16. Someone had to be blamed. Someone had to die. ( ... ) What you can't understand, you destroy.

Melina Marchetta

#17. Sometimes thoughts merely pass through a man's head without mishap, but sometimes they fall out of his mouth on the way through.

Penelope Wilcock

#18. A talking dog is not the answer. That's not a way to convince people not to smoke pot. If animals started talking to me, I would up my pot consumption just to make that happen.

Doug Benson

#19. I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.

Candace Camp

#20. What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.

'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.

Natasha Pulley

#21. Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

Doug Stanhope