Top 100 Very English Sayings
#1. It's very strange to be completely naked in public," said Jacob. "It isn't something Americans ordinarily do."
"I can't say it's very English, either," replied Henry.
"It's a Scottish thing, though, isn't it? With all the kilts and all that.
Caleb Crain
#2. I feel very English. I'm proud of it. I wanted there to be a thread connecting everything, the songs, clothes, artwork, even the string arrangements. It all creates a certain atmosphere.
Gabrielle Aplin
#4. The interesting thing about Sherlock is that he is himself a reflection of that very English duality. As a drug addict, he is a criminal. But he is also a crime fighter. That makes him an extremely potent character to personify the hypocrisy of a culture that is both moralistic and corrupt.
Rupert Everett
#5. 'Ageism,' or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. 'Oh, they're too old to make films or write books.'
Paul Weller
#6. America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.
Lily Cole
#7. In the first half of the 20th century, fashion was simply not a very English thing to do.
Mary Quant
#8. When I was a boy, cricket was very, very English. Anyone who spoke English and anyone from a big town could play. And that was it.
Kapil Dev
#9. I was brought up by the English side of my family, who are very repressed and working class. Absolutely lovely, but very English.
Bat For Lashes
#10. Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
#11. I picked a name that was a combination of an island name and a very English name. Havana was one choice and Dominico was another, but I liked the combination of Jamaica Kincaid.
Jamaica Kincaid
#12. I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions.
Peter Greenaway
#13. As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.
Zaha Hadid
#14. Memories help make us who we are.(Taken from novel...A Very English Affair)
Faith Mortimer
#15. Oh that's very English, that's probably why. They just go 'LOL' in America.
Kelly Osbourne
#16. I like costumes. I am always dressing up - I'm very English like that.
Lou Doillon
#17. My mother was English. My parents met in Oxford in the '50s, and my mother moved to Nigeria and lived there. She was five foot two, very feisty and very English.
Chris Abani
#19. 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
#20. It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?
Kate Bush
#21. Suddenly, she employed those very English weapons: devious good manners and a rapid change of subject.
Patricia Duncker
#22. I'm very English, and we don't talk about emotions publicly.
Marcus Mumford
#23. I feel very English in a suit. There's something about being in a suit abroad, particularly in America, that feels empowering.
Daniel Radcliffe
#24. The history of life was not the bumbling progress - the very English, middle-class progress - Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution.
Salman Rushdie
#25. I love New York, but I have to admit that I feel very English, and I do miss that sense of history that you have everywhere in Britain.
Charlie Cox
#26. I'm very English. I'm white. I mean, I'm so pale. With spray tans they start peeling and start getting really dirty looking.
Sam Claflin
#27. I spent more time in America, but I developed a very English sense of humour. I clicked into it deeply with Peter Sellers, who is still probably my favourite comedian.
Christopher Guest
#28. On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.
Phil Collins
#29. Famous in our circles is the story of the visiting English banker who in 1948 upon seeing our model 95 camera commented, 'Very interesting, but why would one want a picture in a minute?'
Edwin Land
#30. I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.
Peter Porter
#31. We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real state of things in Mexico.
Edward Burnett Tylor
#32. I was shy when I was a kid, I was very shy, but now I think I've improved a lot. I can speak OK with the media and with the people. My English is still bad but I feel a little bit better now than before.
Rafael Nadal
#33. The very notion of Great Britain's "greatness" is bound up with Empire,' the cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, once wrote: 'Euro-scepticism and littel Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood , and rotted English teeth.
Andrea Levy
#34. Slave holding is very unusual among the English-speaking peoples. Canadians didn't do it. Australians didn't do it. The Democratic Party and the states they controlled did it!
Sean Hannity
#35. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.
Julia Glass
#37. Films about the English monarchy, they tend to have a lavishness, sumptuous imagery, it's all very posh and rich.
Tom Hooper
#38. I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.
Christopher Hitchens
#39. [Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique.
Sandra Cisneros
#40. I don't know why that is, but English politics is just so overly white. It's very much about the class structure.
Daniel Radcliffe
#41. I was an educated girl. I'd done very well in school. I had a good point average and graduated from USC as an English teacher. My dad didn't even finish high school.
Marlo Thomas
#42. It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.
Aravind Adiga
#43. The way I think or sing about something is very different if it is in Spanish or English.
Prince Royce
#44. I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time; to say 'high Anglo-Catholic' would be a real English understatement.
John Hurt
#45. The count said in careful English, "That was perhaps not, as you English say, very sporting."
"Games are played to win," Cameron said. "And we're Scottish.
Jennifer Ashley
#46. Radio in England is nonexistent. It's very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.
David Bowie
#47. In Spanish, I record a lot of single-voice tracks, and in English, I 'stack' a lot of voices, so it's very different, and I think I got so used to recording in Spanish for six years that it was really refreshing and challenging to get in and record 'Double Vision' in English.
Prince Royce
#48. Turkey, unlike chicken, has very elegant characteristics. It has more of a cache than chicken. Turkey is a delicacy, so it should be presented in such a way.
Todd English
#49. Americans were most likely good people ... the only thing wrong with them, David thought, was that they spoke English very badly.
Anne Holm
#50. On behalf of the newspaper industry I wish to announce some changes we're making to serve you better. When I say 'serve you better,' I mean 'increase our profits.' We newspapers are very big on profits these days. We're a business, just like any other business, except that we employ English majors.
Dave Barry
#51. [O]ne could translate the 555 pages of The Social System into about 150 pages of straightforward English. The result would not be very impressive.
C. Wright Mills
#52. Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it.
Kate Bush
#53. 'Marielena' was a wonderful experience that so many people still remember today. It challenged me to practice my Spanish. Having been born and raised in Miami, English was very much my dominant language!
Maria Canals Barrera
#54. I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.
J.K. Rowling
#55. There's no nation under the sun can beat the English for ill-politeness: for my part, I hate the very sight of them; and so I shall only just visit a person of quality or two of my particular acquaintance, and then I shall go back again to France.
Fanny Burney
#56. I haven't taught since 2004, but I taught high school English for seven years, primarily at a place called Haddonfield Memorial, which is in a very well-to-do-community in Southern New Jersey.
Matthew Quick
#57. You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can't say I'm very impressed with the food in America. it's all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.
Anne Dudley
#58. My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.
Colm Toibin
#59. It's not often that an English drummer gets an Oscar. So I'm very, very proud of that.
Phil Collins
#60. There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
David Brin
#61. Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
William Golding
#62. I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel ... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.
Alan Bradley
#63. When just a kid, moved back to Canada and looking for a taste of England, I'd picked up a book of my Gram's, a dog-eared romance from the 'sixties about English hospital 'sisters' trying to get it on with the doctors, and thought it very shocking behaviour for nuns.
Roberta Pearce
#64. Music was my life ... It was everything to me, even though I was in school majoring in English. I was still very focused on music and always finding ways to perform, so that was what set me up to want to become a recording artist.
John Legend
#65. I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very much part of Europe both in my upbringing and outlook.
Bruce Bennett
#66. It was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect.
Saki
#67. You speak very good English for an American.
Nico
#68. I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.
Drew Barrymore
#69. We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.
Julie Taymor
#70. I will not look through keyholes," I interrupted hotly. Poirot closed his eyes. "Very well, then. You will not look through keyholes. You will remain the English gentleman and someone will be killed.
Agatha Christie
#71. 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
#72. It's not just the 'Grammys' that I've pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.
Alanis Morissette
#73. There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are similarly intertwined in Catalonia and Spain, in Ukraine and Russia.
Michael Ignatieff
#74. The bus timetable sites are all run by an inbred cabal of malicious gnomes. Who don't speak English. And who don't count very well either. Or tell time. And they certainly can't read maps.
Robin McKinley
#75. 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
#76. The English are very fond of being entertained, and ... they regard the French and the American people as destined by Heaven to amuse them.
M. E. W. Sherwood
#77. Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense of Guillam's life till now.
John Le Carre
#79. My mum is Brazilian and very proud. I'd love to do a Brazilian film. I've been brought up in the Brazilian culture. My mum brought me up on my own, I cook Brazilian food, I've never spoken a word of English to my mother.
Kaya Scodelario
#80. It hapens very often that parents think they are worred about the progress a boy is making. they do not realise that all boys are numskulls with o branes which is not surprising when you look at the parents really the whole thing goes on and on and there is no stoping it it is a vicious circle.
Geoffrey Willans
#81. English players are as easy to coach. The problem is that the Premier League has the best players in the world, and statistically not all of them can be born in England. But we don't have enough English players: we are working very hard on it.
Arsene Wenger
#82. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family."
"Very boring, Emerson.
Elizabeth Peters
#83. I remember reports that the American and English newspapers were very happy about the fact that so many were killed in Dresden. There are many instances of barbarity and cruelty on the part of the Allies which I could tell you.
Julius Streicher
#84. Every free minute away from dance (my main focus) I was memorizing new English words, either showering, walking or on the toilet. I started reading English books even though I had very limited vocabulary.
Li Cunxin
#85. My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'
Ishmael Beah
#86. Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.
Anthony Trollope
#87. I was a terrible reader as a kid. I mean terrible. Super slow and very unfocused. It took me forever to read a book, and I remember being well into high school and still needing my mom to sit down and read aloud to me so I could pass my English tests and such.
John Corey Whaley
#88. Where's your sketch pad?" I asked.
... "I gave that up," Kay said. "I wasn't very good, so I changed my major."
"To what?"
"To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history."
"I like a woman who knows what she wants."
Kay smiled. "So do I, but I don't know any.
James Ellroy
#89. Writing was something I have always been interested in. I've grown up in a household full of books, with both my parents English teachers and very booky.
Alexandra Adornetto
#90. To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.
Fiona Shaw
#91. English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.
Bill Bryson
#92. I had a very tough childhood. I came here from Italy in the '70s and didn't speak a word of English, so the kids at school tormented me. Truly, it was horrifying the names they called me, and the teachers never really did a thing to stop it.
Giada De Laurentiis
#93. I've always felt very much from a mixed culture - mainly English and French, but also Nigerian, Thai, Mexican. Everything's had its influence on me.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#94. English clubs are very exclusive. I played Royal Foxshire and they made me wear a suit and tie ... in the shower.
Bob Hope
#95. I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.
Bernadette Devlin
#96. There is a certain ancient civility about tailors that is welcome - especially in modern London, which is now very much an international city, not an English city. They're still a little vessel of Englishness in what is otherwise a pretty rambunctious place.
Graydon Carter
#97. By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.
Max Beerbohm
#98. For whatever reason, we relate to anything godlike with an English accent. The English are very proud of that. And with anything Roman or gladiators, they have an English accent. For an audience, it is an easy trick to hook people in.
Chris Hemsworth
#99. My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#100. When I speak English, I've been told, I have this patrician way of speaking that's very irritating. It's the whole class thing.
Kristin Scott Thomas
