English Character Quotes

In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.

The Irish hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain, and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character …. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.

The Englishman is too apt to neglect the present good in preparing against the possible evil.

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament.

I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England.

How the English love playing at being naughty boys!

The English may love gardening and fishing, but they have never struck me as being close to nature. Their way of expression is 'the hollyhocks are awfully good' sort of thing, all done in very good taste. The savagery of nature is something they don't dwell upon.

In the English character, the "give and take" policy, the business principle of the trader, is principally inherent.

Be England what she will, with all her faults she is my country still.

The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door.

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

Interestingly, this character [Doctor Nash] is probably closer to me than somebody like the evil Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood or Lord Blackwood who wants to take over the world in Sherlock Holmes. This is a character that's English, he's based in London, and so it's closer to me than a lot of stuff I've been doing recently.

It must not be thought that the cowardly feeling of caution and uneasy self-preservation is innate in the English character. It is the consequence of a corpulence derived from wealth and of the training of all thoughts and passions for acquisitiveness.

I am not accustomed to pay fulsome compliments to the English, by telling them that they are superior to all the world; but this I can say, that they do not deserve the name of cowards.

I considered the attacks on London useless, and I told the Fuhrer again and again that inasmuch as I knew the English people as well as I did my own people, I could never force them to their knees by attacking London. We might be able to subdue the Dutch people by such measures but not the British.

The strange thing about the English character is that they understate everything. It's considered bad form to comment on the food, money, romance, any of those things. So you underplay it.

If I were going to war I would want to be alongside an Englishman not a Frenchman. The Frenchman would think too much.

An Englishman, being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.

The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

A spirit, breathing the language of independence, is natural to Englishmen, few of whom are disposed to brook compulsion, or submit to the dictates of others, when not softened by reason, or tempered with kindness.

There is one thing about Englishmen, they won't fix anything till it's just about totally ruined. You couldn't get the English to fix anything at the start. No! They like to sit and watch it grow worse. Then, when it just looks like the whole thing has gone up Salt Creek, why, the English jump in and rescue it.

The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.

Tis the hard grey weather Breeds hard English men.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

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.