Quotations Britain, England, British, English culture, quotes

It’s especially good that, although British men are notoriously lousy lovers, British women have learnt to expect little more and in fact find earnest male insistence (say, a ten hour Gallic span of attention to the clitoris) only theoretically desirable. Nicholas Lezard, “In Praise of British Women”, GQ, December 1996, p.178 Favorite0

No—but your whole attitude toward emotion is wrong. Emotion has nothing to do with appropriateness. It matters only that it shall be sincere. I happened to feel deeply. I showed it. It doesn’t matter whether I ought to have felt deeply or not. —E. M. Forster, Notes on the English Character Favorite0

And it is this undeveloped heart that is largely responsible for the difficulties of Englishmen abroad. An undeveloped heart—not a cold one. The difference is important, and on it my next note will be based. For it is not that the Englishman can’t feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He

What Englishwomen lack is the light-footed mobility of those Europeans. Vogue, January 1997, p.89 Favorite0

But even the English diet seems to me to give the intellect heavy feet—in fact, Englishwomen’s feet… Friedrich Nietzsche, “Why I am so clever”, in Ecce Homo, p.30 Favorite0

Our cloudy climate and our chilly women. Byron, Beppo, stanza 48 Favorite0

You see, my darling girl, it isn’t quite done over here to parade one’s emotions so publicly. We as a race, on the whole, prefer to—understate. Do you understand my darling?—I was guilty of bad form, especially as, I think I did, I cried a bit when I told them… Oh damn

FOR Fornication and Adultery itself, tho’ heinous Sins, we have Frailty and Nature to plead; but SELF-POLLUTION is a Sin, not only against Nature, but a Sin, that perverts and extinguishes Nature, and he who is guilty of it, is labouring at the Destruction of his Kind, and in a manner strikes

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, pt. 2, sct. 9 (1643). Favorite0

we awake to meet the day we say good-morning and I wish you five hundred miles away. Roger McGough, after the merrymaking, love? Favorite0