A man once asked to shake hands with me, the greatest Englishman who ever lived. I replied, F**k off, I'm Irish.
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A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth -- science -- which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
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What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange misture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a french woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American.
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He was born an Englishman and remained one for years.
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'Exactly,' he said, while he leant forward excitedly, for all the world like a Jack-in-the-box let loose. 'Precisely; and you are a journalist - call yourself one, at least - and it should be part of your business to notice and describe people. I don't mean only the wonderful personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble brow and classic face, but the ordinary person - the person who represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind - the average Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses like hundreds of his fellow-creatures, moves like them, speaks like them, has no peculiarity.'
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Propose to any englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the english mind is directed to find a difficulty, defect or an impossibility in it.
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Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.
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The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.
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Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.
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An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
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Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
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It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, ...
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The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.
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A Frenchman must always be talking, whether or not he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
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Report writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.
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This, our respectable daily life, on which the man of common sense, the Englishman of the world, stands so squarely, and on which our institut...
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What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
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I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.
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An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
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It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
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What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car ?
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The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.
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An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
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