41 Quotes About England & The British Culture
Are you looking for quotes about England for your Instagram captions? Then we’ve got you covered with 19 of our favourite quotes about the country we will always call home.
We’ve also included a few quotes about British culture at the end too – ones that we find both funny and oh-so-true.
19 of Our Favourite Quotes About England
“It is not summer, England doesn’t have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight’s variation here and there.”
– Natasha Pulley, a British author best known for her debut novel: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
“Oh, to be in England now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough in England – now!!”
– Robert Browning, an English poet and playwright from the 1800s
“Growing up in the English countryside, I feel like I’m in a Jane Austen novel when I walk around.”
– Lily Collins, an English-American actress, model and writer
“I live in the English countryside, so I’m surrounded by magpies.”
– Kenneth Branagh, a Northern Irish actor, director, film producer and screenwriter
“I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, ‘Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!’ Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I’ll tell you that.”
– Bill Bryson, a notable American-British travel writer and author
“English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork.”
– Maureen Johnson, an American New York Times bestselling author of young adult fiction
“The sun doesn’t live in England; it comes here on holiday when we’re all at work.”
– Benny Bellamacina, a British songwriter and children’s author
“The land of embarrassment and breakfast.”
– Julian Barnes, an award-winning English author
“Nothing beats snow. Normally we get one day a year – and you have to hope it snows overnight, so you can be snowed in.”
– Michael McIntyre, an English comedian, writer and TV presenter
“I think the UK is an amazing place and has been extremely good to me. Some of my favourite and most-listened-to bands are from England. I have met many good people there and have been in front of some of the most loyal audiences I have ever encountered.”
– Henry Rollins, an American singer, songwriter, actor, comedian and activist
“England is like the margin of a spring-run: near its source, always green, always cool, always moist, comparatively free from frost in winter and from drought in summer.”
– John Burroughs, an American naturalist and essayist from the 1800s
“The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.”
– Neil Gaiman, an English author perhaps best known for his work on Stardust and Coraline, both of which became hit movies
“I love England – it’s no secret.”
– Nicolas Cage, an American actor and filmmaker
“The strangest country I ever visited was England; but I visited it at a very early age, and so became a little queer myself. England is extremely subtle; and about the best of it there is something almost secretive; it is an amateur even more than aristocratic in tradition; it is never official.”
– G.K. Chesterton, an English writer, philosopher and literary critic from the late 1800s to early 1900s
“I hope for nothing in this world so ardently as once again to see that paradise called England. I long to embrace again all my old friends there.”
– Cosimo III de’ Medici, the penultimate Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany from the late 1600s to early 1700s
“There’ll always be an England, while there’s a country lane. Wherever there’s a cottage small, beside a field of grain… There’ll always be an England… England shall be free if England means as much to you as England means to me.”
– Vera Lynn, an English singer, songwriter and actress
“If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.”
– W. Somerset Maugham, an English playwright, novelist and short story writer from the late 1800s to mid 1900s
“I think England is the very place for a fluent and fiery writer. The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark. I like the grey country. A bucket of Greek sun would drown in one colour the crowds of colour I like trying to mix for myself out of grey flat insular mud.”
– Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet and writer from the early to mid-1900s
“There is no land like England, where’er the light of day be; There are no hearts like English hearts, such hearts of oak as they be; There is no land like England, where’er the light of day be: There are no men like Englishmen, so tall and bold as they be! And these will strike for England, And man and maid be free to foil and spoil the tyrant beneath the greenwood tree.”
– Alfred Tennyson, a British poet and Poet Laureate of Great Britain from the 1800s
Are you specifically looking for quotes about London? Check these out! >>
22 Funny & Oh-So True Quotes About The British Culture
“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”
– George Mikes, a Hungarian-born British journalist and writer from the 1900s
“We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.”
– Oscar Wilde, an Irish poet and playwright from the late 1800s perhaps best known for ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’
“The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.”
– Tony Blair, a British politician and former UK Prime Minister
“In England three are sixty different religions, and only one sauce.”
– Francesco Caracciolo, an Italian admiral and revolutionist from the 1700s
“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”
– Quentin Crisp, an English writer and actor from the 1900s
“The maxim of the British people is ‘Business as usual.’”
– Winston Churchill, a British politician, army officer, writer and former UK Prime Minister during the Second World War
“I think it has something to do with being British. We don’t take ourselves as seriously as other countries do.”
– Joan Collins, an English actress, author and columnist
“The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising themselves.”
– Wyndham Lewis, an English writer, painter and critic from the late 1800s to early 1900s
“The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn’t been here twelve hours and already they loved me.”
– Bill Bryson, a notable American-British travel writer and author
“English people don’t like to be told ‘enjoy your meal’. They will enjoy their meal if they feel like enjoying it. It is advisable not to command them such things in case they have other plans with their meal, such as preferring to dislike it.”
– Angela Kiss, a Hungarian-born writer best known for her book: ‘How to be an Alien in England – A Guide to the English’
[On football] “Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day.”
– John Bishop, an English comedian, presenter, actor and former professional footballer
“There’s an accent shift, on average, every 25 miles in England.”
– David Crystal, a British linguist, academic and author
“The readiness of the English to apologise for something they haven’t done is remarkable.”
– Henry Hitchings, a British author, reviewer and critic
“England was full of words I’d never heard before – streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.”
– Bill Bryson, a notable American-British travel writer and author
“I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables.”
– Arsene Wenger, a French football manager and former professional footballer
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.”
– Earle Hitchner, a writer and classical fiction editor
“The Englishman who visits Mount Etna will carry his tea-kettle to the top.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet from the 1800s
“It is a mark of self confidence: the English have not spent a great deal of time defining themselves because they haven’t needed to.”
– Jeremy Paxman, a British broadcaster, journalist, actor and TV presenter
“What other country…could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start?”
– Bill Bryson, a notable American-British travel writer and author
“An Englishman’s home is his castle.”
– An anonymous 17th-century proverb
“You often hear that the English climate has had a profound effect upon the English temperament. I don’t believe it. I believe they were always like that.”
– Will Cuppy, an American humourist and literary critic from the late 1800s to mid-1900s
“Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.”
– George Mikes, a Hungarian-born British journalist and writer from the 1900s
Want to read more about our weird and wacky ways? Check out our British etiquette guide >>
So tell us… what quotes about England or the British culture do YOU like? Tell us about them in the comments below…
Looking for more interesting quotes? Check out some of our other blogs:
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