W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
The Englishman (from HMS Pinafore).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Preface
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)
W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
The Englishman (from HMS Pinafore).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!”
William Makepeace Thackeray book Pendennis
Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer
Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 120.
“There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.”
Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general
Retort attributed to Allen, during his captivity among the British, commenting after a picture of Washington was hung in a outhouse, in an anecdote told by Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Lincoln, Vol. 1 (1996) by David Herbert Donald; the documentation on this is scanty, and it conceivably arose as a comical anecdote as early as Lincoln's time.
Variants:
It is most appropriately hung. There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.
As quoted in Strange But True, America : Weird Tales from All 50 States (2004) by John Hafnor, p. 114
It is most appropriately hung, nothing ever made the British shit like the sight of George Washington.
Disputed
“In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!”
W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)
Source: 1878, HMS Pinafore, act 2, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 354 (2005)
E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist
"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 3-4.
1924
Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist
16 September 1902
Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 531.