“Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols
Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer thut das
Maxims and Arrows, 12
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
“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).
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William Makepeace Thackeray69
novelist 1811–1863Related quotes
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“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
“When he's happy, it makes you happy too.”
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Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 13