Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that”
Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer thut das
Maxims and Arrows, 12
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
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
Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (16 September 1914), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 33
1910s
As quoted in An Essay towards a History of the principal Comets that have appeared since the Year 1742 (1769), p. 49. Halley's Comet reappeared on December 25, 1758.
Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
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.
Essay on Mitford's History of Greece (1824)
“There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.”
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.”
Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 13
