Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson
"England expects that every man will do his duty".
(Message to his men before the Battle of Trafalgar)
Ogden Nash - American humorist
"Let us pause to consider the English. Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish, because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz; that to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is".
Arthur Murray
"The people of England are never as happy as when you tell them they are ruined".
(From "The Upholsterer" - 1758)
William Shakespeare
"This blessed plot, this earth, this realm. This England, this nurse, this teaming womb of royal kings".
(John of Gaunt's speech in Richard II)
William Shakespeare
"We few. We happy few. We band of brothers...".
(King Henry's call to arms of the English army before the battle of Agincourt)
William Shakespeare
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.
On, on you noblest English!
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof;
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here the mettle of your pasture.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and upon this charge
Cry "God for Harry! England and Saint George".
(Henry V - Henry urges his men into the attack at the Siege of Harfleur)
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"When I warned them (the French Government) that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken! Some neck!".
(Speech to Canadian Parliament 1941)
George Borrow (1803-1881) - English writer
"Let no one sneer at the bruisers of England - What were the gladiators of Rome or the bull fighters of Spain, in its palmist days, compared to England's bruisers?".
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) - English poet
"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven".
("The Soldier" - 1914)
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too; and think foal scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm".
(Speech to the troops at Tilbury on the approach of the Armada 1588)