British Culture Quotes

“With all its ethnic and cultural diversity, there’s nowhere else like London for tolerance , compassion and humanity.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“I was once in San Francisco, and I parked in the only available space, which happened to be on the other side of the street. The law descended on me. Was I aware of how dangerous the manoeuvre I’d just made was? I looked at the law a bit blankly. What had I done wrong? I had, said the law, parked against the flow of traffic. Puzzled, I looked up and down the street. What traffic? I asked. The traffic that would be there, said the law, if there was any traffic. This was a bit metaphysical, even for me, so I explained, a bit lamely, that in England we just park wherever we can find a parking space available, and weren’t that fussy about which side of the street it was on. He looked at me aghast, as if I was lucky to have got out of a country of such wild and crazy car parkers alive, and promptly gave me a ticket. Clearly he would rather have deported me before my subversive ideas brought chaos and anarchy to streets that normally had to cope with nothing more alarming than a few simple assault rifles. Which, as we know, in the States are perfectly legal, and without which they would be overrun by herds of deer, overbearing government officers, and lawless British tea importers.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Shitting and bleeding. Always had a problem with shit and blood. The English love to talk about shitting, so other nationalities can skip this bit.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“The difference between the English and the rest of mankind is that the English have long known the truth about themselves — which makes them always able to evade it discreetly, to slip round it.”
― Romain Gary

“This is what Britain has always done - Britain the island, the mountains, valleys, lochs, lakes, forests and coastline of the place; she accepts all comers but quietly transforms them, shapes them in her own image. Britain has had a history of making things British.”
― Neil Oliver, A History of Ancient Britain

“Things get a bit out of hand at Caroline's. No one eats anything, someone pisses in the pot plants and the turkey is stuffed, arse up, down the toilet. I didn’t see who did it, but it was obviously the silly English boys, the Americans would never do anything like that, they’re much more respectful.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“If Britain ever had an actual government of merit and character, it would have severed all ties with the stone-age system of monarchy long time ago.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“The newspaper was always behind the news, not in front. You shouldn't ever go to the papers for information. They usually printed what they thought people wanted to see, and they had no explanation to give. It wasn't the king they saw. That wasn't the king at all. It was the king's shadow. [...] The shadow king was a part of the English tradition. The English, the boy said, were fond of shadows. [...] Somebody asked if you were ever talking to a real man or a shadow when you talked to an Englishman [...] Some of them were the man and the shadow at the same time, but more shadow than man. [...] It was always difficult to distinguish between the man and the shadow, and sometimes it was all shadow. (p.49)”
― George Lamming

“For all that little financial lesson in the Montreal hotel, Emily was still confused by British currency. She’d grown highly incensed not only with it but with me because she couldn’t understand it. It was the only thing I ever heard her admit to not understanding. It was in vain that I tried to show her the difference between a half crown and a two-shilling piece. She refused to admit they were anything but two versions of fifty cents, and persisted in being so stubbornly obtuse about it that I finally told her that if she just bring herself to read what was written on them, she’d know. This didn’t work out so well either because she’d keep taxi drivers waiting interminably while she’d scan the reading matter of each and every coin, turning it round and round, sometimes breathing on it and rubbing it clear. When I suggested that people might think her awfully queer, she said, not at all, they’d merely mistake her for a coin collector.
I tried explaining to her that one florin meant two shillings but that only made her madder. The day we received a bill made out in guineas and I told her that there was no such thing as a guinea, it was a pound and one shilling, only the swanker shops charged you in guineas, and you paid in pound and shillings, but you called it guineas, although as I had said there really was no such thing, she slapped me.”
― Cornelia Otis Skinner, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s

“In London we’d be suppressing our complaints about the queue while looking extremely displeased.”
― Kirsten McDougall, She's a Killer

“Not The Done Thing by Stewart Stafford

Pass the strawberry conserve here,
Layer some cream on top,
This is how one eats scones, my dear,
We’re not pigs feeding in a trough.

Pinky raised when you sip tea,
No slurping sounds escaping your mouth,
Cucumber sandwiches in tiny triangles,
Crusts of bread all cut out.

Drawing room dramas over cordials ensue,
Gossip exchanged with finest manners,
Secrets kept as the cabal breaks up,
The public face flew on their banners.

© 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford