Typical English Quotes & Sayings

45,000 sections of reinforced concrete - three tons each.
Nearly 300 watchtowers.
Over 250 dog runs.
Twenty bunkers.
Sixty five miles of anti-vehicle trenches - signal wire, barbed wire, beds of nails.
Over 11,000 armed guards.
A death strip of sand, well-raked to reveal footprints.
200 ordinary people shot dead following attempts to escape the communist regime.
96 miles of concrete wall.

Not your typical holiday destination.

JF Kennedy said the Berlin Wall was a better option than a war. In TDTL, the Anglo-German Bishop family from the pebbledashed English suburb of Oaking argue about this - among other - notions while driving to Cold War Berlin, through all the border checks, with a plan to visit both sides of it. — Joanna Campbell

Typical English holidaymakers prefer not to mingle with foreigners since they strongly believe that they already have too many of them in England. The last thing they need during their holiday is to see and meet more aliens. Actually, that is the main reason why they choose a holiday abroad, to escape from aliens who occupy England. — Angela Kiss

Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,' I agreed, 'but I'm afraid I'm one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea. — Barbara Pym

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another. — A. N. Wilson

Carlyle, a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetorician out of necessity, constantly aroused by the craving for a strong faithas well as by the feeling of an incapacity for it (Min this respect a typical romantic!) ... Fundamentally, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Cabinet is a conscious, explicit attempt to portray the Doctor himself as myth. "He's a mischief, a leprechaun, a boojum," says one character, bookseller and collector of incunabula, Syme. "The Doctor is a myth. He's straight out of Old English folklore, typical trickster figure really."29 Neither part of an ongoing narrative, nor specifically located within the series' past, Cabinet is in a position to challenge the portrayal of the Doctor. — Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, Kristine Larsen

I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking. — Philipp Meyer

The typical Scottish writer of the nineteenth century went down to London with great talents, sometimes even genius, attempted for a short time to work in the English tradition for an English public and then, having drifted through hack journalism, either starved to death in a garret or took his own life. — Sydney Goodsir Smith

John Guidetti is a typical English striker. Even though he is Swedish — Gareth Barry

The English-language press in India supports the project of corporate globalization fully. It has no time for dispossession and drought and farmers' debts, the ravages that the corporate globalization project is wreaking on the poor of India. So to suddenly turn around and condemn the riots is a typical middle-class response. Let's support everything that leads to the conditions in which the massacre takes place, but when the killing starts, you recoil in middle-class horror, and say, Oh, that's not very nice. Can't we be more civilized? — Arundhati Roy

Being a typical Briton, I love my home comforts and always try and find an English pub where I can tuck into some traditional English food, accompanied by a nice pint. Fortunately, I haven't been ill with food poisoning or anything like that, which is quite surprising considering how many different types of food I eat when I'm travelling. — Olly Murs

The general burden of the Coolidge memoirs was that the right hon. gentleman was a typical American, and some hinted that he was the most typical since Lincoln. As the English say, I find myself quite unable to associate myself with that thesis. He was, in truth, almost as unlike the average of his countrymen as if he had been born green. The Americano is an expansive fellow, a back-slapper, full of amiability; Coolidge was reserved and even muriatic. The Americano has a stupendous capacity for believing, and especially for believing in what is palpably not true; Coolidge was, in his fundamental metaphysics, an agnostic. The Americano dreams vast dreams, and is hag-ridden by a demon; Coolidge was not mount but rider, and his steed was a mechanical horse. The Americano, in his normal incarnation, challenges fate at every step and his whole life is a struggle; Coolidge took things as they came. — H.L. Mencken

With typical arrogance, the Anglos claimed to cherish freedom of speech but failed to recognize this right for anyone but themselves. Where did the Constitution say anything about English? — James Crawford

The typical English painting is narrative in character. The English are a nation of diarists. — Neville Weston

The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread. — Rashers Tierney

There wasn't a single good character in 'Titanic' who was English and this is typical. — David Warner

In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion ... But I really enjoy this contrast. — Italo Zucchelli