England Quotes - page 65
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indianan early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them.... The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of minefor I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.
Mark Twain
In grammar school-and as new to American history as to the American tongue-I nevertheless puzzled through several junior biographies of Franklin because young Ben's ambition magnified my own. I kept lists in those years of the books I read. I recognized the yearning to escape the limits of family-"a strong inclination for the sea”-as well as some more vertical yearning: a boy becomes a man by gaining wisdom; each book a rung therefore; each rung a classical tag. I weighed the shame of the sordid candle shop where Franklin was forced to work for his father against the optimism of old New England.
Richard Rodriguez
Few can contemplate without a sense of exhilaration the splendid achievements of practical energy and technical skill, which, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, were transforming the face of material civilization, and of which England was the daring, if not too scrupulous, pioneer.
E. F. Schumacher
Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement... Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l. a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Walter Harte
From the multitude of books published on the subject of cultivating the earth, one would have imagined the art to have been more studied, than it really has been; since upon the whole it continued in. a sort of declining condition from the days of Virgil and Columella, till the time of Constantine IV. and then lay in a kind of dormant state till about the middle of Henry VIIIth's reign, when it was rather revived,, than improved.
Indeed, about that time, Judge Fitzherbert, in England (better known among us, as author of another/ excellent work, called Natura Brevium) Tatti, Stefano, Agostino Gallo, Sansovino, Lauro, Tarello, &c. in Italy, published several considerable books in Agriculture; but our countryman was the first, if we except Crescenzio dell' Agricoltura, (whose fine performance was printed at Florence in 1478) and Pier Marino the translator of Palladius de Re Rustica, who made his work public in the year 1528.
Walter Harte
Nothing can save England, if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then, indeed, our story is told. If, while on all sides foreign nations are every day asserting a more aggressive and militant nationalism by arms and trade – if we remain paralysed by our own theoretical doctrines or plunged in the stupor of after-war exhaustion...indeed, all that the croakers predict will come true and our ruin will be certain and final.
Winston Churchill
Since the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England, and then the invention of all of our gadgets and contrivances and all of the things and modern conveniences-we unconsciously left God behind. We didn't mean to do it. We just became so involved in getting our big bank accounts that we unconsciously forgot about God-we didn't mean to do it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Since the settlement of [the] Constitution, now nearly two centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though there is no country in which there has been so continuous and such considerable change. How is this? Because the wisdom of your forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of human passions. Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and parties could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving, at the same time, the security for every man's rights and the fountain of honour.
Benjamin Disraeli
It is fourteen years ago since yourself, then the leader of the country gentlemen...appealed to me to assist you at a moment of apparently overwhelming disaster. I ultimately agreed to do so...because, from my earliest years, my sympathies had been with the landed interest of England.
Benjamin Disraeli
![Her Majesty's present Ministers have hitherto been enabled to secure that peace, so necessary to the welfare of all the civilized countries, and so peculiarly the interest of our own. But this ineffable blessing cannot be obtained by the passive principle of non-interference. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of England in the Councils of Europe. ... May [the election] return to Westminster a Parliament not unworthy of the power of England and resolved to maintain it! (Benjamin Disraeli)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/93/benjamin-disraeli-ascendancy-blessing-516393.webp)
[T]here are some who challenge the expediency of the Imperial character of this realm. Having attempted, and failed, to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may, perhaps, now recognize in the disintegration of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only accomplish, but precipitate their purpose. The immediate dissolution of Parliament will afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course which will materially influence its fortunes and shape its destiny. Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the country.
Benjamin Disraeli
In the great struggle between popular principles and liberal opinions, which is the characteristic of our age, I hope ever to be found on the side of the people, and of the Institutions, of England. It is our Institutions that have made us free, and can alone keep us so; by the bulwark which they offer to the insidious encroachments of a convenient, yet enervating, system of centralisation, which, if left unchecked, will prove fatal to the national character.
Benjamin Disraeli
What may be the fate of the Eastern part of Europe it would be arrogant for me to speculate upon...But I am sure that as long as England is ruled by English Parties who understand the principles on which our Empire is founded, and who are resolved to maintain that Empire, our influence in that part of the world can never be looked upon with indifference...The present is a state of affairs which requires the most vigilant examination and the most careful management. But those who suppose that England ever would uphold, or at this moment particularly is upholding, Turkey from blind superstition and from a want of sympathy with the highest aspirations of humanity are deceived. What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England. Nor will we ever agree to any step, though it may obtain for a moment comparative quiet and a false prosperity, that hazards the existence of that Empire.
Benjamin Disraeli
What, then, was that policy? It was a policy of conditional neutrality. Under the circumstances of the case we did not believe that it was for the honour or interest of England or Turkey that we should take any part in the impending contest; but while we enforced the neutrality which we prepared to observe, we declared at the same time that that neutrality must cease if British interests were assailed or menaced. Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own, have denounced this policy as a selfish policy. My Lord Mayor, it is as selfish as patriotism.
Benjamin Disraeli
