Famous quotes containing the words british empire, british, empire and/or decline:
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Quite frankly, if you bed people of belowstairs class, they go to the papers.”
—Jane Clark, British millionaire politician’s wife. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 15 (June 13, 1994)
“Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)