Famous quotes containing the words british, empire and/or decline:
“There’s nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.”
—Melvyn Bragg (b. 1939)
“So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my Good: by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new World, shall know.””
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“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)