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)
“If we were doing this in the Falklands they would love it. It’s part of our heritage. The British have always been fighting wars.”
—British soccer fan. quoted in Independent (London, Dec. 23, 1988)
“The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it.... “Beware of me,” it says, “but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)