Quotes
Quotes about America
Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,--never! never! never!
Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
Then join in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.
I am not a Virginian, but an American.
In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, or goes to an American play, or looks at an American picture or statue?
America has furnished to the world the character of Washington. And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.
Thank God! I--I also--am an American!
I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.
I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.
No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.
In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
There is that glorious epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the historian,in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men:"Good Americans when they die go to Paris."
America thou half-brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land.
It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.
...America was a new country and it seemed queer that they'd got all these slums there already in that short space of time
... and also, there was (in America)less of a smell of people being dead, somehow. I can't say exactly what I mean, but when you're in any English town you can't help feeling that millions of people are dead and gone there, all through the ages, and their sort of ghosts are floating about and making the place seem a bit depressing and heavy somehow
Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book
The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch
Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much
A character in Evelyn Waugh's Put Out More Flags said that the difference between prewar and postwar life was that, prewar, if one thing went wrong the day was ruined; postwar, if one thing went right the day would be made. America is a prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong.
