37 Quotes About British-empire

The growth and improvement of New York was a wonderful example of the vast and irrevocable benefits reaped by the English empire during the four years when England was at peace and her rivals were at war. Yet in every other English colony, from the Carolinas northward, the immeasurable disasters of the great Algonquin wars set colonial development back by more than thirty years. New York alone was spared. New York alone had Andros.

The revolt Samuel Sharpe had started on a Caribbean island was building to a culmination at Westminster – a final drive to asphyxiate slavery throughout the British Empire. But it came not through a spectacular legislative duel or an inspiring floor speech, but rather through the grind of parliamentary process and the unromantic reality of dickering in the shadows.

Then the congregation listened as the clock chimed the twelve bars of midnight. At the last one, Knibb shouted: 'The monster is dead! The negro is free! The church 'broke out into one loud and long-continued burst of exultation and joy,' that awoke Knibb’s young son and rattled all the windows. 'Never did I hear such a sound,' Knibb wrote later.

It was William who would climb out of his carriage unafraid and help a farmer drive a herd of cattle or sheep across a road when necessary.

So spoke the man whose importance originated in the golden harvest he had reaped with the resistless hand of force, from the the legal, but unfortunate possessors, in a far distant region, where the conviction of riches proves certain destruction to the hapless natives, and poverty is considered as the greatest crime their European plunderers can possibly be accused of.

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

The English, he thought, had once conquered most of the known world, but their cooking hadn't improved as a result.

A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.