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Europe quotes

  • The Knight in the triumph of his heart made several 6 reflections on thegreatness of the British Nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that theThames was thenoblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the Seven Wonders of the World; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.383, 20 May.

  • We must free ourselves from thinking in terms of nation states.The countries of westernEuropeareno longer ina position to protect themselves individually. Not one of them is any longer in a position to salvage Europe's culture.

    - Konrad Adenauer
      Speech, May.

  • What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, Through Europe to the Aetolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems: Second Series,'Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse', l.133^8.

  • Of these two literatures [French and German], as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has beena critical effort; the endeavours, in all branches of knowledgetheology, philosophy, history, art, sciencetoseethe object as initself it really is.

    - Matthew Arnold
    On Translating Homer, lecture 2.

  •    We shall never sheath the sword which we have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequatelyassured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.

    -Asquith
      Speech at the Guildhall, London, 9 Nov.

  •    In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.3.

  • †the Metropolis of Great-Britain, founded before the City of Rome, walled by Constantine the Great, no ways inferior to the greatest in Europe for Riches and Greatness.

    - Nathan   d.1742 Bailey
         LONDON1721 An Universal Etymological English Dictionary.

  • Early in life,Duveen†noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation.

    - S(amuel) N(athaniel) Behrman
      Duveen, ch.1.  Joseph Duveen was a highly successful US art dealer.

  • If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.

    -of)
      Attributed deathbed remark. Quoted in the House of Commons,16  Aug1945.

  • My map of Africa liesin Europe.Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.

    -of)
    Remarking on his preoccupation with European, as opposed to colonial, territorial concerns. Quoted in  A  J P  Taylor The Struggle for Mastery in Europe1848^1918 (1954), p.294. Canadian scholar anduniversity administrator, President of the University ofToronto (1958^71).

  • The courts of Europe are a jungle, compared to which your jungles here are a well-kept garden.

    - Robert Oxton Bolt
      Linedeliveredby Ray Mc Anally as Cardinal  Altamirano in The Mission.

  • Whatever maydivideus,Europe is ourcommonhome. A common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.

    - Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
      Speech while visiting the Federal Republic of Germany, 23 Nov.

  • This regard for the liberties of Europe, this care at one time for the protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance of power, is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.

    -John Bright
      Speech, Birmingham, 29 Oct.

  • There is no nation on the continent of Europe that is less able to do harm to England, and there isno nation on the continent of Europe to whom we are less able to do harm, than Russia.We are so separate that it seems impossible that the two nations, by the use of reason or common sense at all, could possibly be brought into conflict with each other.

    -John Bright
      Speech, Birmingham,13  Jan.

  • The age of chivalry isgone.That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

    - Edmund Burke
      Reflections on the Revolution in France.

  • Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

    -of Salisbury
      Speech, Caernarvon,10  Apr.

  • Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
      Of the British people's view of  World War I. Speech at the Guildhall, London, 9 Nov.

  • Are we to be the Don Quixotes of Europeto go about fighting foreverycausewhere we find that someonehas been wronged?

    - Richard Cobden
      Referring to the Crimean War, House of Commons, 22 Dec. Scottish  poet,   whose  best-known   lyric  'The   Flowers   of   the Forest'  commemorates   a   calamity   in   Ettrick   Forest.  Walter Scott was her prote   ge  .

  • : 'Tis for the honour of England that all Europe should know that we have blockheads of all ages. : I wonder there is not an Act of Parliament to save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of fools.

    -William Congreve
    FAINALLMIRABELL1700  The Way of the World, act1, sc.5.

  • Snow has begun to fall on the guilty secrets of Europe.

    - Douglas Eaglesham Dunn
      'The Deserter'.

  • I know that Ihavethe bodyof a weak and feeble woman, but I havetheheart and stomach of a kingand a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

    -Elizabeth I
       Address at Tilbury on the approach of the Spanish Armada.

  • Had every Christian in Hitler's Europe followed the example of the king of Denmark and decided to put on the yellow star, there would be today neither despair in the church nor talk of the death of God.

    - Emil L Fackenheim
      Quest for Past and Future.

  • Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.

    - H(erbert) A(lbert) L(aurens) Fisher
      History of Europe, ch.1.

  • These somewhat troublesome days when the great Mother Empire stands splendidly isolated in Europe.

    - Sir George Foster
      Speech in the House of Commons,16  Jan. The Times reported the speech under the heading of 'Splendid Isolation', 22  Jan.

  • Furnished as all Europe is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experimentation, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

    - Anne Frank
      Letter to Sir  Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 27  Jul.

  • Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

    -W(illiam) E(wart) Gladstone
      Speech,10  Apr.

  •   Iherebycommissionyouto carryout all thepreparations withregardto†atotal solutionoftheJewishquestion, in those territories of Europe that are under German influence.

    - HermannWilhelm Goering
      Directive to the Nazi High Command, 31  Jul, quoted in William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1962).

  • : Say, is it too early for a drink? : What's early about it? It's tomorrow in Europe and yesterday in China.

    - Ruth Gordon
      MAXPOLLY1943  Over Twenty-One, act 3.

  •    The lamps are going out all over Europe.We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

    - Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
      Remark made on the eve of World War I, 3  Aug, in his room at the Foreign Office, recounted in Twenty-FiveYears (1925), vol.2, ch.18.

  •    In1914, Europe had arrived at a point at which every country except Germany was afraid of the present, and Germany was afraid of the future.

    - Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
      House of Lords, 24  Jul.

  • All the wars that are now afoot in Europe have been fused together, and have become a single war.

    -Gustavus II (Adolphus)
      Letter to  Axel Oxenstierna, referring to the ThirtyYears War,1618^48.

  • TheTimes is, we suppose, entitled to the character it gives of itself, of being the'leading journal of Europe', and is perhaps the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world.

    -William Hazlitt
      In the Edinburgh Review, May.

  • Wer in Europa die Brandfackel des Krieges erhebt, kann nur das Chaos wu« n schen. Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.

    - Adolf Hitler
      Speech in the Reichstag, Berlin, 21 May.

  • Es ist die letzte territoriale Forderung, die ich Europa zu stellen habe, aber es ist die Forderung, von der ich nicht abgehe, und die ich, so Gott will, erfu«  llen werde. It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede and which,God-willing, I will make good.

    - Adolf Hitler
      On the Sudetenland. Speech in Berlin, 26 Sep. In Max Domarus (ed) Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen1932^1945 (1962), p.927.

  • My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.

    -Washington Irving
    ^20  The Sketch Book,'The  Author's  Account of Himself'.

  • It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilitiesitentailsisfighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

    - Henry James
      Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 4 Feb.

  • England still stands outside Europe. Europe's voiceless tremors do not reach her. Europe is apart, and England is not of her flesh and body.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

  • At its birth, the republic gave voice to three wordsLiberty,Equality,Fraternity! If Europeiswiseand just, each of those words signifies Peace.

    - Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
      A Manifesto to the Powers, 4 Mar.

  • Securitycan only be obtained bya scheme by whichthe nations of Europe and outside agree together that all will guarantee each, and each will guarantee all. The purposes ofthewar will be attained ifthereisa League of Nations with an absolute and decisive veto upon any mere aggression, and consideration of any legitimate claims that any of the countries engaged in the war may be able to make good.

    - Hastings Bernard Lees-Smith
      House of Commons, 21 Oct.

  • He seemed at ease and to have the look of the last gentleman in Europe.

    - Ada Leverson
      Of Oscar Wilde. Letters to the Sphinx.

  •    It is a great war for the emancipation of Europe from the thralldom of a military caste which has thrown its shadows upon two generations of men, and is now plunging theworld intoawelterof bloodshedand death.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech in Queen's Hall, London, 21 Sep.

  • We have been too comfortable and too indulgentmany, perhaps, too selfishand the stern hand of fatehasscoured ustoan elevationwhere we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks we had forgotten, of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as men and women of thisgeneration last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech, London,19 Sep.

  • Mientras en Norteame  rica la colonizacio  n deposito   los ge  rmenes de un esp|ritu y una econom|a que se plasmaban entonces en Europa y a los cuales pertenec|a el porvenir, a la Ame  rica espan‹  ola trajo los efectos y los me  todos de un esp|ritu y una econom|a que declinaban ya y a los cuales no pertenec|a sino el pasado. Whereas in North America colonization planted the seeds of the spirit and economy then growing in Europe

    -Jose   Carlos Maria t egui
    French poet,  author of  Lais  and  Fables.  Born in Normandy,  she spent most of her life in England. Her Lais in particular  were of great influence on French literature.

  •    A spectre is haunting Europethe spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holyalliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.

    - Karl Heinrich Marx
      The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels, translated by Samuel Moore,1888).

  • He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, theyare in the happy condition of judicious, unencumbered travellers in Europe; they crossthe frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet bag.

    - Herman Melville
      Of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  • When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.

    - Prince Clemens Lothar Wenzel Metternich
      Letter, 26  Jan.

  •    Slavery broke the world in half, it broke it in every way. It broke Europe.It madethem intosomething else, it made themslave masters, it madethem crazy.You can't dothat for hundreds of years and it not take a toll. They had to dehumanize, not just the slaves but themselves.

    -Toni Chloe Anthony ne  e Wofford Morrison
    Quoted in Paul Gilroy Small  Acts (1993),'Living memory: a meeting with Toni Morrison'.

  • A fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe.

    - Horatio,Viscount Nelson Nelson
    Letter to Lady Hamilton, Mar, before the Battle of Copenhagen.

  •    If the Austrian Empire did not exist, it would have to be created in the interest of Europe and of humanity.

    -  Frantis›  ek Palacky
    Quoted in A J P Taylor From Napoleon to theSecond International (1993), p.169.

  • England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example. 653

    -William known as  theYounger Pitt
      Replying to a toast in which he had been described as the saviour of his country in the wars with France. Quoted in R Coupland War Speeches ofWilliam Pitt (1915).

  • Je regrette l'Europe aux anciens parapets! I long for Europe of the ancient parapets! "

    - (Jean Nicolas) Arthur Rimbaud
    Poe  sies,'Le Bateau ivre'.

  • In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

    - Philip Milton Roth
      Interview in Time, Nov.

  • He meant to gather for America an undreamed-of collection of art so great and complete that a trip to Europe would be superfluous.

    - Aline Bernstein ne  e Loucheim Saarinen
    On the philanthropist and collectorJohn Pierpont Morgan. In Antiques, Oct.

  • We are part of the community of Europe and we must do our dutyas such.

    -Marquis of
      Speech at Caernarvon,10 Apr. In TheTimes,11 Apr.

  • This barbarous feeling of nationality†has become the curse of Europe.

    - Le  opold Se  dar Senghor
      Diary, 20 May.

  • Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,' Locksley Hall', l.184.

  • Thisgoing into Europe will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle- aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brusselshotel fora group grope.

    - E P Thompson
      OnBritain's entry into the EEC, in the SundayTimes, 27 Apr.

  • Madam, there are fifty thousand men slain this year in Europe, and not one an Englishman.

    - Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Orford Walpole
      To Queen Caroline, on avoiding British participation in the War of the Polish Succession. Quoted inJohn Hervey Memoirs 1734^43 (1848), vol.1.

  •    The eyes ofall England are onthis Parliament.If youdoin good earnest wish to see England hold the balance of Europe and to be indeed at the head of the Protestant interest, it will appear by your right improving the present opportunity.

    -William III also called  William of Orange
      At the State Opening of Parliament, Dec.

  • The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeand Europe needs Russia.

    - Boris Yeltsin
      Addressing socialist MPs in Strasbourg,15 Apr.

  • America is God's Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming† God is making the American.

    - Israel Zangwill
      The Melting Pot.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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