Anglophile Quotes

Though this is my first trip to the United Kingdom, I am a proud Anglophile. I admire the practical temperament of the people. I love the artful details of daily life: a hand-stitched tea cozy in the shape of a Victorian mansion, the Wellie boots, the sheep's wool stockings, and the best tailors in the world. ~ Adriana Trigiani

He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. ~ Anthony Horowitz

There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret record. ~ Carroll Quigley

The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day - terrified of letting him slip and tumble - I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the following morning but I had to decline. I pleaded truthfully that I was booked on a plane for Chile. 'I am so sorry,' said this courteous old genius. 'But may I then offer you a gift in return for your company?' I naturally protested with all the energy of an English middle-class upbringing: couldn't hear of such a thing; pleasure and privilege all mine; no question of accepting any present. He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. 'You will remember,' he said, 'the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.' And he then recited the following:

What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti) - 'Inclusiveness' - may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. I was mumbling my tha ~ Christopher Hitchens

He ambled towards the abyss again,
Acquiescing to the adroit turns of his
Abtenauer, his Altai horse, his Appaloosa,
His Ardennais, and his Australian Brumby…..
Agilely each equine adumbrates the aesthetics
Of aestivating, much like aficionados of nature
And much like ailurophiles, too……
Ambrosial aromas attract his attention to the
Assemblage of amaranth foliage growing
At the abyss's edge. "Anglophile!" "Antediluvian!"
"Aplomb!" "Apocryphal!" "Apophenia!" "Apothecary!"
Each petal calls out to him as he captures their vision in his
Aqueous humor. Now an arabesque they display,
Then some archipelago formation, as they (those purple perennials)
Give in to the Wind's whimsy. "What's in my arsenal?" He asks himself.
"Do I have Authenticity, like Astrophysics and Astronomy?"
"Am I at last in my Autumn, torn asunder by Avarice?
Shall I now step toward Winter to wither and waste away, without rebirth?"
The Summer's azure skies call him back, reminding him of his herd.
Homeward he must turn. The pony pushes him back to the plain.
And, as he trudges away from the abyss, the warriors of darkness -
His old battle buddies who left him behind as they raced toward Providence -
Rattle in his mind with their Paleolithic war toys, on the war path, chanting:
"The greatest battles we face are in the silent chambers of our own souls….."


-----from the poem 'Summ ~ Mariecor Ruediger

If a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares, and attendant British journalists rejoice, 'You see: the American Cousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are.'
But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. they want to see one queen, once, and if another came to town next week, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw more than two small boys and an Anglophile.
Americans want to see one movie star, one giraffe, one jet plance, one murder, but only one. They run up a skyscraper or the fame of generals and evangelists and playwrights in one week and tear them all down in an hour, and the mark of excellence everywhere is 'under new management'. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Nobody over here [in England] says 'six-thirty' or 'seven-thirty', they say 'hoppussix' and 'hoppusseven'. And 'in' at home is 'trendy' here and 'give it up' is 'pack it in' and 'never mind!' is 'not to worry!' ... and as Shaw once observed, we are two countries divided by a common language. I am now going to bed because it's quataposstwelve. ~ Helene Hanff

All my life I've wanted to see London. [ ... ] I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die. ~ Helene Hanff

I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world. ~ Jefferson Mays