English Quotes

Elections are also about the future - the pledges that we are making for this country. For those who care about equality and fairness in the UK, and beyond, Labour really is the only choice.

Cambridge is thriving and Britain is working. We have been telling people - 'if you value it, vote for it' - and this is particularly relevant in Cambridge.

You can plant a dream.

Love means to commit yourself without guarantee.

Better a bad excuse, than none at all.

The early bird catches the worm.

The sea hath fish for every man.

Have all the hopes of ages come to naught? Is life no more with noble meaning fraught?

Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay!

O what is life, if we must hold it thus as wind-blown sparks hold momentary fire?

Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise the rebel spirit surging in my veins, let the Law deal me penalties and pains And make me hideous in my neighbours' eyes.

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.

I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, 'Tis that I can't remember how They go.

I know you've been married to the same woman for 69 years. That is marvellous. It must be very inexpensive.

Meaning, however, is no great matter.

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.

I'd like to direct more operas.

I would say critically of myself that I am somebody without secrets. Sometimes acting depends on you having a secret. I don't think I've ever had that.

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

I don't have any big regrets.