If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilised.

-Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills
  Mrs Cheveley speaking. An Ideal Husband, act 3.

   A strange manner of battle, where one side works by constant motion and ceaseless charges, while the other can but endure passivelyas it standsfixed tothesod.The Norman arrow and sword worked on: in the English ranks the only movement was the dropping of the dead: the living stood motionless.

-William of Poitiers   11c.
c.1071 Of theBattle of Hastings,14 Oct1066. Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum (edited by R Foreville,1952).

An English peer of the right sort can be bored nearer to the point where mortification sets in, without showing it, than anyone else in the world.

-Plum
  Something Fresh, ch.3.