And I definitely do that very British thing of, take things with a pinch of salt, stiff upper lip, you know what I mean?
I was brought up in a fairly emotionally repressed kind of society in Northeast England where one didn't express emotions and was expected to keep a stiff upper lip.
Only yield when you must, never "give up the ship," but fight on to the last "with a stiff upper lip!
The English take their pleasures sadly, after the fashion of their country.
THE British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality.
My own theory about the phlegmatic qualities and properties of the English is the mountain of pure white sugar hydrocarbons they consume every day bloody day of the year - the stiff upper lip is petrified sugar; that's Bermuda's revenge, the with death, the rotting future square in the teeth of it.
Christianity is in no way a stoic faith. It fundamentally rejects the "stiff upper lip" school of thought.
What do you feel? I’ve never been asked this question once. None of us has. We aren’t supposed to feel. We’re British.
British people don't express when they are in pain. They don't think it's elegant.
It is poison - rank poison - to knuckle down to care and hardships. They must come to us all, albeit in different shapes, and we may not escape them. It is not possible. But we may swindle them out of half of their puissance with a stiff upper lip.
And so I was very grateful that I didn't do the British stiff upper lip, but I went straight to a therapist. And she was wonderful and helpful, and I went for about two years.
Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers.
People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.
I studied in Britain and spent great moments of my life there as a student living in Belsize Park. I admire the British trait of the stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. My wife studied in Britain, too, and both of us have many friends there.
I grew up in southern Africa but was born in England, so my family was afflicted with the stiff upper lip of the British. When coupled with the violence we saw as children, that can be a fatal combination. Fortunately, I have an outlet for trauma in my writing.
Well-bred English people never have imagination.
Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.
Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare.
The British people are extremely conventional. You don't always know what one is thinking or feeling because it is basically hidden. The British people basically let you see what they want you to see.
I'm English. I can't accept happiness that easily. There's got to be a trick in there somewhere.
We are English, and I expect you to behave as such. No more crying.
Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.
