Half Remembered Gk Chesterton Lines.

[sandyRoe]

Something to the effect that the 'ordinary' Englishman is something of a sleeping tiger so when angered would be a formidable foe.
Not even half remembered. Does anyone know the work?

[SeaJayPea]

There's this:

"You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes".

Or this:

That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.

Either of these fit the bill Sandy?

[jourdain2]

Try the poem 'The Secret People'. (GKC) "We are the people of England and we have not spoken yet."

[sandyRoe]

I see now, thanks to Jourdain2, that it was a lion rather than a tiger.

TY, both.