Sunshine is more health-giving than pills and potions: and travel in foreign lands is a mental tonic, which feeds the mind even if it empties the pocket.

Civilisation makes us all as alike as peas in a pod, and it is the very uncouth - uncivilised, if you will - element which individualises nations.

Theatrical work means too much work or none.

Organised brigandage has ceased to exist, but murder and highway robbery are still far too common in the less frequented districts. Travellers rarely suffer to-day, however. It is the wealthy inhabitants who run risks at the hand of the mafia, or lawless Sicilian.

Adversity is the touchstone of character: it is not in success but in misfortune that hidden powers bear fruit.

No Southern people ever seem to possess the energy of their Northern brothers, and in Sicily a dolce far niente life is much enjoyed. Time is no object. According to Pliny, Aristhomacus watched the life of the bee carefully for fifty-eight years, which is just the sort of work a Sicilian of to-day would like.

Few authors are so interesting as their work - they generally reserve their wit or trenchant sarcasm for their books.