When a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut of without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared : "We are not amused".

Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.

A couple from Sydney or Melbourne might leave on the same day for their holiday: the wife might go sun-bathing at Surfers Paradise, in Queensland, the husband ski-ing in the Snowy Mountains. A lucky country.

The world still consists of two clearly divided groups: the English and the foreigners. One group consists of less than 50 million people; the other of 3,950 million. The latter group does not really count.

Foreigners have souls; the English haven't.

When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles, - but never England.

Nobody uses his car in New York, because so many people use it that traffic is congested and unbearably slow.