Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.

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.

I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.

You must not refuse any additional cups of tea under the following circumstances: if it is hot; if it is cold; if you are tired; if anybody thinks that you might be tired; if you are nervous; if you are gay; before you go out; if you are out; if you have just returned home; if you feel like it; if you do not feel like it; if you have had no tea for some time; if you have just had a cup.

A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard of before, and nobody else either.

In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly, "I don't object, you know." If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: "I rather fancy you, in fact.