Israelis keep teaching you your own business. God knows everything but the Israelis know everything better.

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

Was he joking? Was he being sarcastic? Aggressive? Impertinent? Or just courteous? There was no telling from his impassive face. What a country, he thought despairingly. In Russia you always knew. If a man made a stern face he was threatening; if he was laughing uproariously, he was joking.

The man who is not afraid of danger is not a hero, but a psychopath.

I said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.

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".

The English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour. They are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour.