Karel Čapek

“ People say that the use of Sunday is to enable them to go into the country; this is not true; people go into the country to protect themselves in a wild panic from the English Sunday. On Saturday every Briton is assailed by the blind instinct to escape somewhere, just as an animal flees in a blind instinct from an approaching earthquake. ”

“ Good English cooking is simply French cooking; the average cooking in the average hotel for the average Englishman explains to a large extent the English bleakness and taciturnity. Nobody can beam and warble while chewing pressed beef smeared with diabolical mustard. Nobody can exult aloud while unglueing from his teeth a quivering tapioca pudding. A man becomes terribly serious if he is given salmon bedaubed with pink dextrin ”