More than any other in Western Europe, Britain remains a country where a traveler has to think twice before indulging in the ordinary food of ordinary people.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Charles Caleb Colton

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

George Bernard Shaw

We must do the best we can with what we have.

Edward Rowland Sill

I travel abroad constantly on book promotion and research, and the Internet is invaluable to me for accessing U.K. news in places such as America, which most of the time hasn't heard of England.

Peter James

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pool is terrible, but that doesn't have much to do with my record swims. That's all mental attitude.

Mark Spitz

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites...Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke

In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.

Augustine of Hippo

To talk about balance, it's easier to talk about what's out of balance. And I think anytime that you have any disease, and disease meaning lack of ease, lack of flow... dis-ease. So any time there's disease, you're out of balance, whether it's jealousy, anger, greed, anxiety, fear.

Ricky Williams

The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV.

Rupert Holmes

It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

James Madison