John

“Just off the roaring, high-velocity motorways and the congested main roads, there is still a leisurely, low-decibel, cyclists' England. Here, quite apart from national parks, conservation areas and other tourists' high spots is an unspectacular, intimate countryside: and it is the cyclist, himself unspectacular, not the motorist, who is best equipped to enjoy its pleasures of pub, church, market-place and cottage in all their variety of regional character.”
― Frederick Alderson, England by Bicycle

“We didn't exactly believe your story.'
Then --?'
'We believed your two hundred dollars.'
'You mean --' She seemed not to know what he meant.
'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

“I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.”
― Tony Benn

“The range and diversity of...places in England with character or charm is often overlooked. A bicycle more than anything else helps one both to find and to appreciate them: they and it have quiet tastes in common.

And a bicycle leaves no smell, oil-drip, weakened fabric or frightened pedestrian in its wake.”
― Frederick Alderson, England by Bicycle