George Augustus Henry Sala

"I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jacket, that some or would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny s and the s, that grace our morning repast."

"While travelling in America never cease to bear this cardinal fact in mind, that this is a wholesale and not a retail country."

"England is surrounded by enemies—by real enemies who hate her. Why? Because she tries to be honest; and she tries to be free."

"The staples, indeed, of the diet of the common people in Greece comprise bread, somewhat coarse in texture and dark in color, grapes, and black olives. They will also eat as much of a milky kind of cheese (turi) as they can get; and they are greatly addicted to sousing nearly all their dishes with . A common repast for a Greek peasant is a hunch of bread, scored backwards and forwards in parallel lines with a knife to a criss-cross pattern; this is seasoned with pepper and salt, and drenched with oil; and is then heartily partaken of, not only by the agricultural classes, but by monks, sailors, and artisans."