A.E. on the British: If they were only alive they would be the best people in the world

It is really a dead country, but there are very nice people among the dead, and if they were only alive they would be the best people in the world.

   --A.E. [pen name of George William Russell, Anglo-Irish writer] (1867-1935), in a letter to his friend Frank O'Connor from London, quoted by O'Connor in My Father's Son, his autobiography