There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world." — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay… — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
The combination of an out-of-control tabloid press and a readership that thrills to the destruction of the England head coach is something no other country can offer. Scolari was driven out; Steve McClaren's personal life made the front pages. Neither of them even held the job. Then there was the fake-sheikhing of Sven-Göran Eriksson. That a newspaper should so brilliantly… — Simon Barnes Copy Share
Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama. — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
A living countryside is not a luxury but a necessity for the human population; if you let conservation go hang until your pockets are… — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both are ritualistically… — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have… — Simon Barnes Copy Share
Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is. — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly. — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
Sven must have neglected to pay tribute to one of those strict Nordic gods. But instead of cursing Eriksson himself, Thor has done a… — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win… — Simon Barnes Copy Share Image
