You don’t travel in order to deck yourself with exoticism and anecdotes like a Christmas tree, but so that the route plucks you, rinses you, wrings you out, makes you like one of those towels threadbare with washing that are handed out with slivers of soap in brothels.
NICOLAS BOUVIER, The Scorpion-Fish

This is the reason that in the insane asylum, all the lunatics whose minds were not completely gone were trapped in the dilemma of whether they were in Pakistan or Hindustan. If they were in Hindustan, then where was Pakistan? If they were in Pakistan, then how could this be, since a while ago, while staying right here, they had been in Hindustan?
SAADAT HASAN MANTO, Toba Tek Singh
(Trans. from Urdu by Frances W. Pritchett)

Countries, like people, are loved for their failings.
F. YEATS BROWN, Bengal Lancer