“This place is a hive of inactivity.”
Another of mine, from September 17, 2004, on being disappointed to see nothing happening on the roadwork outside our house… again.
“But we have a saying out here [in the suburbs of Richmond] about people like Al [Gore]; they’ll steal your chaw of tobacco if you so much as yawn.”
David Shiflett in National Review March 22, 1999
Journalist W.R. “Titterton tells of an interview with the Aga Khan, in which His Highness said that if a wall fell and crushed his foot he would exclaim: ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to me.’ To which Chesterton responded, ‘Then I feel inclined to retort that the Persian language must be singularly deficient in expletives.’”
An author whose name I failed to record in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 2 #6 Issue 15 (April-May, 1999)
“More than 1,500 pieces of graffiti were preserved in Pompeii when that Roman city was buried in volcanic ash 1,922 years ago. They include: ‘Aufidius was here.’ ‘Marcus loves Spendusa.’ ‘I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.’ Source: The Washington Post.”
Globe & Mail July 12, 2001 p. A16
“Sir, Friends of the vanishing apostrophe should start with Westminster City Council, whose vans carry the message: ‘Were working for a cleaner City.’ Yours faithfully, PAMELA HUTCHINSON, 6 Cleveland Gardens, W2, March 12.”
Letter in the Times March 14, 1984 [sent to me by my father, a connoisseur of all things rhetorical including sloppy usage and its foes]
“My own conclusion, after interviewing him at length one spring afternoon back in 1967, was that while [then-Social Credit leader R.N.] Thompson might not be anti-Semitic, he certainly was anti-semantic.”
Peter C. Newman in Maclean’s April 1, 1996
“Un tour de faiblesse”
Another of mine, from c. May 21, 2007
“This girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army does not believe in her innocence.”
A joke apparently from Sigmund Freud, quoted by Michael Potemra in a review of F.H. Buckley’s The Morality of Laughter in National Review June 30, 2003