This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens

Of course the darkness in Dickens always contrasts with the light, even though nowadays it is the 'darker' aspects that stand out more in our reading of him. The light usually radiates from young girls who are all the more virtuous and kind-hearted the more steeped they are in a kind of black hell. This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens.

I. Calvino, 'Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend' (1983), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 147

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying, but it is always the context in which we have to place ourselves to look either forwards or backwards. In order to read the classic, you have to establish where exactly you are reading them 'from', otherwise both the reader and the text tend to drift in a timeless haze.

I. Calvino, 'Why read the classics?' (1981), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 8

It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident

It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer.

P.G. Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally (1922), 158

The back of old envelopes never enter his life

Bruce Carmyle wrote the information down in a dapper little morocco-bound notebook. He was the sort of man who always has a pencil, and the back of old envelopes never enter his life

P.G. Wodehouse, The adventures of Sally (1922), 60

Poor Mexico

Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States

General V. Huerta, quoted in C.Emmerson, 1913: the world before the Great War (2013), 208

It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle

The zoological lottery that Jared Diamond describes - the pure chance of whether your local animals can be domesticated - enormously favoured Europe and Asia. Australia, by contrast drew a very short straw. It is hard to domesticate an emu, and no-one ever rode a kangaroo into battle. The Americas were almost as badly off, but they did have the llama. Llamas cannot compete with horses for speed, or donkeys for pack power; they also have an infuriating habit, when tired, of just stopping and refusing to move. But they are extraordinarily well adapted to high altitude; they cope well with the cold and can forage for their own food; they cab provide wool, meat and manure; and, although they cannot carry people, a healthy llama can comfortably transport about 30 kilograms of goods.

N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects (2010), 403
[73: Inca gold llama]

If you take a historical view, it is bureaucracy that sees you through the rocky patches

Modern politicians proudly announce their desire to sweep away bureaucracy. The contemporary prejudice is that it slows you down, clogs things up; but if you take a historical view, it is bureaucracy that sees you through the rocky patches and enables the state to survive. Bureaucracy is not evidence of inertia ... it can be life-saving continuity - and nowhere is that clearer than China. China is the longest surviving state in the world and it is no coincidence that it has the longest tradition of bureaucracy

N. MacGregor, A history of the world in 100 objects (2010), 395
[71: Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent]