What unprotected faces they were

what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them defenceless. Those boys had no practised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers who never marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond of children.

W. Cather, My Ántonia (1918), 83-84

Jerusalem had no natural industries except holiness

Jerusalem had no natural industries except holiness

S Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem (2011), 138

A man in his position has to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries

A man in his position has to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries, ruling out anything that might have done well in the latest Miss America contest. But you could certainly describe her appearance as pleasant. She gave me the impression of being one of those quiet, sympathetic girls whom you could tell your troubles to in the certain confidence of having your hand held and your head patted. The sort of girl you could go to and say 'I say, I've just committed a murder and it's worrying me rather', and she would reply 'There, there, try not to think about it, it's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody'.

P.G. Wodehouse, Much obliged, Jeeves (1971), 42

We exchanged significant glances

We exchanged significant glances. At least, I gave him a significant glance and he looked like a stuffed frog, his habit when being discreet. He knows just how I'm situated as regards M. Bassett, but naturally we don't discuss it except by going into the sig-glance-stuffed-frog routine. I mean, you can't talk about a thing like that. I don't know if it would actually come under the head of speaking lightly of a woman's name, but it wouldn't be seemly, and the Woosters are sticklers for seemliness. So, for that matter, are the Jeeveses.

P.G. Wodehouse, Still upper lip, Jeeves (1963), 34

Greco-Roman we are

Greco-Roman we are, and, as the years of crisis deepen, the heritage of imperial Rome becomes more than ever  a millstone round our necks and ball and chain on our feet. On the other hand as we intensify our countless billions of candle-power so that they threaten to consume us, the luminous glow of the Greek city-state seems to penetrate more searchingly into every corner of our civilisation. ... They who laid the intellectual foundations of the western world were the most fanatical players and organizers of games that the world has ever known.

C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (1963), 202

Strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch

Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

And some men eased themselves like setting hens onto the nest of death.

History was secreted in the glands of a million historians. We must get out of this banged up century, some said, out of this cheating, murderous century of riot and secret death, of scrabbling for public lands and damn well getting them by any means at all.

J. Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952) 109

The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one

The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one. In 1871 the political and administrative personnel of the Second Empire had followed its predecessors into the increasingly overcrowded Valhalla of defunct regimes, whose memories filled the history books and whose ghosts haunted the French political scene.

A. Cobban, A History of Modern France Volume 3: 1871 - 1962 (1964), 11