They like command better than power

military men are the opposite of you, general, they're men of quick and easy ambition, they like command better than power and they're not in the service of something but of someone, and that's why it's so easy to make use of them, he said, especially one against the other,

G. Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), 160

The Liberals were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests

The Liberals ... were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce,  to recognise the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut up the country into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Jesus Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities.

G. Garcia Marquez, One hundred years of solitude (1967), 98

Billy didn't think there would be a blank cartridge in a squad that small, in a war that old

Billy closed that one eye, saw in his memory of the future poor old Edgar Derby in front of a firing squad in the ruins of Dresden. There were only four men in that squad. Billy had heard that one man in each firing squad was customarily given a rifle loaded with a blank cartridge. Billy didn't think there would be a blank cartridge in a squad that small, in a war that old.

K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), 86

Secret? My God - from whom?

I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. I was answered by a man who, like myself, was in public relations. He said that he was sorry, but that the information was top secret still.

I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I said, 'Secret? My God - from whom?'

K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), 9

Because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels"

When some rich Muslim families in Şişli and Nişantaşı began buying pine trees to decorate and display in windows the way Christians did in films, I remember that even my mother felt uneasy, but because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels" as the religious press would, dismissing them rather as "harebrained."

O. Pamuk, The museum of Innocence (2009), 446

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed and blanched slowly away, and finally half a dozen daubs of cloud, dull powder pink, sailed high in a pale-green sky, rust-red at the horizon.

M. Robinson, Housekeeping (1980),117

One seems to hear the bugles blowing for the Crusades

[']I rather wish sometimes, Connie,' said Lady Julia meditatively, 'that you were a little less of the grande dame. It's wonderful to watch you in action, I admit - one seems to hear the bugles blowing for the Crusades and the tramp of the mailed feet of a hundred steel-clad ancestors - but there's no getting away from it that you do put people's backs up a bit.'

P.G Wodehouse, Heavy Weather (1933), 240-241