I won’t have them taught out of those big history books you keep bringing home from the library

[']And as for history, keep on with the Hundred Page History of Britain. I won’t have them taught out of those big history books you keep bringing home from the library. I opened one of those books the other day, and the first thing I saw was a piece where it said the English had been beaten in some battle or other. There’s a nice thing to go teaching children! The parents won’t stand for that kind of thing, I can tell you!’

G. Orwell, A Clergyman's daughter (1935), 237-8

He ought never to have been born into the modern world

The secret of his almost unfailing ill humour really lay in the fact that he was an anachronism. He ought never to have been born into the modern world; its whole atmosphere disgusted and infuriated him. A couple of centuries earlier, a happy pluralist writing poems or collecting fossils while curates at 40 pounds a year administered his parishes, he would have been perfectly at home. Even now, if he had been a richer man, he might have consoled himself by shutting the twentieth century out of his consciousness. But to live in past ages is very expensive; you can’t do it on less than two thousand a year. The Rector, tethered by his poverty to the age of Lenin and the Daily Mail, was kept in a state of chronic exasperation

G. Orwell, A Clergyman's daughter (1935), 17

Either he'll remain single - or he'll find himself an utterly stupid wife

Such a brilliant fellow [Joseph Olbrich]. Either he'll remain single - or he'll find himself an utterly stupid wife. That's how thinks go. you only have to take a look at other celebrated artists.

Alma Mahler-Werfel, Diaries 1898-1902. Ed. & tr. A. Beaumont (1998), 247 (Sun 11 February 1900)

The martini which he proceeded to pour proved an agreeable surprise

The martini which he proceeded to pour proved an agreeable surprise. It did not bite like a serpent and sting like an adder, but it was not without a certain quiet authority, and he had taken it into his system and was feeling much invigorated, when the door opened and his sister Hermione appeared.

P.G. Wodehouse, Galahad at Blandings (1965), 204

Yes, but it's a good picture

On seeing Tammy Wynette's mother reading the National Enquirer, Burt Reynolds said:

My mother does the same thing. I caught her reading a story about me last week and I said, 'Mama you know those stories aren't true.' And she said, 'Yes, but it's a good picture, son.'

Tammy Wynette with J. Dew, Stand by your man (1979), 272-3

[Money] sure can take the edge off misery!

Sometimes it's hard for me to realise that I lived like that just fourteen short years ago. I would have been overjoyed then just to own an old secondhand car. Now I have a Corvette and a Thunderbird, a pickup truck and a van, a bus and an airplane. And am I any happier? You bet I am! It kills me to hear people who are well off talk about the "good old days" when they didn't have a dime. I wonder how many of them would go back to that. It's true that money cannot buy you happiness. but it can buy conveniences, and it sure can take the edge off misery!

Tammy Wynette with J. Dew, Stand by your man (1979), 57

He was a highbrow – her deadliest word

He was a highbrow–her deadliest word–a highbrow, to be classed with Lenin, A. J. Cook and the dirty little poets in the Montparnasse cafés
G. Orwell, Burmese Days (1934),