“Unless a louse could really leap, believe you me, She wouldn’t go walking on that weave, it was so threadbare.”
William Langland Piers Plowman (edited, introduced and annotated by Elizabeth D. Kirk and Judith H. Anderson) Passus V ll. 196-97 (describing Covetousness’ shabby appearance)
“His workers liked to say that he always arrived at meetings in a freshly rumpled suit.”
Luke Sharpe in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #7 (re Leo Burnet, a great adman responsible for all sorts of icons including Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, and the Pillsbury Doughboy)
“Mick Jagger told me that the lines on his face were laughter lines, but nothing is that funny.”
British jazz singer George Melly, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail August 4, 2005
“all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, ‘What did the first frog say?’ And the answer was, ‘Lord, how you made me jump!’”
G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy
“He looks like he swallowed a safe.”
An ESPN commentator on the St. John’s basketball team’s very solidly built guard Matt Brust, February 2, 1987
“a sleeping fool may pass for a wise man.”
One of the minor villains in Sax Rohmer The Trail of Fu Manchu
“A man who looks as though he’s been raised by wolves”.
Val Sears in the Ottawa Sun February 24, 1999 (about Peter Gzowski, who he liked)
“Gentlemen, listen to me slowly.”
One of “Still More Samuel Goldwynners” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #1 (September 2005)