“Playwright Neil Simon once described one of his characters as so uptight he even had clenched hair.”
Mary Janigan in Maclean’s April 26, 2004
“A casual visitor might suppose this place to be a Temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness.”
Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers (specifically re the offices of the Commissioners of the Insolvent Court)
“The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
Willie Nelson, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 4, 2008
“Somewhere there’s a headlight looking for this deer.”
Laura Peck (on Gilles Duceppe on TV) in National Post May 25, 2004
“an old family friend … a retired auto-shop teacher, the sort of guy who knows about wrenches, who even has views on wrenches.”
Kevin Bolger in Ottawa Citizen March 12, 1999
An “indignity [that] would incite a stone to be revenged.”
Samuel Pepys in his Diary Nov. 22 1666, about a supposed insult by Louis XIV of France to Charles II of England, specifically dressing all his footmen in a garment Charles favoured as the height of fashion.
“I’ve developed a new philosophy… I only dread one day at a time.”
Charlie Brown in “Peanuts” (I have seen others use it in some form but I believe Schulz got there first)
“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)