“Five restaurant years would be about equivalent to 30 human years, so Bambino’s, which has been around since 1983, is a veritable Methuselah among eateries.” – A.C. Stevens; Why Cook Tonight?; The Boston Herald; Feb 11, 2001.
“Meet Frank Ahern, the Methuselah of Seattle high-school coaches, a revered urban legend in his second half-century of helping city youth.” Craig Smith; A Coach For The Ages; The Seattle Times; Feb 27, 2000.
“Professor Frazer himself has warned that his vaccine is not an invitation to feckless heliolatry, stressing that any jab, no matter how effective, ‘is not a replacement for prevention’.” – Tamara Sheward; Browned Off by a Baking Fad; Herald-Sun (Melbourne, Australia); Jan 7, 2010.
“France has no shortage of linguistic generals who seek to regiment French and see an enemy lurking behind every new word or phrase. Yet what security do they bring? Franglais continues to infiltrate French ranks, despite a Maginot line of laws, word-vetting committees, and diktats from the Academie Francaise.” Ado Cherche Appart; The Economist (London); May 11, 1996.
“Absent some sober rethinking, forward engagement is likely to produce an American Maginot Line around Asia’s rim, as myopic demands to stay there automatically lead to costly missile defenses.” – Paul Bracken; America’s Maginot Line; The Atlantic Monthly (Boston); Dec 1998.
“Theodore R. Weeks refers to ‘national daltonism: the extreme difficulty nationalists had… in perceiving and appreciating the viewpoints or needs of members of other nationalities.” – Stephen D. Corrsin; Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia; Canadian Slavonic Papers (Ottawa); Sep-Dec 1999.
“My student came from a country where professors hold a sacerdotal status and so took my jest as a brushoff.” – David D Perlmutter; Are You A Good Protege?; Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, DC); Apr 18, 2008.
“Even worse, [the proposed amendment] is a deception because it amounts to nothing more than a precatory expression of pious hope.” – Robert C. Byrd; A Hollow and Dangerous Promise; The Washington Post; Oct 31, 1993.
“‘The laws are precatory as opposed to mandatory,’ said Scott Sommer, ‘They say the city “may”, rather than “shall”, enforce the housing code.’” – Deborah Sontag; A Weak Housing Agency Seems to Be a Step Behind; The New York Times; Oct 7, 1996.
“‘I know one day we will all die,’ replied Adi, making a valiant stab at vatic foresight.” – Tom Sutcliffe; Not All of It Added Up; The Independent (London, UK); Jan 29, 2009.
Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, and heaven knows what other canonical heavyweights one might care to name?” – Matt Wolf; Newcomers Who Stole the Show; The New York Times; Dec 29, 2009.
“Watching John Mighton’s play [Half Life] a second time, I found myself wondering how many drafts it must have gone through before reaching its canonical form.” – Robert Cushman; Welcome Back to T.O.; Financial Post (Canada); Jan 20, 2007.
“Poor Joyce Maynard. Not since Martina Hingis submarined a serve to Steffi Graf in the French Open has a woman been so universally excoriated for underhanded conduct. And all Maynard did was sell a bunch of mash notes she had saved from a boyfriend of 27 years ago to raise college tuition for her children. Except that the boyfriend happened to be J.D. Salinger — the eremite of Cornish, N.H.” – Mark Leyner; How to Avoid Salinger Syndrome; Time (New York); May 7, 1999.
“Dressed in Robert Jones’s well-cut, earth-toned ’60s’ pantsuits, Lagerfelt wittily mixes languor and asperity.” – David Benedict; Greta Garbo Came to Donegal; Variety (Los Angeles); Jan 13, 2010.
“Jean Kirkpatrick possessed the rare gift of being able to write subtle and challenging studies of international politics and to formulate strikingly simple and apt phrases to cut through obscurantism and cant.” – Joseph P. Duggan; Jeane Kirkpatrick Set a Very High Bar; St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri); Dec 18, 2006.
“Elizabeth Bishop was sedulous, pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years.” Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 20, 2008.
“It was a labour without rest or surcease.” – Canon Kik Woods; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Jan 16, 2008.
“If you’re lucky, you’ve got an Annie Oakley.” – Tom Rouillard; Big Top Goes Up Today; The Herald (Rock Hill, South Carolina); May 1, 1996.
“Obama did not mention his predecessor by name, but there were harsh words for George W. Bush, who was castigated for funding two wars and several tax cuts through borrowing rather than cutting spending elsewhere.” – Kevin Connolly; Obama’s Deficit Dilemma; BBC News (London, UK); Feb 1, 2010. |
