ad baculum, which means threatening somebody with a stick until they agree with you. - Mark Forsyth

Saint Peter and Saint John were idiots simply because they were laymen. They had no qualifications and were therefore their own men, rather than belonging to some professional class. If they had spoken their own language it would have been an idiom, and if they had been eccentrics with their own way of doing things (which they undoubtedly were) they would have been idiosyncratic.

Requited love is only a pleasing symmetry, and symmetry is a kind of justice.

Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy, and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility.