fiction is only fact minus time. - Mark Forsyth

Minor had a lot of time on his hands, and also the advantage of being criminally insane, which is always a plus in lexicography

Atom is Greek for unsplittable, but the Americans had discovered that by breaking the laws of etymology they were able to create vast explosions,

If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred.

The fault, as Shakespeare put it, is not in our stars; but the language is.