"'Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam' (English: "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed") is a Latin oratorical phrase which was in popular use in the Roman Republic in the 2nd Century BC during the latter years of the Punic Wars against Carthage. The phrase was most famously uttered frequently and persistently almost to the point of absurdity by the Roman senator Cato the Elder (234-149 BC), as a part of his speeches." "Oh,…

Don't be alarmed. Please -- sit down. It's very important that no matter what happens during our conversation, you move as little as possible. No, don't get up. Please. You've got to listen to me. There's a book inside of you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We've suspected it for some time, as you know. There was a time we believed that almost everyone had a book inside of them, but fortunately that's turned out…

Oh, no! You've managed to successfully pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- but you're pulling yourself up too high! You're leaving everyone behind, and drifting over fenceposts and low-hanging rooftops! You've got to stop pulling yourself up before it's too late!

There are some idioms in this great big English language of ours that sound a great deal more exciting than they have any right to be. "The Angel in the House" is one of them. You've almost certainly heard of it, even if it's not a phrase you find occasion to regularly deploy; you're on a website for excitable and bookish women. The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the…

A bar. Could be in any town, in any country in the world. Just a one-room bar with a dusty mirror, dusty bottles, and dusty smiles. A bar with too many heartaches and too few customers. Like every other bar. Unlike every other bar. When he ran -- flung himself, more like -- through the doors, everyone sitting at the bar squinted and held their forearms up against the bolt of afternoon sunlight that came…