It was as if by the mere act of betraying her husband, she had adequately bested him; it was supererogatory for her to gloat, and, if she gloated at all, it was over her fine restraint in not-gloating, over the integrity of her moral sense

happily obliterate what he felt were picayune distinctions between period replicas and originals by a master

She giggled like a soubrette. The giggle was quite out of character at the moment, but she had not been able to resist it.

the Jewish paterfamilias was not the only figure that kept hovering behind your host’s well-padded shoulder

In the apartment, he took her twice with a zeal that was somehow both business-like and insane, and then rolled over on his back and sighed deeply, like a man who has completed some disagreeable but salutary task

Lacedaemonians, shed a tear … Maestius lacrimis Simonideis. The distich of grief was not for her.

The semantic test confirmed this. In the Marxist language, your opponent was always a parvenu, an upstart, an adventurer, a politician was always cheap, and an opportunist vulgar