The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
-- George Orwell AA

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.
-- Joseph Conrad AA

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
-- Jane Austen AA

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-- Umberto Eco AA