Your function as a critic is to show that it is really you yourself who should have written the book, if you had had the time, and since you hadn't you are glad that someone else had, although obviously it might have been done better.

In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

Each of us can, by ploy or gambit, most naturally gain the advantage.

Women are quite unlike men. Women have higher voices, longer hair, smaller waistlines, daintier feet and prettier hands. They also invariably have the upper hand.

Never say the number because it suggest that you are unable to pronounce the name of the wine you are ordering.

Talk of the imperial decay of your invalid port. Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession.

In lawn tennis mixed, the basic chivalry move is to pretend to serve less fiercely to the woman than to the man. This is particularly useful if your first service tends to be out in any case.