Life is a joke that's just begun.

I am the very model of a modern major general

When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.

A policeman's lot is not a happy one

As is gloriously sung in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "H.M.S. Pinafore," in the words of W. S. Gilbert: "Things are seldom as they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream."

When in that House MPs divide/If they've a brain and cerebellum, too/They've got to leave that brain outside/And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.

Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.