Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.