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Mr. Clinton is an honorable man, at least as honorable as Brutus and Cassius in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” To suggest that he might economize on the truth would smack of lese majesty. (Bruce Fein, Vintage Clinton, The Washington Times, 12/28/1999, p. A16.)…

[This word is sometimes used sarcastically or derisively to refer to a group of such people who think that they may be better or smarter than others.]  The problem with Mr. Biden’s advisory committee is that its members are part of the conformist Covid clerisy who think that lockdowns dictated from on high are good for the little people. (Author not given, “Biden’s Lockdown Lobby,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/13/2020.)…

He gathered toward the end of his life a very extensive collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts, and took heightened pleasure in their daedal patterns as his own strength declined. (Florence Boos, The Collected Letters of William Morris, [book reviews], Victorian Studies, 06/22/1997, p. 730.)…

“What do you say to folks who play with snakes in church?” Lester asked. “You can’t appeal to their ratiocinative capacities.” His reference to playing with snakes in church alluded to a bizarre form of Christian worship practiced by certain Pentecostal congregations, where the handling of poisonous serpents is, like speaking in tongues, regarded as a sign of salvation. (Darcy O’Brien, Crime and Politics in Appalachia, The World & I, 01/1/1995, p. 300.)…

[T]he French cling patriotically to their contrariness, buoyed no doubt by their recent defiance of all Western, Eastern and alternative medicine in being the one country that can laugh at heart disease as its people ingurgitate the red wine, triple-cream cheeses and foie gras that kill everyone else. (Jonathan Reynolds, The Death of French Food, The New York Times, 07/23/2000.)…