The uncommunicative strangers seemed unwilling to speak to us, hiding behind the language barrier.

Joe is firm in his principles. The reader admires Joe for not changing his ideas and opinions according to what is popular or advantageous.

The Supreme Court has just flinched from its responsibility to stop the unjust jailing of two journalists―not charged with any wrongdoing―by a runaway prosecutor who will go to any lengths to use the government's contempt power to force them to betray their confidential sources.

We will not rest until we reach a day when not one single veteran falls into homelessness.

Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him.

Cinderella obeyed, but wept, because she too would have liked to go with them to the dance, and begged her step-mother to allow her to do so. “You go, Cinderella,” said she, “covered in dust and dirt as you are, and would go to the festival. You have no clothes and shoes, and yet would dance.” As, however, Cinderella went on asking, the step-mother said at last, I have emptied a dish of lentils into the ashes for you, if you have picked them out again in two hours, you shall go with us.

We loved our teacher Mr. Tanner. He wore shoes that were scuffed, and pants that were so tight around his belly that we wondered if he would pop out of them. His shirts were neatly pressed, but so starchy that he crackled when he walked. And, he was forever forgetting his Coke bottle glasses-perched on top of his head while he looked for them on his desk. But, he loved books, and he made us love books too.

She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community.

“When you sold me this parrot you told me it could repeat every word it heard.”

“That’s right."

“Well, I’ve been talking to it all day and it hasn’t said a word yet. That’s false advertising.”

“No it isn’t. The parrot is deaf.”

"You sold me a faulty computer! When I press the power button, nothing happens."

“Peter said he’s been at home all day and never heard the doorbell, so the delivery man must not have come.”

"When I go for a walk, I'm walking on flat ground, so the earth must be flat."

"It must have stormed last night because the ground is really wet."

How many school shootings should we tolerate before we change the gun laws?

"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

"Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman, "That's the first question, you know."

Why should merely cracking down on terrorism help to stop it, when that method hasn't worked in any other country?

Do you think that we should convict this criminal?

Have you accepted the fact that most environmental studies don’t support global warming?