From Michael Innes's One Man Show:

***

The [art dealer's] hand gestured in a manner that decidely patronised the patrons indicated.

***

"The Duchess has a thing about holding things in trust?"

***

Had the later nineteenth century achieved the idea of [a nightclub], its appearance--the proposition seemed to run--would have been like /this/. But /this/ had been somewhat uncertainly conceived.

***

From Innes's Stop Press:

***

There was no evidence whatever that primitive man had been healthier than his civilized descendant. It was a different matter, now, with the apes. There was considerable scientific backing for the view that when man first stood upright he gave his physical frame a jar from which it never recovered. In this business of posture and the tummy the motto should be not back to primitive man but back to the lemurs, apes and opossums. It would look well on the stage; if a modern-dress /Hamlet/ why not a simian one?

***

From another by Innes:

***

The Applebys, had they been the sort of people provided with eyebrows for such occasions, would no doubt have raised them.

***

From Lawrence Block:

***

This didn't butter no parsnips, as my grandmother would never have dreamed of saying.