
Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a /death pledge/. —
Mark Forsyth

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. —
Mark Forsyth

Poetry is much more important than the truth, and, if you don't believe that, try using the two methods to get laid. —
Mark Forsyth

If somebody learns how to phrase things beautifully, they might be able to persuade you of something that isn't true. —
Mark Forsyth

Who needs sense when you have alliteration? —
Mark Forsyth

The Bible is chock-a-block with such unnecessary but beautiful antitheses. God, whatever his other failings, is a great rhetorician. —
Mark Forsyth

For though one antithesis is grand, a long list of antitheses is divine and is technically known as a progressio. It was a favorite of God and Dickens —
Mark Forsyth

Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality. —
Mark Forsyth

Freud said that everything was secretly sexual. But etymologists know that sex is secretly food. —
Mark Forsyth

If you look back far enough, everything is stolen and every country invaded. —
Mark Forsyth

A dutiful son has to remember not to slouch or swear or, in Hamlet's case, murder the old bat. —
Mark Forsyth

Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better. —
Mark Forsyth

Oxygen was called flammable air for a while, but it didn't catch on. —
Mark Forsyth

Position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse. Sir Mark was having —
Frederick Forsyth

Antanaclasic, which means that it keeps using the same word in different senses. —
Mark Forsyth

It is much harder than you might think to show people your bottom. —
Mark Forsyth

Most people can improvise in unrhymed dactyls for hours. It's just that you lose all your friends if you do. —
Mark Forsyth