All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

[T]he then existing Signors and the colleagues, feeling themselves possessed of sufficient power, assumed the authority to fix upon the Signors that would have to sit during the next forty months, by putting their names into a bag or purse, and drawing them every two months. But, before the expiration of the forty months, many citizens were jealous that their names had not been deposited amongst the rest, and a new emborsation was made. From this beginning arose the custom of emborsing or enclosing the names of all who should take office in any of the magistracies for a long time to come, as well those whose offices employed them within the city as those abroad, although previously, the councils of the retiring magistrates had elected those who were to succeed them.

He was a literature professor, neurotic and blinky behind his glasses […]

Alas! said Syntax, could I pop / Just now, upon a blacksmith's shop, / Whose cooling unguents would avail / To save poor Grizzle's ears and tail!