there always seemed to be one outrageous beauty: an angel who would have been forced into indentured topmodeldom had she been found on a Paris bus; or a wavy-lipped, chisel-chinned, almond-eyed boy-warrior out of the Iliad, as beautiful as humans come.

The gallant King, / His high, his majestic beauty not destroyed / But bearing itself more manlily, the Goddess / In pitying admiration sees, […]

I pulled a few strings, and, as a result, you'll be able to own that house you so wanted to buy.

The intensity of the summer heat is, however, modified after a time by a cooling wind which [Giovanni] Mariti calls limbat. […] This limbat wind is said to be the cause of those fevers which attack the inhabitants, to which Europeans are even more subject.