'a red thread'

There is a curious custom in the British Navy: all the cordage of the Royal Fleet, whether heavy or light, is twisted so that a red thread runs through whole ropes, by which even the smallest piece can be recognized as Crown property.

In the same way a thread of love and deep attachment seems to run through Ottilie's diary, connecting everything she writes, and giving it a distinctive character. Because of this thread, the young girl's comments, observations and quotations bear a special mark, and convey a particular meaning. Each passage we have selected and recorded is definite proof of this.

—Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809) (trans. Elizabeth Mayer & Louise Bogan 1963)

'planning to be such an important finger'

"Well," Amory considered, "I'm not sure that the war itself had any great effect on you or me—but it certainly ruined the old backgrounds, sort of killed individualism out of our generation."

Tom looked up in surprise.

"Yes it did," insisted Amory. "I'm not sure it didn't kill it out of the whole world. Oh Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might be a really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader—and now even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn't be a real old-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The world is so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planning to be such an important finger—"

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

'the broad path of honesty'

They spent two evenings getting an exact definition. The slicker was good-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains that is, and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular, admired and never in trouble. He dressed well, was particularly neat in appearance and derived his name from the fact that his hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted in the middle and slicked back as the current fashion dictated.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920)

'leaves and sky on opening my eyes'

On his way to work each morning, Marcovaldo walked beneath the green foliage of a square with trees, a bit of public garden, isolated in the junction of four streets. He ... listened to the racket of the sparrows, tone-deaf, invisible on the branches. To him they seemed nightingales, and he said to himself: "Oh, if I could wake just once at the twitter of birds and not at the sound of the alarm and the crying of little Paolino and the yelling of my wife, Domitilla!" or else: "Oh, if I could sleep here, alone, in the midst of this cool green shade and not in my cramped, hot room; here amid the silence, not amid the snoring and sleep-talking of my whole family and the racing of trams down below in the street; here in the natural darkness of the night, not in the artificial darkness of closed blinds, streaked by the glare of headlights; oh, if I could see leaves and sky on opening my eyes!" With these thoughts every day Marcovaldo began his eight daily hours—plus overtime—as an unskilled laborer.

—Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city (1963; trans. William Weaver 1983)