Golden Geese and Dancing Cows

A year's collection of sayings which have (however briefly) caught the public consciousness will range from the serious to the frivolous, and it is notoriously difficult to predict which will last (how many people in 1963 would have picked "He would say that, wouldn't he?" as a winner?).

Going further back, lasting quotes from 1904 range from Joseph Chamberlain's pronouncement that "The day of small nations has long passed away", through Anthony Hope's comment at the first night of Peter Pan, "Oh, for an hour of Herod!" to the poet Alfred Noyes's lyrical adjuration to "Go down to Kew in lilac-time".

Some utterances catch the attention through their mixing of metaphors (to take one famous example, the Labour politician Ernest Bevin's warning on the Council of Europe, "If you open that Pandora's box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out"). At the beginning of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt had described his difficulties in dealing with the leaders of Colombia in terms of trying to "nail current jelly to the wall".

Not quite in Bevin's league, but near it, are a couple of comments from the political world of 2004. In January, Alastair Campbell expressed his frustration at the continued debate on his role in suggested changes to the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with the summary, "We can dance on pinheads till the cows come home." In the same month, speaking in the House of Commons on a debate on antisocial behaviour, David Blunkett predicted ultimate success for government policy with the words "In the end, the golden goose will be cooked."

Perhaps the most colourful expressions of this kind can best be described in Milton's line, "Where more is meant than meets the ear."

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