The phrase "classical phrase" is correct and usable in written English
It can be used to refer to a phrase that has been used in the past, either by a historical figure or in a popular saying, and is still in use today. For example: The phrase, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," is a classic phrase that has been repeated throughout history.
Vivaldi meets electronica, classical phrases vie with sharply angled gestures, and dancers from two worlds confront one another.
As the title suggests there's a strong sense of counterpoint, with wholly classical phrases morphing into shimmying, finger-twisting versions of themselves that at times have an almost Indian, Bharata Natyam feel to them.
When Montaigne retired to his writing tower late in life, he first produced neat, closely argued disquisitions on this and that, based on well-known classical phrases and sayings, and carefully modelled on the sort of exercises the Greek and Roman rhetoricians had produced.
As the sound expands and the piano doubles down, playing a quasi-classical phrase over Billy's ecstatic revelation, you see the truth of your miserable life laid bare before you.
It was essentially Taoist, reinforcing the classical Chinese phrase Wu wei er wu bu wei ("By doing nothing everything will be done").
Liu is the son of a steel tycoon from a nearby city, and his Air Jordan tank top reveals a skinny arm covered in tattoos: his first car (a Mitsubishi), magic mushrooms, and a classical Chinese phrase extolling filial piety as the highest of all virtues.
The use of such expressions, especially the classical set phrases known as chengyu, has long been seen as a mark of erudition in China.
Japanese translators in the 19th and 20th centuries, faced with the daunting challenge posed by concepts like "society", "philosophy" and "economics", often simply borrowed classical Chinese phrases, imbuing them with new meaning along the way creating what Victor Mair, a Sinologist, refers to as "round-trip words".
The latter is best reserved for ancient Greece or Rome or in the phrase "classical music".
The very phrase "classical music," implying an art devoted exclusively to the past, banishes it into limbo.
