Mr. Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, had barely finished capping his address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group, with a flourish drawing on a common American expression — "Ladies and gentlemen, if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it?
"Ladies and Gentlemen, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it?" Mr Netanyahu asked.
It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that - Man has lived in vain".
I'd have been more surprised by the action-figure-obsessed gentlemen if I hadn't seen a very similar scene a few weeks earlier, aboard the J.S. Izumo, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's mammoth new helicopter carrier.
Ladies and gentlemen, if I, in Brussels, had the power to investigate the behaviour of the United States, I would have powers that no authority at either European or national level has ever had or is ever likely to have.
Reports differ about the fate of the banks' gentlemen's agreement but if it survived the first day, it did not last the second.
I stopped by a business and asked a gentleman if I could put a campaign sign up at his auto repair shop.
So, ladies — and gentlemen, if you must — I'm going to make it easy on you.
This package solves all of the technical issues; it is a compromise that makes it clear that it is not Europe's role to legislate on ethics, because, ladies and gentlemen, if the next few years are to be characterised by all manner of revolutions, it is up to us to give meaning to them, and to offer hope, not destroy it.
"No man thinks more highly than I do of patriotism....But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve".
And gentlemen, if you no longer make an effort to smell and feel clean, it may be a sign that you don't care what happens in the bedroom.
