We expect pleasing harmonies rather than jarring dissonance – but what sounds pleasing today may have seemed dissonant two hundred years ago.
If so, that's what I want for Christmas, please 2013 was my year of Shirley Hazzard.
Sterling's shareholders were obviously pleased yesterday as the company's shares rose $12, to $43.5625.
The Turks were pleased this week when Germany's chancellor, Helmut Kohl, gave his backing to "eventual" Turkish membership of the EU.
Madame Chenkin, a Comrade, was taken into the family's boarding house as a guest to please Father.
The label's owner, Syd Nathan, hated Brown's first recording, "Please, Please, Please" (1956), but the record eventually sold three million copies and launched Brown's extraordinary career.
By most measures, iPhone owners should have been pleased this year.
"I was really pleased yesterday when I saw him training.
That said, I was pleased today to find an upgrade available on my console today.
But advocates for agricultural research were pleased this week when the White House budget request included $75 million for three new research institutes.
