For a reader of "Rough Beast," it doesn't help matters when Mr. Olcott attempts to write elegant sentences; the strain shows, and they end by parodying themselves.

After my first, rather elegant and pithy sentence, I heard a heckler shouting: "What's he going on about?"

She spoke with a Parisian's instinct for the lark carefully fashioned in the elegant sentence.

The criticism may be right, or wrong, and is quickly forgotten; but year after year the scholar must still go back to Landor for a multitude of elegant sentences - for wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable.

I have the Lydia Davis translation of "Madame Bovary," which is so beautiful-go to any page and be reminded, by the confluence of writer and translator, of the power of the simple, elegant sentence.

O'Neill writes elegant, long sentences, formal but not fussy, pricked with lyrically exact metaphor.

Nevertheless, it's a shame to see her spinning elegant sentences merely to demonstrate literary wit - because, when she finds the right subject, she's capable of creating fiction that's informed by wisdom and passion.

In my case it provokes a distinct brain-twitch and a revulsion to those elegant, rolling sentences with their lumpish protrusions and I have to stop reading.

Athill's elegant sentences affirm what she acknowledges: that she is among the lucky, lucid ones.

Romantic versus Classic Art - with Kenneth Clark, "elegant, perspicuous sentences, television's premier talking head."