Quotable Friday (22)

My quotation this week is from the Bible. Sepcifically, it's from the King James Version (KJV). In 2011 I read the entire Bible using the KJV, to celebrate its 400th anniversary. I won't say it was the easiest translation to understand, but the language is quite beautiful and it's amazing how many common phrases we use today originate in that text.

Anyway, there were a few verses in the KJV that tickled me when I read them - they are so much more emotive than in modern translations. Today's quotation is one such verse - taken from the Book of Daniel (chapter five, verse six). King Belshazzar has just seen writing appear on the wall of his palace...

"Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another."

Knees smiting each other sounds so much better than knees knocking together, don't you think?

As a bonus, here are just a few of the phrases we get from the KJV:

• Gave up the ghost
• Apple of my eye
• My brother's keeper
• Out of the mouth of babes
• In the twinkling of an eye
• Suffer fools gladly
• By the skin of my teeth
• How the mighty have fallen