Quotable quotes

Some thoughts from the OED and its files on

An apple a day...

1529 Grete Herball, Apples eaten raw doothe more dysseases than ony other fruytes.

...gender-bending...

1693 tr. G. de Foigny New Discov. Terra Incognita, All the Australians are of both Sexes, or Hermaphrodites.

...suffer the little children...

1895 Jrnl. Anthropol. Inst. Great Brit. & Irel., They have a custom of flattening the heads of their infants...This process is carried out in early infancy; the infant is kept swathed and upright in the cradle-frame, at the top of which is hinged a folding flap, which is tightly bound down on to the child's forehead. The little creature does not seem to suffer, indeed they are remarkably quiet babies.

...how time flies...

1899 Edinburgh Review, A millennium, which lasted a fortnight, succeeded his visit.

...and those were the days...

1977 T. M. Bernstein Dos, Don'ts and Maybes of English Usage, It sounds incredible, but a friend reports that he has recently heard access used as a verb. For instance, he says, at a sales seminar a speaker said, 'You can access the information if you dial 626'.