"To swap punches with a power shovel"

"I need a man good looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he's got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel."

I am reading Trouble Is My Business by Ramond Chandler and this is how someone describes his legendary private eye Philip Marlowe. It fits him, but it fits so many that were inspired by him and it is such a great and vivid description that I wanted to share it here. I love reading Chandler just for such lines.