EH! what are we sinners doing all our lives? Making soup in a basket, and getting nothing but the scum for our stomachs.
Machiavelli, in George Eliot's Romola.
Y idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
Hugo Bohun, in Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair.
ILL you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's the porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?"
"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied, "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance,
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.