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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Fish

It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an R in their names to eat an oyster.

Butler.

Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

Pericles.

  • Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
  • The bright-eye perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
  • The silver eel, in shining volumes roll’d,
  • The yellow carp, in scales bedropp’d with gold,
  • Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
  • And pikes, the tyrants of the wat’ry plains.
  • Pope.

    They say fish should swim thrice***first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?), then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.

    Swift.

  • “Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,
  • “There’s a 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?”
  • Lewis Carroll.

  • O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
  • What is ’t ye do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles?
  • How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
  • How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
  • In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites,
  • And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles.
  • Leigh Hunt.