These things serve to shew how far the People were really overcome with Delusions; and as they had a notion of the Approach of a Visitation, all their Predictions run upon a most dreadful Plague.

—DANIEL DEFOE, A Journal of the Plague Year

One other such victory and we shall be utterly ruined.

—PYRRHUS, in Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus

To me the utterances of the unenlightened are as noises emanating from the belly. What difference does it make to me whether their rumblings come from their upper or nether regions?

—DEMETRIUS, to his friend Seneca

“It’s every man for hisself,” cried the Elephant as he danced among the Chickens.

—ANON