Geese

"“That’s The Goose,” he said. The way he said it, I could hear the capitals. I stared at it. It looked like any other goose, fat, self-satisfied and short-tempered."

"I dare not hope to please a Cinna's ear. Or sing what Varus might vouchsafe to hear; Harsh are the sweetest lays that I can bring, So screams a goose where swans melodious sing."

"GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed."

"鹅 鹅 鹅， 曲 项 向 天 歌。 白 毛 浮 绿 水， 红 掌 拨 清 波。"

"Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful."

"A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial."

"Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal, O'er head and ears plunge for the common weal? Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories, And cackling save the monarchies of Tories?"

"As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, Rising and cawing at the gun's report, Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky."

"Idem Accio quod Titio jus esto."