bite quotes

And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.

- Edmund Burke
  Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Nov (published1800).

  Oh! he is mad is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals.

-George II
c.1759  Replying to remarks made about General James Wolfe by the Duke of Newcastle. Quoted in HenryBeckles Wilson Life and Letters of  James Wolfe (1909), ch.17.

  Need I go on? I hate to bite Hands that led me to the limelight In the Penguin book, I regret The awkwardness. But British, no, the name's not right. Yours truly, Seamus.

- SeamusJustin Heaney
  'An Open Letter to Blake and  Andrew, Editors, Contemporary British Verse, Penguin Books, Middlesex'. Heaney was complaining at his inclusion in the book edited by Blake Morrison and  Andrew Motion on the grounds of his Irish nationality.

Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.

-William Safire
  Safire's Political Dictionary, introduction.

   So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind.

-Jonathan Swift
  'On Poetry', l.337^42.

He felt like a manwho, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.

-Plum
  Eggs, Beans and Crumpets,'Anselm Gets His Chance'.