monkey quotes

Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

- Matsuo Basho
c.1689  On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, no.3 (translated by Lucien Stryk).

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

- Robert Charles Benchley
  My TenYears in a Quandary.

I am not going to spend any time whatsoever attacking the Foreign Secretary.Quite honestly, I am beginning to feel extremely sorry for him. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.

- Aneurin Bevan
  Expressing his wish to address Prime Minister Harold Macmillan rather than Selwyn Lloyd on the Suez crisis in the House of Commons, May.

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a Monkey, without very Mortifying Reflections.

-William Congreve
  Letter to  John Dennis,10  Jul.

And they brought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a CranberryTart, And a hive of silvery Bees. And they brought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, and forty Bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese.

- Edward Lear
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Jumblies'.