Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Thinking
Who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?
Shakespeare.—King Richard II., Act I. Scene 3. (Bolingbroke to Gaunt.) The wife of Bath’s tale. Prol. Line 6721.
Thinking is but an idle waste of thought;
For nought is every thing, and every thing is nought.
Smith.—Rejected Addresses; imitation of Lord Byron.
So in this way of writing without thinking,
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.
Dorset.—Sat. on Edward Howard.
I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.
Shakespeare.—Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III. Scene 5. (Falstaff.)