Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed out loud as if sharing a joke with nothingness.

Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse

Now there is a further difficulty with the light
I am obliged to perform in complete darkness
Operations of great delicacy
On my self

John Berryman
77 Dream Songs, #67

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
then how should I begin…
And how should I presume?

T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby

To have fallen so low was indeed gall and wormwood to his soul.

T.F. Powys
Unclay

…Let folly also swell the tragic chorus.

…A show they want, they come to gape and stare.

Goethe
“Prologue for the Theatre” The Tragedy of Faust

Thy bones I pray may in the urne safe rest, And may the’earths weight thy ashes nought molest.

Ovid
Elegia 8

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
    The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
    And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Thomas Gray
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

…and from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain War with Heav’n

John Milton
Paradise Lost, II: 6-9

O Visions ill foreseen! better had I
Liv’d ignorant of future, so had borne
My part of evil onely, each dayes lot
Enough to bear;

John Milton
Paradise Lost, XI: 763-66

Towards unbroken night. Universal stone. Day no sooner risen fallen. Scrapped all the ill seen ill said.

Samuel Beckett
Ill Seen Ill Said

Death’s legs in black net stockings will
Confuse our undercover revolutions.

Robert Duncan
A Pair of Uranian Garters for Aurora Bligh

O that men
(Canst thou believe?) should be so stupid grown

John Milton
Paradise Lost, XII: 115-6

I wonder that a soothsayer doesn’t laugh when he sees another soothsayer.

Cicero

The dull product of a scoffer’s pen.

Edward Bulwark-Lytton
Richelieu, Act II, Scene 2

What is a cynic?…A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Oscar Wilde
Lady Windermere’s Fan

Botches and blaines must all his flesh emboss

John Milton
Paradise Lost, XII: 180

A man who is intent on creation always dives beneath, to the open wound, to the festering obscene horror…only blood and pus gush forth, it is something.

Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer

Forth flourished thick the clustering, forth crept
the swelling gourd, upstood the corny reed
embattled in her field.

John Milton
Paradise Lost, VIII: 320-2

Jesus was a poor boy/From the wrong side of the tracks/He rose again but not before/He fell between the cracks.

Dave Alvin
Lost Between the Cracks

If it depended on my choice,
I think it might be great
To have a place in Paradise;
Better yet — outside the gate.

Frederick Nietzsche
“57 Choosy Taste, Prelude in German Rhyme” The Gay Science

“amuse (v.)
late 15c., “to divert the attention, beguile, delude,” from Old French amuser “fool, tease, hoax, entrap; make fun of,” literally “cause to muse” (as a distraction), from a “at, to” (from Latin ad, but here probably a causal prefix) + muser “ponder, stare fixedly” (see muse (v.)).

Original English senses obsolete; meaning “divert from serious business, tickle the fancy of” is recorded from 1630s, but through 18c. the primary meaning was “deceive, cheat” by first occupying the attention. “The word was not in reg. use bef. 1600, and was not used by Shakespere” [OED]. Bemuse retains more of the original meaning. Greek amousos meant “without Muses,” hence “uneducated.”

Online Etymology Dictionary
https://www.etymonline.com/word/amuse#etymonline_v_11027 (accessed July 4, 2020)

“The anointing…” See Xanthippe and the chamber pot.

…they heard the skylark saying his matins high up in the air, and the pit bird warbling in the sedges as he had warbled all night long.

Charles Kingsley
The Water Babies

Postremus