
“The point is plain as a pike-staff.”
Epistle to a Friend as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book XII, ch. 7. Compare: "A flat case as plain as a pack-staff", Thomas Middleton, The Family of Love (1602-07), Act v, Scene 3.
Gil Blas (1715-1735)
“The point is plain as a pike-staff.”
Epistle to a Friend as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“A flat case as plain as a pack-staff.”
Act v. Sc. 3. Compare: "Plain as a pike-staff", Terence in English (1641); Buckingham, Speech in the House of Lords, 1675; Gil Blas (Smollett’s translation), book xii. chap. viii. John Byrom, Epistle to a Friend.
The Family of Love (co-written with Thomas Dekker, 1602-7)
“Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.”
in Equality (1931)
sometimes cited as an English proverb, sometimes also attributed to Isaiah Berlin
Disputed
“The pike does not ask the frog’s permission before dining.”
Lini
(15 October 1994)
“The governor is the worst administrator ever to come down the pike.”
Lou Papan, former State Assemblyman, The Sacramento Union, unspecified article/page, 26 December 1982.
Aaro Hellaakoski, "The Pike's Song," (1927), Leevi Lehto (transl.), in: Leevi Lehto. Leevi Lehto. Finnish poetry: then and now, January 2005. Published online at upenn.edu. Accessed 20-03-2013
La France fut faite à coups d'épée. La fleur de lys, symbole d'unité nationale, n'est que l'image d'un javelot à trois lances.
in La France et son armée.
Writings
“It is only a plain tale of plain people told in the plain dialect of a plain old woman.”
Hall, Eliza Calvert (1910). "Introduction". Sally Ann's Experience. Illustrated by G. Patrick Nelson, Theodore Brown Hapgood. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. pp. v - xii. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ugAZAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA50&dq=aunt+jane+of+kentucky&ots=Oaz4lMOoks&sig=_ET0k7b6BWOlRwCqW5Qja3baNvg#v=onepage&q=Introduction&f=false.
Lida Obenchain's description of her then famous story Sally Ann's Experience.