“Sometimes the duck is tormented in a different manner, without the assistance of the dogs; by having an owl tied upon her back, and so put into the water, where she frequently dives in order to escape from the burden, and on her return for air, the miserable owl, half drowned, shakes itself, and hooting, frightens the duck; she of course dives again, and replunges the owl into the water; the frequent repetition of this action soon deprives the poor bird of its sensation, and generally ends in its death, if not in that of the duck also.”

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: Many are the fools who say that Jesus stood in His own path and opposed Himself; that He knew not His own mind, and in the absence of that knowledge confounded Himself.
Many indeed are the owls who know no song unlike their own hooting.
You and I know the jugglers of words who would honor only a greater juggler, men who carry their heads in baskets to the market-place and sell them to the first bidder.
We know the pygmies who abuse the sky-man. And we know what the weed would say of the oak tree and the cedar.
I pity them that they cannot rise to the heights.

Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers

Source: The Name of the Wind

Source: Solstice Wood

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 49

Ode XIV. A Night-Piece; or, Modern Philosophy (1748).

Source: A Living Nightmare

Source: The Impossible

Source: I Capture the Castle