“His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell;
But oftentimes mistook th' one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.”

Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)
Context: He cou'd foretel whats'ever was
By consequence to come to pass;
As death of great men, alterations,
Diseases, battles, inundations.
All this, without th' eclipse o' th' sun,
Or dreadful comet, he hath done,
By inward light; away as good,
And easy to be understood;
But with more lucky hit than those
That use to make the stars depose,
Like Knights o' th' post, and falsely charge
Upon themselves what others forge:
As if they were consenting to
All mischiefs in the world men do:
Or, like the Devil, did tempt and sway 'em
To rogueries, and then betray 'em.

Hoss Sense and Nonsense (1926).
As quoted in The American Treasury, 1455-1955 (1955) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 993.
Variant: When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.

Source: The Secret Garden

Stanza 7
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

Writing as his character, "th' Hon. Ex.-Editur Cale Fluhart." as quoted in The American Humorist : Conscience of the Twentieth Century (1964) by Norris W. Yeats, p. 107.

Canto I, line 81
Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)
Context: For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk,
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.

Source: The Secret Garden

Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 953–954 (tr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Ch. 1, p. 11