Quotes about tail
A collection of quotes on the topic of tail, likeness, head, doing.
Quotes about tail

“Be thou comforted, little dog; thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail.”

Earliest published version found on Google Books with this phrasing is in the 1993 book The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking by Tracy L. LaQuey and Jeanne C. Ryer, p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=sP5SAAAAMAAJ&q=meowing#search_anchor. However, the quote seems to have been circulating on the internet earlier than this, appearing for example in this post from 1987 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/msg/cc89abb5e065d23f?hl=en and this one from 1985 http://groups.google.com/group/net.sources.games/browse_thread/thread/846af15b5a38c35/3d6d5a639c24bba3. No reference has been found that cites a source in Einstein's original writings, and the quote appears to be a variation of an old joke that dates at least as far back as 1866, as discussed in this entry from the "Quote Investigator" blog http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/24/telegraph-cat/#more-3387. A variant was told by Thomas Edison, appearing in The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), p. 216 http://books.google.com/books?id=NXtEAAAAIAAJ&q=edinburgh#search_anchor: "When I was a little boy, persistently trying to find out how the telegraph worked and why, the best explanation I ever got was from an old Scotch line repairer who said that if you had a dog like a dachshund long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that. But it was hard to get at what it was that went through the dog or over the wire." A variant of Edison's comment can be found in the 1910 book Edison, His Life and Inventions, Volume 1 by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, p. 53 http://books.google.com/books?id=qN83AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false.
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
Variant, earliest known published version is How to Think Like Einstein by Scott Thorpe (2000), p. 61 http://books.google.com/books?id=9yrYQxBgIYEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false. Appeared on the internet before that, as in this archived page from 12 October 1999 http://web.archive.org/web/19991012152820/http://stripe.colorado.edu/%7Ejudy/einstein/advice.html
Misattributed

A Murderous Fox Has Made Me Shoot David Beckham, p. 161
The World According to Clarkson (2005)

“You're playing touch-butt with that dork in park, the pony tail.”
3 March 2016, UFC 196 pre-fight press conference, source: "UFC 196: Nate Diaz Says Conor McGregor Just Plays Touch Butt" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_O-FgRFlWc&feature=youtu.be&t=1m52s.

As quoted in Unexpected News : Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (1984) by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 19

“To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.”
Source: Jacob Have I Loved

Source: The Best of Lewis Carroll

On 21 March 2018 at a Human Rights Day rally in Mpumalanga Stadium, South African politician says Australia is a ‘racist country’, farmers should ‘leave the keys’ when they go http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/south-african-politician-says-australia-is-a-racist-country-farmers-should-leave-the-keys-when-they-go/news-story/e98607c4fa66d30d9b2731aa30e2a956, Frank Chung, news.com.au (22 March 2018)

Bible Teaching and Religious Practice http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false.
"Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" (1923)

"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

“How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?”
His collected works contain no riddle about dog legs, but George W. Julian recounts Lincoln using a similar story about a calf in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by distinguished men of his time (1909), p. 241: "There are strong reasons for saying that he doubted his right to emancipate under the war power, and he doubtless meant what he said when he compared an Executive order to that effect to 'the Pope’s Bull against the comet.' In discussing the question, he used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, 'Five,' to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg."
A very similar riddle about cow legs was also circulated by Edward Josiah Stearns' Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), p. 46: '"Father," said one of the rising generation to his paternal progenitor, "if I should call this cow's tail a leg, how many legs would she have?" "Why five, to be sure." "Why, no, father; would calling it a leg make it one?"'
Misattributed

Letter to Lady Londonderry (22 February 1854), in Benjamin Disraeli, Letters: 1852-1856 (1997), p. 405.
1850s

Song You should see me dance the Polka This song was performed and played a roll in the 1941 movie, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in a scene that took place in an English music hall. The movie starred Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner; directed by Victor Fleming.

12 October 1492; This entire passage is directly quoted from Columbus in the summary by Bartolomé de Las Casas
Journal of the First Voyage

Susan Ratcliffe (2010) Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject. p. 411: On her "horsey" reputation

“What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

“To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.”
"The Designers and the Politicians" (1962), later published in Beyond Left & Right : Radical Thought for Our Times (1968) by Richard Kostelanetz, p. 368
1960s
Context: Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process. Industry paces economics. It changes the tools, a great ecological change. And in that manner we come finally to everyday life.
The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 26-27

Chapter XLVIII, p. 344 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t0xp7k74t&view=1up&seq=364' (published 1872)
Roughing It (1872)

Letter to Friedrich Engels (4 February 1852), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39. Letters 1852–55 (2010), p. 32
Source: Matkai.com - https://www.matkai.com/this-pride-lets-start-celebrating-the-bodies-that-go-uncelebrated/

The Sign (May 1938) This has been misquoted as: The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.
Source: This is Where I Leave You
Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
“Peacocks have the bright feathers. Fish have the long tails. Women have the mall.”
Source: My Double Life
“First time it's a stranger. Second time its just a coincidence. Third time it's a tail”
Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
Source: The Tail of Emily Windsnap
Source: Uncommon Criminals
Source: The Darkest Secret

Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 237-238)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?

“Breaking things is a specialty of everyone in Fairy Tail”
Source: Fairy Tail, Vol. 12

“When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.”
Source: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

“This is a fierce bad rabbit;
look at his savage whiskers,
and his claws and his turned-up tail.”

“Foaly twitched his tail contentedly. Genius. No point in being humble about it.”
Source: The Arctic Incident
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Nausea (1938)
Source: Nausea, The Wall and Other Stories

“What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.”
Source: After the Quake
“I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q…”
Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Letter to W. Tait (17 August 1838), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 127.
1830s

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 22
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment on ABCnews.com (October 28, 2005) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1260229

“All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!”
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 2, "The Open Road"

“A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.”
Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 551)

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (2 July 1922), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 370.
Prime Minister
As quoted in "Dramatic Comet Outburst Could Last Weeks" (26 October 2007) by Robert Roy Britt at Space.com http://www.space.com/spacewatch/071026-comet-holmes-update.html.

Camouflage, written by Chris DuBois, Kelley Lovelace, and Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)
"Strictly from Hunger", The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) pp. 47-48
Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

"On Stasis and Progress"' in Diary of a Snail (1972)