How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.2,'The Pool of  Tears'.

La poe¤  sie veutquelque chose d'e¤  norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.

-Diderot, Denis
  Discours sur la poe¤  sie dramatique.

If there is a distinctive Irish experience, it is one of division, exacerbated by the fact that division in a country so small seems perverse.But the scale doesn't matter.

-Donoghue, Denis
  We Irish.

He canna Scotland see wha yet Canna see the Infinite, And Scotland in true scale to it.

-Grieve
  A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, l.2527^9.

   Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat In reason, and is judicious, is the scale By which to heav'nly love thou may'st ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.

-Milton,John
  Raphael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.589^94.

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.1, l.52^4.