bats

All is now desolate, fantastic, and ambushed with ghosts; the archaeologists twitter among them like bats.

—Macaulay, Dame (Emilie) Rose

How on earth are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England†to be taken seriouslyagainst that kind of background noise? It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.

—Howe, Baron

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

—Berryman,John originally John Allyn Smith

   The walls of spiders' legs are made, Well mortised and finely laid; He was the master of his trade It curiously builded; The windows of the eyes of cats, And for the roof, instead of slats, Is covered with the skins of bats, With moonshine that are gilded.

—Drayton, Michael

   The colour of my soul is iron-greyand sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.

—Debray, Regis

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans