TrueThomas lay on Huntlie bank, A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e, And there he saw a ladye bright, Come riding down by the EildonTree.

-Ballads
'Thomas the Rhymer', opening lines.

O waly, waly up the bank, And waly, waly doun the brae, And waly, waly yon burn-side Where I and my love wont to gae. I lean'd my back unto an aik, I thocht it was a trustie tree; But first it bow'd, and syne it brakeö Sae my true love did lichtlie me. O waly, waly, gin love be bonnie A little time while it is new; But when 'tis auld it waxeth cauld And fades awa' like morning dew. O wherefore should I busk my heid, O wherefore should I kame my hair? For my true love has me forsook, And says he'll never lo'e me mair.

-Ballads
pre-1566  'Waly, Waly', opening stanzas.

She has been beastly to the Bank of England, has demanded that the BBC'set its house in order'and tends to believe the worst of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her handbag.

-Critchley, SirJulian Michael Gordon
  Profile of Margaret Thatcher in The Times, 21  Jun.

Where, like a pillow on a bed, A pregnant bank swelled up, to rest The violet's reclining head, Sat we two, one another's best.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'The Ecstasy', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

   U.S.A. is the slice of a continent.U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in bya Western Union boy on a black-board, a publiclibrary full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled in the margins in pencil.U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills.U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts.U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery.U.S.A. is the letters at theend of anaddresswhenyouareaway from home.But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people

-Dos Passos,John Roderigo
  U.S. A.,'U.S. A.' (new prologue to collected trilogy).

Dear J W, have the bank president finish the script.

-Epstein,JuliusJ
Response to a note from  Jack Warner which had read 'Railroad presidents get in at nine o'clock, bank presidents get in at nine o'clock, read your contract, you're coming in at nine o'clock.' Quoted in  Aljean Harmetz Round Up the Usual Suspects (1993).

   The easiest way to steal from a bank is to own one.

-Korthals, Robert
Quoted by Diane Francis in Controlling Interest:  Who Owns Canada? (1986).

Inside every banker, even the governor of the Bank of England, there lies a gambling streak. In me, they recognise one of their own kind.

-Kristol, Irving
Quoted in Michael Wilding and Pamela Wilcox  Apple Sauce (1982).

You can't put off being young until you retire, And however you bank your screw, the money you save Won't in the end buy you more than a shave.

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  'Money'.

What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.

-Liberace pseudonym of  Wladziu Valentino Liberace
  Responding to a hostile critic.  Autobiography.

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
  TheABC of Reading, ch.1.

Will you please tell me what you do with all the vice presidents a bank has?† The United Statesisthebiggest business institution in the world and they only have one vice president and nobody has ever found anything for him to do.

-Rogers,Will
  Speech, International Bankers'Association.

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of water's murmuring Along a shelving bankof turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightst in dream.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'The Question', stanza1.