[Chaucer] must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his CanterburyTales the various manners and humours of the whole English nation in his age.

-Dryden,John
  Fables  Ancient and Modern, preface,'In Praise of Chaucer'.

   Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.

-Hume, David
  A  Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.2, section 6.

   If the cardinal points of costume are Robes,Tato, Rig and Scunge, where are shorts in this compass? Theyare the never Robes as other bareleg outfits have been: the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava, the Mahatma's cotton dhoti; archbishops and field marshals at their ceremonies never wear shorts. The very word means underpants in North America.

-Murray, Les(lie Allan)
  Selected Poems,'The Dream of  Wearing Shorts Forever'.