Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose.

-Amis, Martin Louis
  The Information, pt.3.

   Nose, nose, jolly red nose, Who gave thee this jolly red nose?† Nutmegs and ginger, cinnamon and cloves, And they gave me this jolly red nose. 20

-Anonymous
Quoted in FrancisBeaumont and John Fletcher TheKnight of the Burning Pestle (1609) but thought to be a rhyme of earlier origin.

O tell me the truth about love. When it comes, will it come without warning Just as I'm picking my nose? Will it knock on my door in the morning, Or tread in the bus on my toes?

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Twelve Poems', section12.

Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, Beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Prologue:  The Birth of  Architecture', postscript.

Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely, And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe.

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Canterbury  Tales,'General Prologue', l.122^6.

He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin.

-cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings
  The Enormous Room, ch.3.

There was really no joy in pouring out one's sins while he sat assiduously picking his nose.

-Firbank, (ArthurAnnesley) Ronald
  Valmouth, ch.6.

Cansado, sobre todo, de estar siempre conmigo, de hallarme cada d|¤a, cuando termina el suen‹  o, all |¤ , donde me encuentre, con las mismas narices y con las mismas piernas. Tired, above all, of being always with myself, of finding myself everyday, when the dream comes to an end, wherever I am, with the same old nose and with the same old legs.

-Girondo, Oliverio
  Persuasio¤  n de los d|¤  as,'Cansancio' ('Fatigue').

Si la morale de Cle¤  opa" t re e u" t e¤  te¤   moins courte, la face du monde aurait change¤  . Son nez n'en serait pas devenu plus long. If Cleopatra's morality had been less short, the face of the world would have been altered. Her nose would not thereby have grown longer.

-Lautre¤  amont, Comte de properly Isidore Ducasse
  Poe¤  sies, pt.2.

And those who watch at that midnight hour From Hall orTerrace or loftyTower, Cry as the wild light passes along, 'The Dong!öthe Dong! The wandering Dong through the forest goes! The Dong!öthe Dong! The Dong with a Luminous Nose!'

-Lear, Edward
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Dong with a Luminous Nose'.

Pussy said to the Owl,'You elegant Fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose.

-Lear, Edward
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat'.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  'In Front of  Your Nose'.

Le nez de Cle¤  opa"  tre: s'il e u" t e¤  te¤   plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change¤  . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, no.162 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

-Poe, EdgarAllan
  'Marginalia', in the Southern Literary Messenger, Jul.

Beware of anything that promises freedom or enlightenmentötraps for eager and clever foolsöa dog has a keener noseöevery creature in a cave can justify himself. Three-fourths of philosophyand literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

-Snyder, Gary Sherman
  Earth House Hold,'Japan FirstTimeAround, 24: X'.

How haughtily he lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.

-Swift,Jonathan
  'TheJournal', l.81^2.

Bah! the thing is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my face.

-Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)
  Select Conversations with an Uncle,'The Man with a Nose'.