Yet once more,O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, opening lines.

Son of a whore,God damn you! can you tell A Peerless Peer the readiest way to Hell?

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
c.1676  'To the Post-Boy', l.1^2 (published1926).The postboy's answer is'The readiest way, my lord, is by Rochester'.

An English peer of the right sort can be bored nearer to the point where mortification sets in, without showing it, than anyone else in the world.

-Plum
  Something Fresh, ch.3.