He that toucheth pitch shall be difiled therewith; and he that hath fellowship with a proud man shall be like unto him.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Ecclesiasticus13:1.

The centipede was happy quite, Until the toad in fun Asked him which leg went after which, Which drove him into such a pitch He lay distracted in a ditch, Considering how to run.

-Craster, Mrs Edmund   d.1874
Attributed.

If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid and of infinite possibility.

-Eberhart, Richard Ghormley
  'If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That Is Near Madness'.

Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'Creation and Redemption: The Great Sacrifice'. Collected in C Devlin (ed)  The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1959), ch.8.

   No worst, there is none.Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'No worst, there is none'.

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled, They know not, poor misguided souls, They too shall perish unconsoled. I am the batsman and the bat, I am the bowler and the ball, The umpire, the pavilion cat, The roller, pitch, and stumps and all. See Emerson 313:39.

-Lang, Andrew
'Brahma'. Quoted by Alan Richardson in a letter to The Times, 18 May,1963.

There are people on the pitch†they think it's all over†it is now!

-Wolpert, Lewis
  Radio commentary on the last goal of theWorld Cup final, in which England beatWest Germany atWembley.

Propinquity had brought Imagination to that pitch where it casts out All that is not itself. I had grown wild And wandered murmuring everywhere,'My child, my child.'

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'A Bronze Head', l.18^21. Collected in Last Poems (1939).