Quotations and Proverbs

Tramp on a snail and she'll shoot out her horns.
James Kelly, Scottish Proverbs. (1721)

Vicistis cochleam tarditudine. (You have beaten a snail in slowness.)
Plautus, Poenulus,1.532 (c. 200 B.C.)

Ye drive a snail to Rome.
Ferguson, Scottish Proverbs. (c. 1595)

And man may bee as slowe as a snaile, but as fierce as a lyon.
Henry Porter, 'The Two Angrie Women of Abington' (1599)

There he comes, in a snail's trot.
George Colman, Jr., 'John Bull' (1803)

Ye go a snail's gallop.
Robertson, 'Phraseologica Generalis' (1681)

The Snail slides up the Tower at last, though the Swallow mounteth it not.
Thomas Fuller, 'Gnomologia' (1732)

How ingenious an animal is a snail. When it encounters a bad neighbour it takes up its house and moves away.
Philemon, Fragment. (c. 300 B.C.)