What a great simile to describe a fast-darting, quick-acting mind!  Sadly, this vivid image also reminds me of a certain virus now prevalent, being similarly active and biting everything that comes near.

‘With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form that suited it …’

Source: George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 59

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