Soft and fair goes far. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Health and money go far. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Good people live far apart. [ German Proverb ]
He runs far who never turns. [ Italian Proverb ]
Far from court, far from care. [ Proverb ]
Wise as far as the beard goes. [ Proverb ]
Gather roses while they bloom,
Tomorrow is yet far away.
Moments lost have no room,
In tomorrow or today. [ Gleim ]
Far be it from me; God forbid.
Draff is good enough far swine. [ Proverb ]
Far shooting never killed bird. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Days of absence, sad and dreary;
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,
Days of absence, I am weary;
She I love is far away. [ Rousseau ]
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are. [ Hartley Coleridge ]
Fair and softly goes far in a day. [ Proverb ]
A gentle wind of western birth,
From some far summer sea,
Wakes daisies in the wintry earth. [ George MacDonald ]
O reputation! dearer far than life. [ Lowell ]
Necessity is stronger far than art. [ Aeschylus ]
Say, what other metre is it
Than the meeting of the eyes?
Nature poureth into nature
Through the channels of that feature
Riding on the ray of sight,
Fleeter far than whirlwinds go.
Or for service, or delight,
Hearts to hearts their meaning show. [ Emerson ]
Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched without impediment. [ William Shakespeare, King Richard III, Act 5, Sc. 2 ]
You cannot push a man far up a tree. [ Proverb ]
Light burdens carried far grow heavy. [ French and Ger. Proverb ]
Poets are far rarer birds than kings. [ Ben Jonson ]
Peace and wickedness are far asunder. [ Stillingfleet ]
How blue were Ariadne's eyes
When, from the sea's horizon line,
At eve, she raised them on the skies!
My Psyche, bluer far are thine. [ Aubrey De Vere ]
Deference and intimacy live far apart. [ Moliere ]
He runs far indeed that never returns. [ Proverb ]
As far from the heart as from the eyes. [ Proverb ]
He that goeth far hath many encounters. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The lane goes as far as your staggerer. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Like angel visits, few and far between. [ Campbell ]
The plague of gold strikes far and near. [ Mrs. Browning ]
How sweet the answer Echo makes
To music at night.
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,
And far away, over lawns and lakes,
Goes answering light. [ Moore ]
Tomorrow you will live, you always cry;
In what far country does this morrow lie? [ Cowley ]
To me at least was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day. [ Robert Browning ]
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither. [ Wordsworth ]
Far from gay cities, and the ways of men. [ Homer ]
Tyranny and anarchy are never far asunder. [ Bentham ]
Curst be the gold and silver which persuade
Weak men to follow far fatiguing trade!
The lily peace outshines the silver store,
And life is dearer than the golden ore.
Yet money tempts us over the desert brown,
To every distant mart and wealthy town. [ Collins ]
It's not too far, it just seems like it is. [ Yogi Berra ]
And the Sabbath bell,
That over wood and wild and mountain dell
Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy
With sounds most musical, most melancholy. [ Samuel Rogers ]
But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much. [ Dryden ]
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. [ Gray ]
Have I in conquest stretched mine arm so far
To be afeard to tell gray-beards the truth? [ Jul. Caes ]
O, he's as tedious
As is a tired horse, a railing wife;
Worse than a smoky house; I had rather live
With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,
Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me,
In any summer-house in Christendom. [ William Shakespeare ]
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt. [ Milton ]
Far beneath a soul immortal is a mortal joy. [ Young ]
Where you see a jester a fool is not far off. [ Proverb ]
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. [ William Cowper ]
Press not a falling man too far; 'tis virtue:
His faults lie open to the laws; let them.
Not you, correct him. [ William Shakespeare ]
We credit most our sight; one eye doth please
Our trust far more than ten ear witnesses. [ Herrick ]
What is nearest is often unattainably far off. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hills, a humbler heaven. [ Pope ]
Far off I hear the crowing of the cocks.
And through the opening door that time unlocks
Feel the fresh breathing of Tomorrow creep. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
When over the street the morning peal is flung,
From yon tall belfry with the brazen tongue,
Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale,
To each far listener tell a different tale. [ Holmes ]
The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame.
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurelled bard,
Those bold insurancers of deathless fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain. [ Blair ]
But strong of limb
And swift of foot misfortune is, and, far
Outstripping all, comes first to every land,
And there wreaks evil on mankind, which prayers
Do afterwards redress. [ Homer ]
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet.
The basest weed outbraves its dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. [ William Shakespeare ]
A jest driven too far brings home hate or scorn. [ Proverb ]
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar. [ Tennyson ]
Far-fetched and dear-bought, is good for ladies. [ Proverb ]
O, reputation! dearer far than life.
Thou precious balsam, lovely, sweet of smell.
Whose cordial drops once spilt by some rash hand,
Not all the owner's care, nor the repenting toil
Of the rude spiller, ever can collect
To its first purity and native sweetness. [ Sewell ]
The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims
Tidings of good to Zion. [ Charles Lamb ]
Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been. [ Bailey ]
O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? [ Shelley ]
Honesty is a warrant of far more safety than fame. [ Owen Feltham ]
Humble wedlock is far better than proud virginity. [ St. Augustine ]
The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore -
A shore that wears on her alluring brows
Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea
That blushed a tell-tale. [ Alexander Smith ]
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted in two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven. [ Shelley ]
No one knows how far his powers go till he has tried. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Man is only miserable so far as be thinks himself so. [ Sannazaro ]
They are the heritage that glorious minds
Bequeath unto the world! — a glittering store
Of gems, more precious far than those he finds
Who searches miser's hidden treasures over.
They are the light, the guiding star of youth.
Leading his spirit to the realms of thought,
Pointing the way to Virtue, Knowledge, Truth,
And teaching lessons, with deep wisdom fraught.
They cast strange beauty round our earthly dreams,
And mystic brightness over our daily lot;
They lead the soul afar to fairy scenes,
Where the world's under visions enter not;
They're deathless and immortal — ages pass away,
Yet still they speak, instruct, inspire, amidst decay! [ Emeline S. Smith ]
Mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast. [ Wordsworth ]
The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he would. [ Spanish Proverb ]
Pleasure is far sweeter as a recreation than a business. [ Roswell D. Hitchcock ]
Alas that we must dwell, my heart and I, so far asunder! [ Christina G. Rossetti ]
The pomp of death is far more terrible than death itself. [ Nathaniel Lee ]
Intellect annuls fate; so far as a man thinks, he is free. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Ceremonious friends are so, as far as a compliment will go. [ Proverb ]
A man travels as far in a day as a snail in a hundred years. [ French Proverb ]
He dwells far from neighbours who is fain to praise himself. [ Proverb ]
Virtue would not go far, if a little vanity walked not with it. [ Proverb ]
Oh, let us fill our hearts up with the glory of the day
And banish every doubt and care and sorrow far away!
For the world is full of roses and the roses full of dew,
And the dew is full of heavenly love that drips for me and you.
[ James Whitcomb Riley ]
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off. [ Johnson ]
We are only so far worthy of esteem as we know how to appreciate. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit. [ Fielding ]
Better far to die in the old harness than to try to put on another. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
Nothing seems important to me but so far as it is connected with morals. [ Cecil ]
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism. [ Diderot ]
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. [ Denis Diderot ]
Offend but one monk, and the lappets of all cowls will flutter as far as Rome. [ German Proverb ]
It is far better to be deceived than undeceived by those whom we tenderly love. [ Rochefoucauld ]
A lie has no legs, and cannot stand; but it has wings, and can fly far and wide. [ Warburton ]
Near and far do not belong to the eternal world, which is not of space and time. [ Carlyle ]
If we stretch our thoughts as far as they can reach, eternity is still before us. [ J. Edmondson ]
Its summit stretches as far into the upper ether as its root into the nether deep.
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than words, was simply doing good. [ Whittier ]
The gifts of genius are far greater than the givers themselves venture to suppose. [ Moses Harvey ]
Levity of behavior, always a weakness, is far more unbecoming in a woman than a man. [ William Penn ]
A fact in our lives is valuable, not so far as it is true, but as it is significant. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The height of power in women, so far as manners are concerned, rests in tranquillity. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]
How far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world. [ William Shakespeare ]
Sweet tears! the awful language eloquent of infinite affection, far too big for words. [ Pollok ]
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure. [ Hamerton ]
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend it like a gentleman. [ Colton ]
Thou dwarf dressed up in giant's clothes, that showest far off still greater than thou art. [ Suckling ]
Love without esteem can not reach far, nor rise very high: it is an angel with but one wing. [ A. Dumas fils ]
The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far. [ Emerson ]
Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart. [ Colton ]
Friendship cannot go far if we are not disposed mutually to forgive each other's venial faults. [ La Bruyère ]
Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and, far from commanding it, we are forced to obey it. [ Rousseau ]
Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; the reality always remains far apart from the ideal. [ Joseph Roux ]
Lovely sweetness is the noblest power of woman, and is far fitter to prevail by parley than by battle. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
We should be as careful of our words as of our actions, and as far from speaking ill as from doing ill. [ Cicero ]
Rigour pushed too far is sure to miss its aim, however good; as the bow snaps that is bent too stiffly. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among human actions. [ Bacon ]
That man has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. [ Chamfort ]
Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws so far as we can read them. [ Froude ]
Thee, Fortune, I follow; hence far all treaties past; to fate I commit myself, and the arbitrament of war. [ Lucan on the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar ]
Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Lovely, far more lovely, the sturdy gloom of laborious indigence than the fawning simper of thriving adulation. [ Goldsmith ]
There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
As his wife has been given to man as his best half, so night is the half of life, and by far the better part of life. [ Goethe ]
The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes like the warbling of music, than in the hand. [ Lord Bacon ]
Every man turns his dreams into realities as far as he can. Man is cold as ice to the truth, but as fire to falsehood. [ La Fontaine ]
Cure oneself as far as possible of a trick common to almost every one, of using four or five adjectives before a noun. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Every one turns his dreams into realities as far as he can; man is cold as ice to the truth, hot as fire to falsehood. [ La Fontaine ]
He that, by often arguing against his own sense, imposes falsehoods on others, is not far from believing them himself. [ Locke ]
Revenge is a debt, in the paying o( which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual. [ Colton ]
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire, - not too near, lest he burn: nor too far off, lest he freeze. [ Diogenes ]
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. [ Lamartine ]
Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant. [ Pascal ]
Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses. [ Wycherley ]
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals. [ Basil Hall ]
There are few persons of greater worth than their reputation; but how many are there whose worth is far short of their reputation! [ Stanislaus ]
We disregard the things which lie under our eyes; indifferent to what is close at hand, we inquire after things that are far away. [ Pliny ]
Not to resolve is to resolve; and many times it breeds as many necessities, and engageth as far in some other sort, as to resolve. [ Bacon ]
Art, as far as it has ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild. [ Dante ]
Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world. [ Goethe ]
Does an error do harm you ask? Not always! but going wrong always does. How far we shall certainly find out at the end of the road. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Of the things which man can make or do here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy, are the things that we call books. [ Carlyle ]
The woman's vision is deep reaching, the man's far reaching. With the man the world is his heart, with the woman her heart is her world. [ Grabbe ]
Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but, far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. [ 0. A. Sala ]
A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing. [ Colton ]
The happiest lot for a man as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. [ Whately ]
What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. [ Walter Scott ]
The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. [ Carlyle ]
The generality of men are wholly governed by names in matters of good and evil, so far as the qualities relate to and affect the actions of men. [ South ]
Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy. [ Lowell ]
He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave. [ Heine ]
To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand. [ Tuckerman ]
I won't rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un, I just won't. As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that's his problem, not mine. [ President Donald Trump, Gridiron Club's 133rd Anniversary Spring Dinner, March 3, 2018 ]
That state of life is alone suitable to a man in which and for which he was born, and he who is not led abroad by great objects is far happier at home. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to reenact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intellect. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]
God has made an unerring law for His whole creation, upon principles which, so far as we now know, can never he understood without the aid of mathematics. [ E. D. Mansfield ]
No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health. [ Colton ]
Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it. [ T. W. Higginson ]
They who neglect the opportunity of reaping a small advantage in hopes they shall obtain a better, are far from acting on a reasonable and welladvised foundation. [ S. Croxall ]
So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other. [ Johnson ]
The poet's delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
When I behold the passion for ornamentation, and the corresponding power, I feel as if women had so far shown what they are bad for, rather than what they are good for. [ Julia Ward Howe ]
Speak with contempt of no man. Every one hath a tender sense of reputation. And every man hath a sting, which he may, if provoked too far, dart out at one time or other. [ Burton ]
I have ventured like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory, but far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride at length broke under me. [ Shakespeare ]
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I cannot reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. [ Louisa May Alcott ]
Talents give a man a superiority far more agreeable than that which proceeds from riches, birth, or employments, which are all external. Talents constitute our very essence. [ Rollin ]
As a tract of country narrowed in the distance expands itself when we approach, thus the way to our near grave appears to us as long as it did formerly when we were far off. [ Richter ]
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately. [ Ruskin ]
To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. [ Talfourd ]
The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far-reaching, while the former is altogether wanting. [ Joubert ]
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea. Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam. Survey our empire, and behold our home! [ Byron ]
Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only so far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit. [ Moses Harvey ]
Our souls sit close and silently within. And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch. [ Dryden ]
Everybody takes pleasure in returning small obligations; many go so far as to acknowledge moderate ones; but there is hardly anyone who does not repay great obligations with ingratitude. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. [ Bacon ]
It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallowtrade; you must know where to find yourself. [ George Eliot ]
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. [ Colton ]
Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them. [ De Quincey ]
Good-nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it, and certainly to everybody who dwells with them, in so far as mere happiness is concerned. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
It is the work of fancy to enlarge, but of judgment to shorten and contract; and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination. [ South ]
Government is a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing over-much kills the self-help and energy of the governed. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Man is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest. [ Carlyle ]
The wisest of us must, for by far the most part, judge like the simplest; estimate importance by mere magnitude, and expect that which strongly affects our own generation, will strongly affect those that are to follow. [ Carlyle ]
All men need something to poetize and idealize their life a little; something which they value far more than for its use, and which is a symbol of their emancipation from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life. [ Theodore Parker ]
Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those that come after them; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave. [ Ruskin ]
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilization goes they are in their second. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse - a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable. [ Colton ]
The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a house of mourning,
I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory. [ T. L. Cuyler ]
Commonsense is science exactly so far as it fulfils the ideal of commonsense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. [ Huxley ]
Local esteem is far more conducive to happiness than general reputation. The latter may be compared to the fixed stars which glimmer so remotely as to afford little light and no warmth. The former is like the sun, each day shedding his prolific and cheering beams. [ W. B. Clulow ]
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receives. [ Colton ]
All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. [ Thomas Paine ]
The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance. [ Ruskin ]
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it may be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. [ Cowley ]
Great men, though far above us, are felt to be our brothers; and their elevation shows us what vast possibilities are wrapped up in our common humanity. They beckon us up the gleaming heights to whose summits they have climbed. Their deeds are the woof of this world's history. [ Moses Harvey ]
True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]
Love to make others happy; yes, surely at all times, so far as you can. But at bottom that is not the aim of any life. Do not think that your life means a mere searching in gutters for fallen creatures to wipe and set up.... In our life there is no meaning at all except the work we have done. [ Carlyle ]
He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case. [ Colton ]
Few have borrowed more freely than Gray and Milton; but with a princely prodigality, they have repaid the obscure thoughts of others, with far brighter of their own - like the ocean, which drinks up the muddy water of the rivers from the flood, but replenishes them with the clearest from the shower. [ Colton ]
Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]
It is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty times, Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far as the need is. [ Emerson ]
True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-travelling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor; the ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise; odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold. [ R. A. Willmott ]
For ages the world has been waiting and watching; millions, with broken hearts, have hovered around the yawning abyss; but no echo has come back from the engulfing gloom - silence, oblivion, covers all. If indeed they survive; if they went away whole and victorious, they give us no signals. We wait for years, but no messages come from the far-away shore to which they have gone. [ Bishop R. S. Foster ]
Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters. [ Colton ]
Columbus died in utter ignorance of the true nature of his discovery. He supposed he had found India, but never knew how strangely God had used him. So God piloted the fleet. The great discoverer, with all his heroic virtues, did not know whither he went. He sailed for the back door of Asia, and landed at the front door of America, and knew it not.
He never settled the continent. Thus far and no farther, said the Lord. His providence was over all. [ David James Burrell ]
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! [ Emerson ]
The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take commonsense quantum sufficit (in sufficient quantity); add a little application to the rules and orders of the House of Commons, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. [ Chesterfield ]