Everything new is fine. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
All is fine that is fit. [ Proverb ]
Fine words dress ill deeds. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Dogs are fine in the field. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
But O, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day,
Is half so fine a sight. [ Sir John Suckling ]
A fine thing is soon snapt up. [ French Proverb ]
A fine diamond may be ill set. [ Proverb ]
Talking is one of the fine arts. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Nothing is fine but what is fit. [ Proverb ]
He put a fine feather in his cap. [ Proverb ]
Ragged colts may make fine horses. [ Proverb ]
Fine cloth is never out of fashion. [ Proverb ]
A misty morning may have a fine day. [ Proverb ]
Fine by defect, and delicately weak. [ Pope ]
And be the thread of coarse or fine,
The loom is still the best receiver!
Whatever I spin, the same is mine.
Returned in full from Time the Weaver. [ Henry Reed ]
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less. [ Prior ]
I have a dog of Blenheim birth.
With fine long ears and full of mirth;
And sometimes, running over the plain,
He tumbles on his nose:
But quickly jumping up again
Like lightning on he goes! [ Ruskin ]
No cloth is too fine for moth to devour. [ Proverb ]
To fine folks a little ill finely wrapt. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Fine clothes wear soonest out of fashion. [ Proverb ]
God's mill goes slow, but it grinds fine. [ German Proverb ]
A thread too fine spun will easily break. [ Proverb ]
He that makes a thing too fine breaks it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Fine words! I wonder where yon stole them. [ Swift ]
There are no fine prisons, nor ugly loves. [ Proverb ]
No fine clothes can hide the fool or clown. [ Proverb ]
The love of praise
Fills life with fine amenities. Not all
Who live have pleasant tempers, and not all
The gift of gracious manners, or the love
Of nobler motive higher meed than praise. [ J. G. Holland ]
A proud look makes foul work in a fine face. [ Proverb ]
Fine clothes oftentimes hide a base descent. [ Proverb ]
Long is the calm brain active in creation;
Time only strengthens the fine fermentation. [ Goethe ]
What's a fine person, or a beauteous face,
Unless deportment gives them decent grace?
Blessed with all other requisites to please.
Some want the striking elegance of ease;
The curious eye their awkward movement tires:
They seem like puppets led about by wires. [ Churchill ]
Honesty is a fine jewel, but much out of fashion. [ Proverb ]
Be aware of a fine tongue, 'twill sting mortally. [ Proverb ]
You are a fine fellow to fetch the devil a priest. [ Proverb ]
Before employing a fine word, find a place for it. [ Joubert ]
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 ]
Money, thou bane and bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine. [ Herbert ]
The house is a fine house when good folks are within. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Fine dressing is a foul house swept before the doors. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Fit words are fine, but often fine words are not fit. [ Proverb ]
There are more lords in the world than fine gentlemen. [ Proverb ]
It is not the fine coat that makes the fine gentleman. [ Proverb ]
Fine eyes are to the face what eloquence is to speech.
The son full and tattered, the daughter empty and fine. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name. [ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream ]
Nobility without virtue is a fine setting without a gem. [ Jane Porter ]
Spin not too fine a thread, lest it break in weaving up. [ Proverb ]
A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 4 ]
He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Women who have not fine teeth laugh only with their eyes. [ Mme. de Rieux ]
The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom too fine spun. [ Proverb ]
Wait till night before saying that the day has been fine. [ French Proverb ]
In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation, is the aim. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
To see may be easy, but to foresee, that is the fine thing. [ Proverb ]
Silence is a fine jewel for a woman, but it is little worn. [ Proverb ]
Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perception. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
None laugh better, and oftener, than women with fine teeth.
Fine dressing is usually a foul house swept before the door. [ Proverb ]
More goes to the making of a fine gentleman than fine clothes. [ Proverb ]
In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other. [ Beaconsfield ]
A fair wife without a fortune is a fine house without furniture. [ Proverb ]
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, makes that and the action fine. [ George Herbert ]
We see roses die and revive again; it is not so with our fine days. [ Charleval ]
In a word, to be a fine gentleman is to be a generous and brave man. [ Steele ]
A coxcomb is ugly all over with the affectation of the fine gentleman. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The fine tints and fluent curves which constitute beauty of character. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
'Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
If the weather is fine, take your cloak; if it rains, do as you please. [ French Proverb ]
Don't put too fine a point to your wit, for fear it should get blunted. [ Cervantes ]
The jealous is possessed by a fine mad devil
and a dull spirit at once. [ Lavater ]
Still it is a fine sight to see a man who has never changed his principles. [ Jules Favre ]
To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber. [ Goldsmith ]
Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains. [ Hannah More ]
And yet you had the look of one that promised (threatened) many fine things. [ Horace ]
He that is proud of his fine clothes, fetches his reputation from his tailor. [ Proverb ]
A person that is beautiful and vicious, is a fine picture set in a scurvy frame. [ Proverb ]
Is there anything so wretched as to look at a man of fine abilities doing nothing? [ Chapin ]
Though a coat be never so fine that a fool wears, yet it is still but a fool's coat. [ Proverb ]
In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned. [ Chamfort ]
All women are fond of minds that inhabit fine bodies, and of souls that have fine eyes. [ J. Joubert ]
That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources. [ Colton ]
It is fine to stand upon some lofty mountain thought, and feel the spirit stretch into a view. [ Bailey ]
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool. [ J. Roux ]
Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a man's face as like a man's face as it can. [ John Ruskin ]
To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor. [ Pope ]
Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious. [ Hume ]
The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts is proportioned to that of the public prosperity. [ T. B. Macaulay ]
A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman. [ Addison ]
It is as natural for women to pride themselves in fine clothes, as it is for a peacock to spread his tail. [ Proverb ]
Beauty has no lustre except when it gleams through the crystal web that purity's fine fingers weave for it. [ Maturin ]
Coolness, and absence of heat and haste, indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise, a lady is serene. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Nature meant to make woman her masterpiece, but committed a mistake in the choice of the clay; she took it too fine. [ Lessing ]
A man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a fine woman than the gay, the giddy, the flattering coxcomb. [ Henry Home ]
Happiness is the fine and gentle rain which penetrates the soul, but which afterwards gushes forth in springs of tears. [ M. de Guérin ]
Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended. [ Thackeray ]
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy. [ Seneca ]
Like a beautiful flower full of color, but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly. [ Buddha ]
There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop. [ Hare ]
Presence of mind, penetration, fine observation, are the sciences of women; ability to avail themselves of these is their talent. [ Rousseau ]
Persons of fine manners make behaviour the first sign of force,--behaviour, and not performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Fine natures are like fine poems; a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you if you read on. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
We must love our friends as true amateurs love paintings; they have their eyes perpetually fixed on the fine parts, and see no others. [ Mme. d'Epinay ]
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
It is a fine observation of Plato, in his Laws, that atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding. [ Wm. Fleming ]
Fine speeches are the instruments of fools or knaves, who use them when they want good sense; but honesty needs no disguise or ornament. [ Otway ]
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth - that is the secret of the fine arts. [ Joubert ]
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. [ Emerson ]
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form. It is the finest of the fine arts. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces of folly that can be. [ Sir Matthew Hale ]
Books are negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the fine lines are produced. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato. [ Swift ]
We should love our friends as true amateurs love pictures: they keep their eyes perpetually fixed on the fine points, and do not see the defects. [ Mme. Dufresnoy ]
Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained. [ The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (President Snow) ]
There is something irresistibly pleasing in the conversation of a fine woman; even though her tongue be silent, the eloquence of her eyes teach wisdom. [ Goldsmith ]
Intellectual fairness is often only another name for indolence and inconclusiveness of mind, just as love of truth is sometimes a fine phrase for temper. [ J. Morley ]
More bounteous run rivers when the ice that locked their flow melts into their waters. And when fine natures relent, their kindness is swelled by the thaw. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry. [ Pope ]
The blessings of fortune are the lowest: the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health; but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind. [ L'Estrange ]
Education, indeed, has made the fondness for fine things next to natural; the corals and bells teach infants on the breasts to be delighted with sound and glitter. [ H. Brooke ]
The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father, the former has intellect; the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury. [ Schopenhauer ]
If you make a law against dancing-masters imitating the fine gentleman, you should with as much reason enact, that no fine gentleman shall imitate the dancing-master. [ Goldsmith ]
When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge, love simple ones as you would native roses on your cheek. [ J. C. Hare ]
Have something to tell, and tell it clearly, simply, without a trace of affectation or conscious effort at fine writing. I should advise the study of examples in this perfection of art. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker if it is not the truth that he is speaking? If an eloquent speaker is not speaking the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation? [ Carlyle ]
Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. [ Tuckerman ]
Life may as properly be called an art as any other, and the great incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than the severest members of a fine statue or a noble poem. [ Fielding ]
The study of the mathematics is like climbing up a steep and craggy mountain; when once you reach the top, it fully recompenses your trouble, by opening a fine, clear, and extensive prospect. [ Jeremiah Day ]
Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Women overrate the influence of fine dress and the latest fashions upon gentlemen; and certain it is that the very expensiveness of such attire frightens the beholder from all ideas of matrimony. [ Abba Goold Woolson ]
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks in its tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. [ South ]
Vanity is a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs, and chuck us over; but pride is a fine horse, that will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow-travelers. [ Marryat ]
It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists. [ Rousseau ]
The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense. And he that will carry nothing about him but gold will be every day at a loss for readier change. [ Pope ]
If as much care were taken to perpetuate a race of fine men as is done to prevent the mixture of ignoble blood in horses and dogs, the genealogy of every one would be written on his face and displayed in his manners. [ Voltaire ]
Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily; for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one. [ Chesterfield ]
Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning humility, and virtue; - that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy. [ Sterne ]
Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. The observer forgets the window in the landscape it displays. A fine style gives the view of fancy - its figures, its trees, or its palaces, - without a spot. [ Willmott ]
A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! [ Lamb ]
At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. [ Macaulay ]
To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence: for to be what some people, call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking. [ Addison ]
Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]
Every man must bear his own burden, and it is a fine thing to see any one trying to do it manfully; carrying his cross bravely, silently, patiently, and in a way which makes you hope that he has taken for his pattern the greatest of all sufferers. [ James Hamilton ]
Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. [ Franklin ]
A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking. [ Addison ]
That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out. [ Addison ]
If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. [ Emerson ]
What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. [ Schlegel ]
Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round and sweethearting, a sunshine holiday in summer time; but when once through matrimony's turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold, aguish fit, to which the faculty give the name of indifference. [ G. A. Stevens ]
Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament. [ Alcott ]
The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterized by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naivete. [ Goethe ]
The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterised by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naïveté. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore. [ Melmoth ]
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? [ Emerson ]
He must have an artist's eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, and picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side hill with gorgeous colors and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead of allowing the flowers to remain as they were gathered, they are laid upon the table, divided, rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never again have that charming naturalness and grace which they first had. [ Beecher ]