Happiness is a rare cosmetic. [ G. J. W. Melville ]
Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
Stood up in balmy air.
Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore.
And breathed a perfume rare. [ George MacDonald ]
Absolute and entire ugliness is rare. [ Ruskin ]
Wisdom is rare, Lorenzo! wit abounds. [ Young ]
Rare benevolence, the minister of God. [ Carlyle ]
Who have not saved some trifling thing
More prized than jewels rare,
A faded flower, a broken ring,
A tress of golden hair. [ Ellen C. Howarth ]
In youth and beauty wisdom is but rare! [ Homer ]
Rare is the union of beauty and virtue. [ Juvenal ]
Commonsense among men of fortune is rare. [ Juvenal ]
Rare indulgence produces greater pleasure. [ Juvenal ]
Simplicity is a very rare thing now-a-days. [ Ovid ]
Death is not rare, alas! nor burials few,
And soon the grassy coverlet of God
Spreads equal green above their ashes pale. [ Bayard Taylor ]
The daisy is fair, the day-lily rare,
The bud of the rose as sweet as it's bonnie. [ Hogg ]
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer. [ La Fontaine ]
True love is rare; true friendship, still rarer. [ La Fontaine ]
Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;
They love a train, they tread each other's heel. [ Young ]
Oh, rare the headpiece, if but brains were there! [ Phaedrus ]
This fellow must have a rare understanding;
For nature recompenseth the defects
Of one part with redundance in another;
Blind men have excellent memories, and the tongue
Thus indisposed, there's treasure in the intellect. [ Shirley ]
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 ]
A constant friend is a thing rare and hard to find. [ Plutarch ]
Absolute fiends are as rare as angels, perhaps rarer. [ J. S. Mill ]
The spell is thine that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery - they are short. [ Halleck ]
Faith and piety are rare among the men who follow the camp. [ Lucan ]
Great talents are rare, and they rarely recognise themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Friends are rare, for the good reason that men are not common. [ Joseph Roux ]
Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him. [ Bayard Taylor ]
It is rare to find a fish,, that will not sometime or other bite. [ Proverb ]
Occasions are rare; and those who know how to seize upon them are rarer. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Physical beauty in man has become as rare as his moral beauty has always been. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. [ Emerson ]
There are many rare abilities in the world, which fortune never brings to light. [ Proverb ]
Commonsense, alas in spite of our educational institutions, is a rare commodity. [ Bovee ]
Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. [ Jon Stewart ]
A book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers. [ William Shakespeare ]
To love IS a rare happiness; if it were common, it would be better to be a man than a god. [ Mme. du Chatelet ]
He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being. [ Sir E. Brydges ]
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream - past the wit of man to say what dream it was. [ William Shakespeare ]
To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger; and danger has become so rare in modern life. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
And there's one rare strange virtue in their speeches, The secret of their mastery - they are short. [ Halleck ]
It is rare that, after having given the key of her heart, a woman does not change the lock the day after. [ Sainte-Beuve ]
In all the world there is nothing so remarkable as a great man. nothing so rare, nothing which so well repays study. [ Theodore Parker ]
Nothing is more common than to talk of a friend; nothing more difficult than to find one; nothing more rare than to improve one as we ought. [ Henry A. Oakley ]
A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect workmanship of God, and the true glory of angels, the rare miracle of earth, and the sole wonder of the world. [ Hermes ]
What a pity flowers can utter no sound! A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle - oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! [ Beecher ]
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in few words. [ Johnson ]
You know that in everything women write there are always a thousand faults of grammar, but, with your permission, a harmony which is rare in the writings of men. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]
Greatness, in any period and under any circumstances, has always been rare. It is of elemental birth, and is independent alike of its time and its circumstances. [ W. Winter ]
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster! [ Jeremy Taylor ]
A really grand passion is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the only use of the idle classes in the country. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Commonsense in one view is the most uncommon sense. While it is extremely rare in possession, the recognition of it is universal. All men feel it, though few men have it [ H. N. Hudson ]
A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page. [ Willmott ]
A friend is a rare book, of which but one copy is made. We read a page of it every day, till some woman snatches it from our hands, who sometimes peruses it, but more frequently tears it.
Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to record it. [ Carlyle ]
The capacity of apprehending what is high is very rare; and therefore, in common life a man does well to keep such things for himself, and only to give out so much as is needful to have some advantage against others. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
It has been shrewdly said, that when men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do. [ Colton ]
Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. [ Colton ]
Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite: and this rare conjunction, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. [ Chateaubriand ]
A sense of humor is a saving grace, and happy is that woman who has been blessed by birth with that rare sixth sense of seeing the funny side.
If you have it naturally, be gladly grateful, for it is a greater gift than beauty or riches. It means cheerfulness, contentment, courage and, possessing it, you are equipped with a potent weapon against the blows of fate. [ Unknown ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another.... And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal. [ John Ruskin ]