Troy was. [ Proverb ]

The coast was clear. [ Michael Drayton ]

I was born an American;
I live an American;
I shall die an American. [ Daniel Webster ]

I am not what I once was. [ Horace ]

Never was bad woman fair. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Troy was not took in a day. [ Proverb ]

It was got out of the fire. [ Proverb ]

Merit was ever modest known. [ Gay ]

To be young was very heaven! [ Wordsworth ]

Rome was not built in a day. [ Proverb ]

Long jesting was never good. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Divine grace was never slow. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

My salad days;
When I was green in judgment. [ William Shakespeare ]

His Christianity was muscular. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Rome was not built in one day. [ Heywood ]

Every thought was once a poem. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Calamity was ordained for man. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die. [ Wordsworth ]

Self-love was born before love.

It was Love who invented music. [ Virey ]

Oh! St. Patrick was a gentleman,
Who came of decent people. [ Henry Bennett ]

My pen was never dipped in gall. [ Crébillon ]

For yesterday was once tomorrow. [ Persius ]

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,A Psalm Of Life ]

Until I truly loved, I was alone. [ Mrs. Norton ]

All that's bright must fade -
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest. [ Moore ]

Such a blush
In the midst of brown was born
Like red poppies grown with corn. [ Hood ]

Every artist was first an amateur. [ Emerson ]

Thought is deeper than all speech.
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught. [ C. P. Cranch ]

You were born when wit was scarce. [ Proverb ]

A light broke in upon my soul -
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased - and then it came again
The sweetest song ear ever heard. [ Byron ]

No man was ever scared into heaven. [ Proverb ]

And might was the measure of right. [ Lucan ]

He that grows worse was never good. [ Proverb ]

You have found what was never lost. [ Proverb ]

Alas! the praise given to the ear
Never was nor never can be sincere. [ Miss Landon ]

In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plundered.
Perhaps of goose, but now and then,
From Jove's own eagle sundered.
But now, metallic pens disclose
Alone the poet's numbers;
In iron inspiration glows,
Or with the poet slumbers. [ John Quincy Adams ]

It was fear that first put on arms. [ Proverb ]

No man lives so poor as he was born. [ Proverb ]

My library was dukedom large enough. [ William Shakespeare ]

A youth to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven. [ Wordsworth ]

Who can foretell for what high cause
This darling of the gods was born? [ Andrew Marvell ]

Achilles absent, was Achilles still. [ Homer ]

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon Him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that He on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those,
Whom He to follow Him hath chose. [ Izaak Walton ]

Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again. [ Browning ]

Ennui was born one day of uniformity. [ Motte ]

For never, never wicked man was wise. [ Homer ]

There was all the world and his wife. [ Swift ]

The world will turn when we are earth
As though we had not come nor gone;
There was no lack before our birth.
When we are gone there will be none. [ Omar Khayyam ]

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound.
And curs of low degree. [ Oliver Goldsmith ]

He thought the World to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the Town;
In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set - Mankind. [ Hannah More ]

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Let every man do what he was made for. [ Proverb ]

Here lies the body of Jonathan Ground,
Who was lost at sea and never found. [ Epitaph ]

Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity. [ Moore ]

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame:
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show,
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? [ O. W. Holmes ]

He was not of an age, but for all Time,
Sweet Swan of Avon. [ Ben Jonson ]

He was exhaled; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew. [ John Dryden ]

Silently as a dream the fabric rose;
No sound of hammer or of saw was there. [ Cowper ]

The wooing was a day after the wedding. [ Proverb ]

The finest poetry was first experience. [ Emerson ]

An ass was never cut out for a lap-dog. [ Proverb ]

This was the most unkindest cut of all. [ William Shakespeare ]

All was deception, a lie, and illusion. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

There never was night that had no morn. [ D. M. Mulock ]

He alone is blessed who never was born. [ Prior ]

Hunger was the best seasoning for meat. [ Cicero ]

See how the orient dew
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses
(Yet careless of its mansion new
For the clear region where it was born)
Round in itself incloses,
And in its little globe's extent
Frames, as it can, its native element. [ Andrew Marvell ]

And to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth
And that was shining on him. [ Byron ]

I was taken by a morsel, says the fish. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Every one was eloquent in his own cause. [ Ovid ]

He fell upon whatever was offered, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike. [ Byron ]

He only is secret who never was trusted. [ Congreve ]

Land was never lost for want of an heir. [ Proverb ]

No time was ever suitable in all points. [ Proverb ]

It was the lark, the herald of the morn. [ William Shakespeare ]

He never was good, neither egg nor bird. [ Proverb ]

His eye was blue and calm, as is the sky
In the serenest noon. [ Willis ]

No man was ever scolded out of his sins. [ William Cowper ]

You cast your net but nothing was caught. [ Proverb ]

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? two hundred more. [ Butler ]

He who was never sick dies the first fit. [ Proverb ]

The devil was handsome when he was young. [ French Proverb ]

To me at least was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day. [ Robert Browning ]

He was born within the sound of Bow-bell. [ Proverb ]

The golden age never was the present age. [ Proverb ]

That was new in last year's new almanack. [ Proverb ]

Alexander himself was once a crying babe. [ Proverb ]

It was Homer who gave laws to the artist. [ Francis Wayland ]

I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty -
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? [ Ellen Sturgis Hooper ]

The soul was made for joy and good cheer. [ Newell Dwight Hillis ]

Better to say Here it is than Here it was. [ Proverb ]

There never was a good war or a bad peace. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

He was my friend, faithful and just to me. [ Jul. Caes ]

A foe to God was never true friend to man;
Some sinister intent taints all he does. [ Young ]

Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man. [ Pope ]

And O the buttercups! that field
O' the cloth of gold, where pennons swam -
Where France set up his lilied shield,
His oriflamb,
And Henry's lion-standard rolled:
What was it to their matchless sheen,
Their million million drops of gold
Among the green! [ Jean Ingelow ]

All who joy would win
Must share it - happiness was born a twin. [ Byron ]

She thought our good-night kiss was given.
And like a lily her life did close;
Angels uncurtain'd that repose,
And the next waking dawn'd in heaven. [ Gerald Massey ]

What is reason now was passion heretofore. [ Ovid ]

I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor
I cannot woo in festival terms. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Sc. 2 ]

Never was a scornful person well received. [ Proverb ]

I am what you will be, I was what you are.

I was always a lover of soft-winged things. [ Victor Hugo ]

And both were young, and one was beautiful. [ Byron ]

No man was made for sports and recreations. [ Proverb ]

Their flag was furled, and mute their drum. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

And I have loved thee. Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers. [ Byron ]

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night. [ William Shakespeare ]

And by his side rode loathsome gluttony.
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine;
His belly was up-blown with luxury,
And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne. [ Spenser ]

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. [ Swift ]

No ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes. [ Carlyle ]

I really liked it. Even the music was good. [ Yogi Berra, when asked if he liked the opera one evening ]

I was never less alone than when by myself. [ Edward Gibbon ]

Tomorrow; never yet was born
In earth's dull atmosphere a thing so fair
Never tripped, with footsteps light as air,
So glad a vision over the hills of morn. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried:
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. [ Rev. C. Wolfe ]

Time-honored golf! I heard it whispered once
That he who could not play was held a dunce
On old Olympus, when it teemed with gods. [ G. F. Carnegie ]

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

Of all the phantoms fleeting in the mist
Of time, though meagre all and ghostly thin;
Most unsubstantial, unessential shade
Was earthly fame. [ Pollok ]

Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But why did you kick me down stairs? [ J. P. Kemble ]

Beard was never the true standard of brains. [ Fuller ]

The lovely town was white with apple blooms.
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their serial looms.
Shot through with golden thread. [ Longfellow ]

Your purse opened not when it was paid, for. [ Proverb ]

'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
And, after one hour more, 'twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot. [ William Shakespeare ]

Not once or twice in our rough island story,
The path of duty was the way to glory. [ Tennyson ]

It is a fortunate head that was never broke. [ Proverb ]

But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much. [ Dryden ]

Oftentimes, excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse;
As patches, set upon a little breach.
Discredit more in hiding of the fault,
Than did the fault before it was so patched. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is a good knife, it was made at Dull-edge. [ Proverb ]

Every established religion was once a heresy. [ Buckle ]

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven. [ Michael Angelo ]

Life is probation: mortal man was made
To solve the solemn problem - right or wrong. [ John Quincy Adams ]

Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye.
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. [ Byron ]

What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember. [ Seneca ]

Ink was invented to make words living truths. [ W. Caxton ]

An hour may destroy what an age was building. [ Proverb ]

By his life alone.
Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown. [ Whittier ]

Live long and happy, and in that thought die;
Glad for what was. [ Robert Browning ]

Zounds! I was never so be thumped with words
Since I first called my brother's father dad. [ William Shakespeare, King John, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love. [ Milton ]

There was a general whisper, toss, and wiggle,
But etiquette forbade them all to giggle. [ Byron ]

Who ceases to be a friend, never was a friend.

Such harmony in motion, speech and air,
That without fairness, she was more than fair. [ Crabbe ]

Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it. [ Byron ]

Draff was his errand, but drink he would have. [ Proverb ]

Around her shone
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone.
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face.
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul. [ Byron ]

If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold! [ Charles Lamb ]

Apelles was not a master-painter the first day. [ Proverb ]

Shakspeare was not of an age, but for all time. [ Ben Jonson ]

The charm of eloquence - the skill
To wake each secret string,
And from the bosom's chords at will
Life's mournful music bring;
The overmastering strength of mind, which sways
The haughty and the free,
Whose might earth's mightiest ones obey
This charm was given to thee. [ Mrs. Embury ]

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell.
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.
Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door.
And bolted doors that open'd of themselves;
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe. [ Tennyson ]

Whom the gods love die young, was said of yore. [ Byron ]

With affection's warm, intense, refined;
She mixed such calm and holy strength of mind.
That, like heaven's image in the smiling brook,
Celestial peace was pictured in her look. [ Campbell ]

No great man was ever other than a genuine man. [ Carlyle ]

Even to the delicacy of their hand
There was resemblance such as true blood wears. [ Byron ]

She was a neat dame that washed the ass's face. [ Proverb ]

I have a passion for the name of Mary,
For once it was a magic sound to me,
And still it half calls up the realms of fairy.
Where I beheld what never was to be. [ Byron ]

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her work, gave sign of woe
That all was lost. [ Milton ]

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay.
When this was now a king, and now is clay! [ William Shakespeare ]

No trumpet-blast profaned
The hour in which the Prince of Peace was born;
No bloody streamlet stained
Earth's silver rivers on that sacred morn. [ Bryant ]

Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great is passed away. [ Wordsworth ]

There was a laughing devil in his sneer,
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell,
Hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell. [ Byron ]

No man was ever as rich as all men ought to be. [ Old saying ]

The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake.
They sighed for the dawn and thee. [ Tennyson ]

He was a man
Versed in the world as pilot in his compass;
The needle pointed ever to that interest
Which was his loadstar; and he spread his sails
With vantage to the gale of others' passions. [ Ben Jonson ]

Thus was beauty sent from heaven,
The lovely ministress of truth and good,
In this dark world; for truth and good are one,
And beauty dwells in them and they in her
With like participation. [ Akenside ]

Assail'd by scandal and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;
And he that forged, and he that threw the dart,
Had each a brother's interest in his heart. [ Cowper ]

No book was ever written down by any but itself. [ Bentley ]

Mock no pannier-man if your father was a fisher. [ Proverb ]

I wept when I was born, and every day shows why. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

That was his sole delight and solace in his woe. [ Virgil ]

Roman virtue it was that raised the Roman glory. [ Proverb ]

Speak good of pipers, your father was a fiddler. [ Proverb ]

Her form was fresher than the morning rose
When the dew wets its leaves; unstained and pure
As is the lily, or the mountain snow. [ Thomson ]

Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew.
She sparkled, was exhal'd, and went to heaven. [ Young ]

The world was sad! - the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sighed - till woman smiled. [ Campbell ]

No man was ever great without divine inspiration. [ Cicero ]

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what never was, nor is, nor ever shall be. [ Pope ]

Here lies Dame Dorothy Peg,
Who never had issue except in her leg,
So great was her art, so deep was her cunning,
That while one leg stood, the other kept running. [ Epitaph ]

She wept to feel her life so desolate,
And wept still more because the world had made it
So desolate: yet was the world her all;
She loathed it, but she knew it was her all. [ Dr. Walter Smith ]

Like to the time of the year between the extremes
Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry. [ William Shakespeare ]

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading;
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not;
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer. [ William Shakespeare, Henry VIII ]

You will ride a horse that was foaled of an acorn. [ Proverb ]

His dress was a volcano of silk with lava buttons. [ Sydney Smith ]

St. Luke was a saint and a physician, yet is dead. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The thrift of you was the death of your good-dame. [ Proverb ]

Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labor when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain. [ Pope ]

A dinner warmed up again was never worth anything. [ Boileau ]

He that ceases to be a friend never was a good one. [ Proverb ]

Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin's sands. [ Proverb ]

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whispered tales.
They say that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. [ Tennyson ]

When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war! [ Nathaniel Lee ]

The birth of science was the death of superstition. [ Huxley ]

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

In days of yore nothing was holy but the beautiful. [ Schiller ]

But words are words; I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear. [ William Shakespeare, Othello, Act I. Sc. 3 ]

It was thus by the glare of false science betrayed,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind. [ Beattie ]

There never was a hero who did not have his bounds. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]

The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him. [ William Shakespeare ]

He led on; but thoughts
Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins
Grew visible upon his swarthy brow,
And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain.
He trod less firmly; and his restless eye
Glanc'd forward frequently, as if some ill
He dared not meet were there. [ Willis ]

Amiens was taken by the fox and retaken by the lion. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A diamond polished was first a diamond in the rough. [ G. W. Doane ]

Yes - it was love - if thoughts of tenderness.
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet - oh more than all! - untired by time.
Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile,
Could render sullen were she near to smile,
Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent
On her one murmur of his discontent;
Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part.
Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart;
Which nought removed, nor menaced to remove -
If there be love in mortals— this was love! [ Byron ]

I wept when I was born, and now every day shews why. [ Proverb ]

Like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field, and flourished,
I'll hang my head, and perish. [ William Shakespeare ]

Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn;
And he alone is bless'd, who never was born. [ Prior ]

I knew exactly where it was, I just couldn't find it. [ Yogi Berra ]

It is easy to keep a castle that was never assaulted. [ Proverb ]

Never marry a widow, unless her first man was hanged. [ Proverb ]

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead.
(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think)
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor. [ William Shakespeare ]

The heart that had never loved was the first atheist. [ L. S. Mercier ]

Her eye (I am very fond of handsome eyes).
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flashed an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise,
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul,
Which struggled through and chastened down the whole. [ Byron ]

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. [ Bible ]

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable. [ Landor ]

Instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct. [ William Shakespeare ]

I was once a poet and a historian, and now I am nothing. [ Boudier, for his epitaph ]

What I was ashamed to say, love has ordered me to write. [ Ovid ]

Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman. [ Bible ]

Who has not seen that feeling born of flame
Crimson the cheek at mention of a name?
The rapturous touch of some divine surprise
Flash deep suffusion of celestial dyes:
When hands clasped hands, and lips to lips were pressed,
And the heart's secret was at once confessed? [ Abraham Coles ]

It was Dante who called this noble art God's grandchild. [ Washington Allston ]

Nothing is wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours. [ Inscription on the bust of Molière, which was placed in the Academy in 1773 ]

Alexander was below a man, when he affected to be a god. [ Proverb ]

Around her shone The light of love, the purity of grace.
The mind, the music breathing from her face;
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole;
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul! [ Byron ]

I was for Ovid at fifteen, but I am for Horace at thirty. [ Ducerceau ]

That which was bitter to endure may be sweet to remember. [ Proverb ]

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin. [ Byron ]

Mention not a halter in the house of him that was hanged. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

No man was ever written out of reputation but by himself. [ Monk ]

Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers. [ Emerson ]

No man had ever a point of pride but was injurious to him. [ Burke ]

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort. [ John Ruskin ]

But now so wise and wary was the knight
By trial of his former harms and cares,
That he descry'd and shunned still his slight;
The fish, that once was caught, new bait will hardly bite. [ Spenser ]

He that is kinder than he was wont hath a design upon you. [ Proverb ]

Power acquired by guilt was never used for a good purpose. [ Tacitus ]

He was scarce of news who told that his father was hanged. [ Proverb ]

No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself. [ Lord Greville ]

The rose was budded in her cheek, just opening to the view. [ Mallet ]

He who was taught only by himself, had a fool for a master. [ Ben Jonson ]

Never was cat or dog drowned, that could but see the shore. [ Proverb ]

Nay, stay, quoth Stringer, when his neck was in the halter. [ Proverb ]

She was gentle towards death, as she was towards every one. [ Bossuet ]

There comes naught ought out of the sack but what was there. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early. [ Yogi Berra ]

Hope smiled when your nativity was cast. Children of Summer! [ Wordsworth ]

Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. [ Swift ]

So lonely it was that God himself scarce seemed there to be. [ Coleridge ]

Of all men, Adam was the happiest - he had no mother-in-law. [ P. Parfait ]

He shone with the greater splendour because he was not seen. [ Tac ]

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action. [ Wendell Phillips ]

I always thought that record would stand until it was broken. [ Yogi Berra ]

No fool was ever so foolish, but some one thought him clever. [ Proverb ]

As pure in thought as angels are, to know her was to love her. [ Rogers ]

Marriage was instituted as a penance for the sins of celibacy.

I wish I was as sure of anything as Macaulay is of everything. [ William Windham ]

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

He that is killed by a cannon was cursed in his mother's belly. [ Proverb ]

Her walk was like no mortal thing, but shaped after an angel's. [ Petrarch ]

Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude. [ William Shakespeare ]

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts. [ Voltaire ]

If there was no future life, our souls would not thirst for it. [ Richter ]

Put your finger into the fire, and say it was your ill fortune. [ Proverb ]

Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine. [ Robert Browning ]

Flattery, which was formerly a vice, is now grown into a custom. [ Publius Syrus ]

The mother-in-law, remembers not that she was a daughter-in-law. [ Proverb ]

He came safe from the East Indies, and was drowned in the Thames. [ Proverb ]

You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope. [ The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (Katniss Everdeen) ]

The best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all. [ John Ruskin ]

She was so hungry she could not stay for the parson to say grace. [ Proverb ]

To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father bred me early,
For one, he said, to labour bred, was a match for fortune fairly. [ Burns ]

As prodigal of all dear grace as Nature was in making graces dear. [ Shakespeare ]

And am I to suffer for it because I was born a man? Is pity a sin? [ Friedrich Schiller ]

All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture. [ William Shakespeare ]

There never yet was a mother who taught her child to be an infidel. [ Henry W. Shaw ]

Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Sampson was a strong man, yet could not pay money before he had it. [ Proverb ]

Learning is worse lodged in him, than Jove was in a thatched house. [ Proverb ]

No earnest man, in any time, ever spoke what was wholly meaningless. [ Carlyle ]

Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience? [ Tillotson ]

I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it. [ Yogi Berra, when asked what he would do if he found a million dollars ]

The cuckold was very cunning, but he was cunninger that cuckold him. [ Proverb ]

We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness. [ Joubert ]

And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. [ Longfellow ]

Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to Love whom she had blinded. [ La Fontaine ]

I felt that I was in the world to do something, and I thought I must. [ Whittier ]

Her luxuriant hair. It was like the sweep of a swift wing in visions! [ Willis ]

Job was not so miserable in his sufferings, as happy in his patience. [ Proverb ]

Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman. [ William Shakespeare ]

I never hear of a great man, that I do not inquire who was his mother. [ J. Adams ]

The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made. [ Browning ]

Contempt for private wrongs was one of the features of ancient morals. [ Joubert ]

I too was once a youth with curly locks, rich in courage and in hopes. [ Lortzing ]

It was surely the devil that taught women to dance, and asses to bray. [ Proverb ]

Here, where the city now stands, was at that time nothing but its site. [ Ovid ]

He will be beloved when he is dead (who was envied when he was living). [ Horace ]

His face was of that doubtful kind, That wins the eye but not the mind. [ Scott ]

He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the whole world. [ Lucan ]

Who of us has not regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips! [ J. J. Rousseau ]

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs. [ Swift ]

Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased. [ John McC. Holmes ]

For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. [ Abraham Lincoln ]

It will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art. [ Addison ]

I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death. [ Bible ]

There never was so great a thought labouring in the breasts of men as now. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

A wise judge, by the craft of the law, was never seduced from its purpose. [ Southey ]

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. [ Longfellow ]

Next to the assumption of power was the responsibility of relinquishing it. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]

The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago.
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood.
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men.
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen. [ Bryant ]

We consecrate a great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed by great men. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

You read of but one wise man; and all that he knew was that he knew nothing. [ Congreve ]

As a man is, so is his God: therefore God was so often an object of mockery. [ Goethe ]

Tully was not so eloquent as thou, thou nameless column with the buried base. [ Byron ]

I never was on the dull, tame shore, but I loved the great sea more and more. [ Barry Cornwall ]

London bridge was made for wise men to pass over, and for fools to pass under. [ Proverb ]

To Adam Paradise was home. To the good among his descendants home is paradise. [ Hare ]

He that was born under a three-halfpenny planet shall never be worth twopence. [ Proverb ]

He seemed for dignity composed and high exploit; but all was false and hollow. [ Milton ]

In the spot where liberty has made her last stand she was fated to be smitten. [ Lucan ]

He that repents of his own act either is, or was a fool by his own confession. [ Proverb ]

There was a time when the world acted upon books; now books act upon the world. [ Joubert ]

I was too hasty to condemn unheard; and you perhaps too prompt in your replies. [ Dryden ]

If one was to think constantly of death the business of life would stand still. [ Johnson ]

Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. [ Bible ]

I thought your love eternal. Was it tied so loosely that a quarrel could divide? [ Dryden ]

Not for herself was woman first created, nor yet to be man's idol, but his mate. [ Mrs. Norton ]

In order to do great things, it is necessary to live as if one was never to die. [ Vauvenargues ]

Nature was here so lavish of her store, That she bestowed until she had no more. [ Brown ]

I was never so bethumped with words since first I called my brother's father dad. [ William Shakespeare ]

Nothing in nature, much less conscious being, was ever created solely for itself. [ Young ]

Jack was embarrassed - never hero more. And as he knew not what to say, he swore. [ Byron ]

The natural religion of the pagan philosophers was mixed with fancies and dreams. [ Saurin ]

The inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. [ William Winter ]

Before old age, it was my chief care to live well; in old age, it is to die well. [ Seneca ]

I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the best. [ Keats ]

His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than words, was simply doing good. [ Whittier ]

In olden times an enemy was sometimes poisoned by a bouquet, - deceit sugar-coated. [ Latimer ]

History tells us of illustrious villains, but there never was an illustrious miser. [ St. Evremond ]

The first vice of the first woman was curiosity, and it runs through the whole sex. [ Richardson ]

It was hard to have a conversation with anyone; there were too many people talking. [ Yogi Berra ]

In love, it is as it was with the thieves of Sparta: only the awkward are punished.

There was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

As hasty as Hopkins, that came to jail over-night, and was hanged the next morning. [ Proverb ]

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had. [ Johnson, of Goldsmith ]

It was Dean Swift who ignored the bill of fare, and asked for a bill of the company. [ N. P. Willis ]

In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the latter poetry has become science. [ Lowell ]

The ugliest man was he who came to Troy; with squinting eyes and one distorted foot. [ Homer ]

I was all ear, and took in strains that might create a soul under the ribs of death. [ Milton ]

It is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself. [ Monk ]

I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being. [ Charles Kingsley ]

It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free. [ Johnson ]

So, with decorum all things carried, Miss frowned, and blushed, and then was married. [ Goldsmith ]

Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

The most efficacious secular book that ever was published in America is the newspaper. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use. [ Emerson ]

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [ Thoreau ]

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said. Let Newton be; and all was light. [ Pope ]

If wisdom was to cease throughout the world, no one would suspect himself of ignorance. [ Saadi ]

Habit with him was all the test of truth, It must be right: I've done it from my youth. [ Crabbe ]

Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt. [ William Shakespeare ]

His hair is of a good color, an excellent color; your chestnut was ever the only color. [ William Shakespeare ]

Whoever thinks a perfect work to see, thinks what never was, nor is, nor ever shall be. [ Pope ]

Nero was wont to say of his master, Seneca, that his style was like mortar without lime. [ Bacon ]

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough. [ Bovee ]

His heart was one of those which most enamours us - wax to receive, and marble to retain. [ Byron ]

I saw one excellency was within my reach - it was brevity; and I determined to obtain it. [ Jay ]

He that has no fools, knaves, nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning. [ Proverb ]

If for anything he loved greatness, it was because therein he might exercise his goodness. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

For his bounty, there was no winter in it; an autumn it was that grew the more by reaping. [ William Shakespeare ]

The Reformation was cradled in the printing-press, and established by no other instrument. [ Agnes Strickland ]

Such was the force of his eloquence, to make the hearers more concerned than he that spake. [ Denham ]

Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it was neither rhyme nor reason. [ Sir Thos. More ]

Thus was beauty sent from heaven, the lovely ministress of truth and good in this dark world. [ Akenside ]

Even the lowest book of chronicles partakes of the spirit of the age in which it was written. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

To fight with its neighbours never was, and is now less than ever, the real trade of England. [ Carlyle ]

The promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present. [ Macchiavelli ]

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand. [ Montaigne ]

Very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. [ Bible ]

There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate. [ South ]

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution, but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses. [ Ledru-Rollin ]

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. [ Emerson ]

I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king, because I like people to do what I say. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There never was any party, faction, or sect in which the most ignorant was not the most violent. [ Pope ]

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life. [ Tennyson ]

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man. [ Macaulay ]

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 ]

Great was the respect paid of old to the hoary head, and great the honour to the wrinkles of age. [ Ovid ]

It is the mind that sins, not the body, and where there was no intention there is no criminality. [ Liv ]

She was a good deal shocked, - not shocked at tears, for women shed and use them at their liking. [ Byron ]

When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only. [ Napoleon ]

If you love something set it free. If it comes back it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be. [ Source unknown ]

Wine, though it possesses good qualities, was forbidden by the prophet, because it attacked reason. [ Hais-Bais ]

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor. [ Sir W. Temple ]

It is a powerful sex; they were too strong for the first, the strongest, and the wisest man that was. [ Howell ]

I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other. [ Coleridge ]

Milton was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherrystones. [ Dr. Johnson ]

No action will be considered as blameless unless the will was so; for by the will the act was dictated. [ Seneca ]

I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was always ugly, and with a woman, that is half the battle. [ Heinrich Heine ]

Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. [ Ruskin ]

The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. [ J. G. Holland ]

Jess would have been an omnivorous reader of books had it not been her conviction that reading was idling. [ George Eliot ]

The poorest human soul is infinite in wishes, and the infinite universe was not made for one, but for all. [ Carlyle ]

Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak. [ Ruskin ]

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Wit is, in general, the finest sense in the world. I had lived long before I discovered that wit was truth. [ Dr. Richard Porson ]

The feather whence the pen was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, dropped from an angel's wing. [ Wordsworth ]

It seems to me as if not only the form, but the soul of man was made to walk erect, and look upon the stars. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves. [ Bacon ]

He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the Lord. [ Bible ]

There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help. [ Charles Dudley Warner ]

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance. [ William Ellery Channing ]

A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered. Opportunity! [ Moore ]

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself. [ Montesquieu ]

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment. [ Bishop Hall ]

I have often thought that the nature of women was inferior to that of men in general, but superior in particular. [ Greville ]

The future of society is in the hands of the mothers. If the world was lost through woman, she alone can save it. [ De Beaufort ]

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State. [ Lowell ]

Life was never a May-game for men; not play at all, but hard work, that makes the sinews sore and the heart sore. [ Carlyle ]

No great composition was ever produced but with the same heavenly involuntariness in which a bird builds her nest. [ John Ruskin ]

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns. [ William Penn ]

The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached upon that subject. [ Saville ]

The Egyptians, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul was immortal. [ Bishop Warburton ]

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. [ Charles Dickens ]

Life was spread as a banquet for pure, noble, unperverted natures, and may be such to them, ought to be such to them. [ W. R. Greg ]

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it. [ Trench ]

If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was. [ Thackeray ]

There is none but he whose being I do fear; and, under him, my genius is rebuked, as it is said Antony's was by Caesar. [ William Shakespeare ]

In my interview with the king of the French, he stated expressly that the drunkenness of France was occasioned by wine. [ Hon. E. C. Delavan ]

Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature but what he was forced to ascribe it to many inconsistencies. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

In the present day, and especially among women, one would almost suppose that health was a state of unnatural existence. [ Beaconsfield ]

It was wisely said, by a man of great observation, that there are as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them. [ Izaak Walton ]

A man who does not learn to live while he is getting a living is a poorer man after his wealth is won than he was before. [ J. G. Holland ]

Venus was the daughter of the waves. She gave birth to Love: we can expect nothing but tempest from a daughter of the sea.

Open, candid, and generous, his heart was the constant companion of his hand, and his tongue the artless index of his mind. [ George Canning ]

Her hair was not more sunny than her heart, though like a natural golden coronet it circled her dear head with careless art. [ Lowell ]

The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a steppingstone in the pathway of the strong. [ Carlyle ]

Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed; it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. [ Carlyle ]

A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created. [ Tuckerman ]

Troubled blood through his pale face was seen to come and go, with tidings from his heart, as it a running messenger had been. [ Spenser ]

Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world; no heart was ever cast in the same mould, as that which we bear within us. [ F. Berni ]

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. [ Montaigne ]

There never was a talent, even for real literature, but was primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind. [ Carlyle ]

'Twas but a dream - let it pass - let it vanish like so many others! What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless. [ Longfellow ]

Sir Amyas Pawlet, when he saw too much haste made in any matter, was wont to say, Stay awhile, that we may make an end the sooner. [ Bacon ]

As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. [ Dr. Johnson ]

It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree. [ William Shakespeare ]

Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, when he was chill, was harmless, but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison. [ Johnson ]

That was a judicious mother who said, I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me. [ Beecher ]

Birth into this life was the death of the embryo life that preceded, and the death of this will be birth into some new mode of being. [ Rev. Dr. Hedge ]

The wrinkles on his forehead are the marks which his mighty deeds have engraved there, and still indicate what he was in former days. [ Corneille ]

The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections. [ Joubert ]

Midas longed for gold. He got gold, so that whatever he touched became gold; and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it. [ Carlyle ]

That Mirabeau understood how to act with others, and by others--this was his genius, this was his originality, this was his greatness. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Music was a thing of the soul; a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea; a strange bird singing the songs of another shore. [ J. G. Holland ]

The strongest love which the human heart has ever felt has been that for its Heavenly Parent. Was it not then constituted for this love? [ W. E. Channing ]

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and be does it without effort. [ Ruskin ]

Her head was bare, but for her native ornament of hair, which in a simple knot was tied above - sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love! [ Dryden ]

It would take long to enumerate how great an amount of crime was everywhere perpetrated; even the report itself came short of the truth. [ Ovid ]

No character was ever rightly understood until it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance only, but of sympathy. [ Carlyle ]

Where men or nations have broken down, it will almost invariably be found that neglect of little things was the rock on which they split. [ Smiles ]

I like books. I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling when I get in their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. [ O. W. Holmes ]

To be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain he must die is to mourn because thy friend was not born an angel. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty. [ Montaigne ]

The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. [ Johnson ]

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

With every anguish of our earthly part the spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant when Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. [ Lowell ]

The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Woman was formed to admire; man to be admirable. His are the glories of the sun at noonday; hers the softened splendors of the midnight moon. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Before the birth of Love, many fearful things took place through the empire of Necessity; but when this god was born, all things rose to men. [ Socrates ]

The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself. [ Seneca ]

Her cheeks blushing, and withal, when she was spoken to. a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a little breath stirred. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Party or Person? Party, a collective noun, meaning a number of persons is often incorrectly used for person; as, He was a very agreeable party. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

It was in his own home that Fielding knew and loved her (Amelia); from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction. [ Thackeray ]

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war. [ Bovee ]

We have exchanged the Washingtonian dignity for the Jeffersonian simplicity, which was in truth only another name for the Jeffersonian vulgarity. [ Bishop Henry C. Potter ]

The diamond has been always esteemed the rarest stone, and the most precious of all; among the ancients it was called the stone of reconciliation. [ Lewis Vertoman ]

Given the books of a man, it is not difficult. I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born. [ Stoddard ]

He who has done the best he can, has a right to be as happy in the hope of ultimate triumph as though he was already enthroned amidst that triumph. [ Newell Dwight Hillis ]

Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was. [ John Bunyan ]

By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now. [ J. C. Hare ]

Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim's Progress? [ Dr. Johnson ]

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 ]

This span of life was lent for lofty duties, not for selfishness; not to be wiled away for aimless dreams, but to improve ourselves, and serve mankind. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]

I would not despair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was passed; saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity. [ Jeremy Collier ]

There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a fair pearl laid up in the bosom of the sea, that never was seen nor never shall be. [ Bishop Hall ]

His last day places man in the same state as he was before he was born; nor after death has the body or soul any more feeling than they had before birth. [ Pliny the Elder ]

There never did and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in a character which was a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial. [ Scott ]

Some folks say it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and knocked the next pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a lucky swing. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Every man's experience of today is that he was a fool yesterday and the day before yesterday. Tomorrow he will most likely be of exactly the same opinion. [ Charles Mackay ]

Before Greece, every thing in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt. Since Greece, every thing has been a rude and imperfect imitation. [ James Freeman Clarke ]

There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods, and make a pish at chance and sufferance. [ William Shakespeare ]

Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many. [ Lowell ]

It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers. [ Coleridge ]

There never was a great truth but it was reverenced: never a great institution, nor a great man, that did not, sooner or later, receive the reverence of mankind. [ Theodore Parker ]

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work," is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing; yet in what corner of this planet was that ever realised? [ Carlyle ]

That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one. [ Whately ]

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. [ Pope ]

As the evening sun faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There is but one thing necessary to keep the possession of true glory, which is to hear the opposers of it with patience, and preserve the virtue by which it was acquired. [ Steele ]

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: Yes, he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them to life. [ Emerson ]

He was a kind and thankful toad, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer; and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. [ Washington Irving ]

No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be. [ Landor ]

Various and very absurd notions prevailed among the ancients in regard to the dew; by some it was supposed to descend from the stars, and to be possessed of wonderful virtues. [ Barnard ]

In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that ever was or ever will be of godlike in this world, - the veneration done to human worth by the hearts of men. [ Carlyle ]

Urge them while their souls are capable of this ambition, lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath of soft petitions, pity and remorse, cool and congeal again to what it was. [ William Shakespeare ]

When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

All was ended now, the hope and the fear and the sorrow, all the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, fill the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

One day, a daughter of Aristotle, Pythias by name, was asked what color pleased her most. She replied, The color with which modesty suffuses the face of simple, inoffensive men. [ Joubert ]

A misanthrope was told of a young friend of his: Your friend has no experience of the world; he knows nothing about it. True; but he is already as sad as if he knew all about it.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius. [ Johnson ]

It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was running to go fight in another fight, away from the first fight. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained, and, indeed, never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The poetry of the ancients was that of possession, ours is that of aspiration; the former stands fast on the soil of the present, the latter hovers between memory and anticipation. [ Schlegel ]

Adam knew no disease so long as temperance from the forbidden fruit secured him. Nature was his physician; and innocence and abstinence would have kept him healthful to immortality. [ South ]

The exhaustion of taste, genius, and splendor upon its fables and ceremonies, even to our times, constitute the ancient paganism a marvel of all that was attractive and magnificent. [ R. W. Hamilton ]

That same dew, which sometime on the buds was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes, like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. [ William Shakespeare ]

No villainy or flagitious action was ever yet committed but, upon a due inquiry into the cause of it, it will be found that a lie was first or last the principal engine to effect it. [ South ]

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace, or after ages of conflict and war; but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred. [ Edward Everett ]

The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and his Sabbath-work ever since is the illumination of the spirit. [ Bacon ]

The old pool shooter has won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did all the other cues came crashing to the floor. Sorry, he said with a smile. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Even though he was an enemy of mine, I had to admit that what he had accomplished was a brilliant piece of strategy. First, he punched me, then he kicked me, then he punched me again. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. [ Heinrich Heine ]

To escape from arrangements that tortured me, my heart sought refuge in the world of ideas, when as yet I was unacquainted with the world of realities, from which iron bars excluded me. [ Schiller at his training-school ]

Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that was of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. [ Bishop Sherlock ]

I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle and broken it and put all the pieces in his bosom where they were cutting him perpetually. [ H. W. Beecher ]

He was given to flights of oratory that way - a very dangerous thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there, and down you come. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]

Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used to swan-songs; I have sung them several times. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Gravity, with all its pretensions, was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

If you were a poor Indian with no weapons, and a bunch of conquistadors came up to you and asked where the gold was, I don't think it would be a good idea to say, I swallowed it. So sue me. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever does or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless changes. [ Carlyle ]

Samuel Gardner was blind in one eye and in a moment of confusion he stepped out of a receiving and discharging door in one of the warehouses into the ineffable glories of the celestial sphere. [ Epitaph ]

Then was I as a tree whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night, a storm or robbery, call it what you will, shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, and left me bare to weather. [ Shakespeare ]

Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet. [ Landor ]

I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Lord Melbourne was so accustomed to garnish his conversation in this way that Sydney Smith once said to him, We will take it for granted that everybody is damned, and now proceed with the subject. [ L'Estrange ]

Why was the sight to such a tender ball as the eye confined, so obvious and so easy to be quenched, and not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, that she might look at will through every pore? [ Milton ]

Well was it said by a man of sagacity that dancing was a sort of privileged and reputable folly, and that the best way to be convinced of this was to close the ears and judge of it by the eyes alone. [ Gotthold ]

I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest high catch, and he never walked off the field. [ Yogi Berra ]

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Nature has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that we received it? [ Cicero ]

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning softness that brings and shuts the day, while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. [ James Fenimore Cooper ]

It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to scour the anchor. [ Samuel Smiles ]

The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star - she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

She was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood; at the age when, if ever angels be for God's good purpose enthroned in mortal form, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers. [ Dickens ]

Someone once observed, and the observation did him credit, whoever he was, that the dearest things in the world were neighbors' eyes, for they cost everybody more than anything else contributing to housekeeping. [ Albert Smith ]

The examples of maternal influences are countless; Solomon himself records the words of wisdom that fell from a mother's lips, and Timothy was taught the Scriptures from a child by his grandmother and his mother. [ A. Ritchie ]

No man is so foolish but he may give another good counsel sometimes, and no man so wise but he may easily err, if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that was taught only by himself had a fool for a master. [ Ben Jonson ]

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 ]

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 ]

The emperor one day took up a pencil which fell from the hand of Titian, who was then drawing his picture; and upon the compliment which Titian made him on that occasion he said, Titian deserves to be served by Caesar. [ Dryden ]

What was your dream? It seemed to me that a woman in white raiment, graceful and fair to look upon, came towards me and calling me by name said: On the third day, Socrates, thou shalt reach the coast of fertile Phthia. [ Plato ]

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

When a man's pride is subdued it is like the sides of Mount Etna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top. [ Beecher ]

If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. [ Dr. Johnson ]

I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, What was that?! [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Graves, the dashes in the punctuation of our lives. To the Christian they are but the place at which he gathers breath for a nobler sentence. To Christ, the grave was but the hyphen between man and God, for He was God-man. [ Duffield ]

Pride is the common forerunner of a fall. It was the devil's sin. and the devil's ruin; and has been, ever since, the devil's stratagem, who, like an expert wrestler, usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw. [ South ]

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars. [ Macaulay ]

The poets fabulously fancied that the giants scaled heaven by heaping mountain upon mountain. What was their fancy is the gospel truth. If you would get to heaven you must climb thither by putting Mount Sion upon Mount Sinai. [ Bishop Hopkins ]

He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it. [ Montaigne ]

Of God's light I was not utterly bereft, if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him; nevertheless in my heart He was present and His heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred there. [ Carlyle ]

I never yet heard man or woman much abused, that I was not inclined to think the better of them; and to transfer any suspicion or dislike to the person who appeared to take delight in pointing out the defects of a fellow-creature. [ Jane Porter ]

No peace was ever won from fate by subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin--victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. [ John Ruskin ]

Sydney Smith playfully says that commonsense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs. [ Whipple ]

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance. [ Marcus Aurelius ]

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. [ O. W. Holmes ]

Negligence or Neglect? Negligence is a habit; neglect is an act. The following sentences illustrate the difference in the meaning of these words:
His negligence was the source of all his misfortunes,
By his neglect he lost the opportunity. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

He said - and his observation was just - that a man on whom heaven hath bestowed a beautiful wife should be as cautious of the men he brings home to his house as careful of observing the female friends with whom his spouse converses abroad. [ Cervantes ]

Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soulmoving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow. [ Peter Bayne ]

As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither nimble nor graceful, so his style was void of all grace and ease, and, being the most unlike of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated mind, had the least pretension to the praise of eloquence. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]

A little neglect may breed great mischief. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Peacefully and reasonably to contemplate is at no time hurtful, and while we use ourselves to think of the advantages of others, our own mind comes insensibly to imitate them; and every false activity to which our fancy was alluring us is then willingly abandoned. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much, by gaudy attire. Lysander knew this was in part true, and refused the rich garments that the tyrant Dionysius proffered to his daughters, saying that they were fit only to make unhappy faces more remarkable. [ Zimmermann ]

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe. [ Johnson ]

As Plato entertained some friends in a room where there was a couch richly ornamented, Diogenes came in very dirty, as usual, and getting upon the couch, and trampling on it, said, I trample upon the pride of Plato. Plato mildly answered, But with greater pride, Diogenes! [ Erasmus ]

To men addicted to delights, business is an interruption; to such as are cold to delights, business is an entertainment. For which reason it was said to one who commended a dull man for his application: No thanks to him; if he had no business, he would have nothing to do. [ Steele ]

Socrates was pronounced by the oracle of Delphos to be the wisest man in Greece, which he would turn from himself ironically, saying there could be nothing in him to verify the oracle, except this, that he was not wise and knew it, and others were not wise and knew it not. [ Bacon ]

Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought - the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven. [ Longfellow ]

A blushing young damsel of 109 has just died at Mallow, Ireland. She had been an ardent smoker of twist tobacco for 81 years, and finally died in the bloom of her youth. To make matters worse, she was an orphan. Those who do not wish to die young should make a note of this. [ Tobacco Jokes For Smoking Folks, 1888 ]

The press is not only free; it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people. [ Beaconsfield ]

If all fools had baubles* we should want fuel. (*The fool or jester carried in his hand a wooden sceptre called a bauble. It was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or with that of a puppet or doll. Jesters were still retained in Herbert's day.) [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. [ Landor ]

Even the grasses in exposed fields were bung with innumerable diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of the traveler. * * * It was as if some superincumbent stratum of the earth had been removed in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Be not too rash in the breaking of an inconvenient custom; as it was gotten, so leave it by degrees. Danger attends upon too sudden alterations; he that pulls down a bad building by the great may be ruined by the fall, but he that takes it down brick by brick may live to build a better. [ Quarles ]

No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects. [ Lord Shaftesbury ]

When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, I knew he was mortal. So we in all casualties of life should say I knew my riches were uncertain, that my friend was but a man. Such considerations would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected. [ Plutarch ]

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them, - that it was a vain endeavor? [ Thoreau ]

Phaeton was his father's heir; born to attain the highest fortune without earning it; he had built no sun-chariot (could not build the simplest wheel-barrow), but could and would insist on driving one; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent gig and horses spinning through infinite space, and set the universe on fire. [ Carlyle ]

O poets! what injury you have done us, and how right Plato was to banish you from his republic! How your ambrosia has rendered more bitter our absinth! How have we found our lives more barren and more desolate, after having turned our eyes toward the sublime perspectives which your dreams have opened in the infinite! [ T. Gautier ]

It is necessary to look forward as well as backward, as some think it is always necessary to regulate their conduct by things that have been done of old times, but that past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on an alternative of some past that went before it. [ Madame De Stael ]

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

A prolific source of obscurity is ambiguous arrangement. A member of the Savage Club, so runs the story, was one day standing on the steps of the club house. A messenger stopped and inquired: Does a gentleman belong to your club with one eye named Walker? I don't know, was the answer, what was the name of his other eye? [ Sir J. F. Stephen, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us - that's what they sing. [ O. Henry, A Tempered Wind ]

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind. [ Bruyere ]

Taking our stand on the immovable rock of Christ's character we risk nothing in saying that the wine of miracle answered to the wine of nature, and was not intoxicating. No counterproof can equal the force of that drawn from His attributes. It is an indecency and a calumny to impute to Christ conduct which requires apology. [ Abraham Coles ]

What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper. [ Seneca ]

It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. [ Albert Barnes ]

How sacred, how beautiful, is the feeling of affection in pure and guileless bosoms! The proud may sneer at it, the fashionable may call it fable, the selfish and dissipated may affect to despise it; but the holy passion is surely of heaven, and is made evil by the corruptions of those whom it was sent to bless and to preserve. [ Mordaunt ]

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner! We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Most people give up before they start because they think it is too hard, there is too much against me here, I can’t do this on my own, I don’t have the resources. I was on the back to work scheme when I applied. I didn’t have resources... It never occurred to me to fail. I always knew it was part of my destiny to do that thing. [ Mary Reynolds, 2002 Gold Medal Winner of the Chelsea Flower Show ]

Was man made to disdain the gifts of nature? Was he placed on earth but to gather bitter fruits? For whom are the flowers the gods cause to bloom at the feet of mortals? It pleases Providence when we abandon ourselves to the different inclinations that He has given us: our duties come from His laws, and our desires from His inspirations.

To be a finite being is no crime, and to be the Infinite is not to be a creditor. As man was not consulted he does not find himself a party in a bargain, but a child in the household of love. Reconciliation, therefore, is not the consequence of paying a debt, or procuring atonement for an injury, but an organic process of the human life. [ John Weiss ]

Often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by its old perfume, an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds of our first dim feelings! [ Richter ]

Yorick sometime?, in his wild way of talking, would say that gravity was an arrant scoundrel, and, he would add, of the most dangerous kind, too, because a sly one; and that he verily believed more honest well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. [ Sterne ]

He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, Dust to dust, some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he told the others, I'll be waiting for you in heaven - with a gun. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, - that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all these incorporated spirits and the perfume of all these flowers. [ Richter ]

If I ever opened a trampoline store, I don't think I'd call it Trampo-Land, because you might think it was a store for tramps, which is not the impression we are trying to convey with our store. On the other hand, we would not prohibit tramps from browsing, or testing the trampolines, unless a tramp's gyrations seemed to be getting out of control. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. [ Trench ]

Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army. [ Napoleon I ]

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it - a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

It is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood or betray its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. [ Hawthorne ]

The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony declined with paganism, but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. [ Disraeli ]

I wouldn't be surprised if someday some fisherman caught a big shark and cut it open, and there inside was a whole person. Then they cut the person open, and in him is a little baby shark. And in the baby shark there isn't a person, because it would be too small. But there's a little doll or something, like a Johnny Combat little toy guy - something like that. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it, whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel at evening that the day was well worth its fatigues. [ Lucy Larcom ]

Partially or Partly? The use of the adverb partially for partly, although it has the sanction of Webster, is obviously incorrect. The case in court has been partially heard. This is a common expression, the intended meaning of which is, that the case has been heard in part, or partly heard. Partially heard, denotes that it was heard in a biased or prejudiced manner. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Cheeriness is a thing to be more profoundly grateful for than all that genius ever inspired or talent ever accomplished. Next best to natural, spontaneous cheeriness is deliberate, intended and persistent cheeriness, which we can create, can cultivate and can so foster and cherish that after a few years the world will never suspect that it was not an hereditary gift. [ Helen Hunt Jackson ]

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business. [ Seneca ]

I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky. Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]

Who is there who has not experienced that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us as village children a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us. by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora-clouds of our first dim feelings? [ Richter ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard pavement of poor Picciola's prison was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here amid rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature. And O, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ Chapin ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard payment of poor Picciola's prison, was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here, amid the rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature; and oh, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ E. H. Chapin ]

There is the same difference between diligence and neglect, that there is between a garden curiously kept and the sluggard's field when it was all overgrown with nettles and thorns; the one is clothed with beauty and the gracious amiableness of content and cheering loveliness; while the other hath nothing but either little smarting pungencies or else such transpiercings as rankle the flesh within. [ Feltham ]

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted he knew nothing; and that those ideas which in theory appeared the most advantageous were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. [ Terence ]

O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever! [ The last prayer of Voltaire ]

Wherever there is a sky above him and a world around him, the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavours; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through eternity; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. [ Carlyle ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]

Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing was more grateful; Aristotle afirmed that beauty was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a favor bestowed by the gods. [ From the Italian ]

Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings, - a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness, a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first would make us grateful; the second, humble; and the third, moderate. [ Hannah More ]

It is the saying of an old divine, Two things in ray apparel I will chiefly aim at - commodiousness and decency; more than these is not commendable, yet I hate an effeminate spruceness as much as a fantastic disorder. A neglected comeliness is the best ornament. It is said of the celebrated Mr. Whitfield that he always was very clean and neat, and often said pleasantly that a minister of the gospel ought to be without a spot. [ J. Beaumont ]

Paraphernalia, Trappings or Regalia? We often hear paraphernalia used in the sense of trappings or regalia; as, The Grand Marshal was conspicuous in his gorgeous paraphernalia The word is derived from the Greek, and is strictly a law term, meaning whatever the wife brings with her at marriage, in addition to her dower, such as her dresses and her jewels. Hence the evident absurdity of the use of paraphernalia in the sentence cited. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

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 ]

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

If I live in the Wild West days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That was if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like, Hey look. He's carrying a soldering iron! and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice. Then everyone would get real quiet and ashamed, because they made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. . . . We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. [ Dialogues, Theaetetus ]

When we turn away from some duty or some fellow-creature, saying that our hearts are too sick and sore with some great yearning of our own, we may often sever the line on which a Divine message was coming to us. We shut out the man, and we shut out the angel who had sent him on to open the door . . . There is a plan working in our lives; and if we keep our hearts quiet and our eyes open, it all works together; and, if we don't, it all fights together, and goes on fighting till it comes right, somehow, somewhere. [ Annie Keary ]

The man who makes a success of an important venture never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticised. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done. [ C. V. White ]

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed with the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings. [ Dr. Johnson ]

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got - meaning the chairman - if you've got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and - not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know. He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: This story isn't too long. But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, Uh-oh, this story is getting long. But then the story was over, and I said to myself: You know, that story wasn't too long after all. I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me, I said. I'm off the team, aren't I? Well, said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times. It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Since I was seven years old I have seldom take, a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

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 ]

I was walking in the street, a beggar stopped me, — a frail old man. His inflamed, tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores . . . oh, how horribly poverty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch, or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited and his out-stretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it. Don't be vexed with me, brother; I have nothing with me, brother. The beggar raised his bloodshot eyes to mine; his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. Never mind, brother, stammered he; thank you for this — this, too, was a gift, brother. I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother. [ Ivan Tourgueneff ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]