Almost never killed a fly. [ German Proverb ]
O wild and wondrous midnight.
There is a might in thee
To make the charmed body
Almost like spirit be,
And give it some faint glimpses
Of immortality! [ Lowell ]
He who is sorry for having sinned
Is almost innocent. [ Seneca ]
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much. [ Henry W. Longfellow ]
Almost all women have hearts full of pity. [ Thackeray ]
He has, I know not what
Of greatness in his looks, and of high fate
That almost awes me. [ Dryden ]
Do not idolatrize; beauty's a flower,
Which springs and withers almost in an hour. [ Wm. Smith ]
I work with patience, which is almost power. [ Mrs. Browning ]
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;
Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. [ William Shakespeare ]
I am almost frightened out of my seven senses. [ Cervantes ]
For use almost can change the stamp of nature. [ William Shakespeare ]
We understood
Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought.
That one might almost say her body thought. [ Donne ]
Almost always the most indigent are the most generous. [ Stanislaus ]
It is almost as necessary to know other men as ourselves. [ Proverb ]
To the man of thought almost nothing is really ridiculous. [ Goethe ]
The company keeper has almost as many snares as companions. [ Proverb ]
It is necessary to be almost a genius to make a good husband. [ Balzac ]
It is almost as easy to find a true diamond, as a true friend. [ Proverb ]
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept. [ Quintilian ]
If God were not a necessary being of Himself,
He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men. [ John Tillotson ]
He that repents of a fault upon right grounds is almost innocent. [ Proverb ]
Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. [ Whipple ]
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. [ Beecher ]
If you sit down a mere philosopher, you will rise almost an atheist. [ Proverb ]
Being educated puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
The passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet. [ Dryden ]
To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. [ Abbe Trublet ]
Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
When the rights of hospitality are invaded, revenge is almost allowable. [ Proverb ]
There are people who are almost in love, almost famous, and almost happy. [ Mme. de Krudener ]
Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself. [ Hosea Ballou ]
The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little circumstances. [ Gibbon ]
Marriage in our days? - I would almost say that it is a rape, by contract. [ Michelet ]
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. [ Colton ]
The gods have attached almost as many misfortunes to liberty as to servitude. [ Montesquieu ]
We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost everything speed towards it. [ Channing ]
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty. [ Burke ]
How many minds - almost all the great ones - were formed in secrecy and solitude! [ Matthew Arnold ]
Without content, we shall find it almost as difficult to please others as ourselves. [ Greville ]
Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters. [ Tuckerman ]
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles. [ Montesquieu ]
Contempt is like the hot iron that brands criminals: its imprint is. almost always indelible. [ Alibert ]
Neatness, and its reverse, among the poor, are almost a certain test of their moral character. [ Dr. Whitaker ]
Whatever disgrace we have merited, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation. [ Rochefoucauld ]
We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Good-nature is the beauty of the mind, and, like personal beauty, wins almost without anything else. [ Hanway ]
The angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. [ John Bright ]
Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our character. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it. [ Landor ]
The mistakes of woman result almost always from her faith in the good, and her confidence in the truth. [ Balzac ]
One could take down a book from a shelf ten times more wise and witty than almost any man's conversation. [ Campbell ]
Almost all my tragedies were sketched in my mind, either in the act of hearing music or a few hours after. [ Alfieri ]
The eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, you might have almost said her body thought. [ Donne ]
Natural intelligence may make up almost every step in culture, but no culture make up for natural intelligence. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
The history of literature abounds with examples of words used almost without meaning by whole classes of writers. [ William Mathews ]
Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds. [ Bacon ]
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the press than the pulpit. [ Goldsmith ]
All musical people seem to be happy. It is the engrossing pursuit - almost the only innocent and unpunished passion. [ Sydney Smith ]
Cure oneself as far as possible of a trick common to almost every one, of using four or five adjectives before a noun. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
In the present day, and especially among women, one would almost suppose that health was a state of unnatural existence. [ Beaconsfield ]
We all drink at the spring of happiness in a fractured vase: when it reaches our lips, there is almost nothing left in it. [ Mme. du Deffand ]
If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name. [ Goldsmith ]
Resolution is the youngest and dearest daughter of Destiny, and may win from the fond mother almost any favor she chooses to ask. [ Lowell ]
Natural abilities can almost make up for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation for want of natural abilities. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself. [ Shaftesbury ]
Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease. [ La Roche ]
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 ]
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. [ Thoreau ]
To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you. [ Cicero ]
A lover is a man who endeavors to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be: this is the reason why almost all lovers are ridiculous. [ Chamfort ]
The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Nothing, or almost nothing, is certain to me, except the Divine Infernal character of this universe I live in, worthy of horror, worthy of worship. [ Carlyle ]
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, contingent, transitory, almost as liable to change as the winds and waves that waft it to our shores. [ Colton ]
Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day. [ Fenelon ]
God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts. [ Locke ]
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. [ Mark Twain ]
Natural ability can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation; but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural ability. [ Schopenhauer ]
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself. [ Milton ]
Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three. [ Rochefoucauld ]
It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man, that his earthly influence, which has a commencement, will never, through all ages, have an end. [ Aughey ]
A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life. [ Willmott ]
Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment. [ Amiel ]
The effusions of genius are entitled to admiration rather than applause, as they are chiefly the effect of natural endowment, and sometimes appear to be almost involuntary. [ W. B. Clulow ]
Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. [ Bovee ]
Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples. [ Pope ]
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. [ Lamb ]
It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. [ Washington Irving ]
Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to record it. [ Carlyle ]
There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scale the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove; and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire. [ Balzac ]
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter it is deceptive. [ Whately ]
Almost every great soul that has led forward, or lifted up the race, has been furnished for each nobler deed, and inspired with each patriotic and holy aspiration, by the retiring fortitude of some Spartan - some Christian mother. [ C. J. White ]
There are jilts in friendship, as well as in love; and by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with the view only of making the parties miserable. [ Fielding ]
There are few souls who are so vigorously organized as to be able to maintain themselves in the calm of a strong resolve: all honest consciences are capable of the generosity of a day, but almost all succumb the next morning under the effort of the sacrifice. [ George Sand ]
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God. that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite. [ James A. Garfield ]
Ask men of genius how much they owe to their mothers, and you will find that they attribute almost all to them and their influence; and if we could only guage the mental capacity of the wives of great men, we might perhaps learn why genius is so seldom hereditary. [ Lord Kames ]
Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels, - teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and the world's good. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them; almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and girls, and their kind, tender mothers. [ Thackeray ]
There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world, - to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second. [ Swift ]
The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium. [ G. S. Hillard ]
Man reconciles himself to almost any event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling; for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of heaven. [ Humboldt ]
Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing; sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world. [ Carlyle ]
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day. [ Hawthorne ]
All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman. Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. [ Colton ]
Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature, - may almost say, I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.
[ Leigh Hunt ]
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]
Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood. [ Rogers ]
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, - the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]
Throughout the pages of history we are struck with the fact that our remarkable men possessed mothers of uncommon talents for good or bad, and great energy of character; it would almost seem from this circumstance, that the impress of the mother is more frequently stamped on the boy, and that of the father upon the girl - we mean the mental intellectual impress, in distinction from the physical ones. Mothers will do well to remember that their impress is often stamped upon their sons. [ Helen Mar ]
Consistent characters are those which in social intercourse are easy, sure, and gentle. We do not clash with them, and they are never wanting nor contradictory to themselves; their stability incites confidence, their frankness induces self-surrendering openness. We feel at ease with them, we are not offended at their superiority, doubtless we admire them less, but we also hardly dream of feeling envious of them, and they seem almost to disdain malignity by the peaceful influence of their presence. [ Degerando ]
The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts, - the ifirst and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind, - just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. [ Coleridge ]