Apt quotations carry conviction. [ William Ewart Gladstone ]

Men apt to promise are apt to forget. [ Proverb ]

A man apt to promise is apt to forget. [ Proverb ]

We are apt to believe what we wish for. [ Proverb ]

O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! [ William Shakespeare ]

Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites are apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving, too, and full as vain. [ Dryden ]

Whoso does no evil, is apt to suspect none. [ Proverb ]

Weeds are apt to grow faster than good herbs. [ Proverb ]

Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance. [ Addison ]

An unfortunate man's cart is apt to overthrow. [ Proverb ]

Great interests are apt to clash with each other. [ Lucan ]

Women are not apt to be won by the charms of verse. [ Bayard Taylor ]

Poor people are apt to think every body flouts them. [ Proverb ]

Whoso is apt to believe, shall frequently repent it. [ Proverb ]

The truly great man
Is as apt to forgive as his power is able to revenge. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Our esteem is apt to be given where we know the least. [ Michelet ]

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters. [ Swift ]

Apt words have power to 'suage The tumors of a troubled mind;
And are as balm to festered wounds. [ Milton ]

Surely she wears low heeled shoes, she's apt to fail backwards. [ Proverb ]

Passionate men like fleet hounds are apt to over-run the scent. [ Proverb ]

The blood that is once inflamed with wine is apt to boil with rage. [ Hall ]

Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job. [ H. W. Shaw ]

The art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words. [ Dryden ]

If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase, commit it to your memory. [ Sir Henry Sidney ]

There is a glare about worldly success which is very apt to dazzle men's eyes. [ Hare ]

Elocution is the adjustment of apt words and sentiments to the subject in debate. [ Cicero ]

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged. [ Whipple ]

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

The ideal is the flower-garden of the mind, and very apt to run to weeds unless carefully tended. [ Mrs. Oliphant ]

A man selects his enemies, his friends make themselves, and from these friends he is apt to suffer. [ Donn Piatt ]

Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived, and apt to have ague fits. [ Erasmus ]

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. [ Chesterfield ]

A man behind the times is apt to speak ill of them, on the principle that nothing looks well from behind. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is apt to degenerate into enthusiasm (fanaticism). [ Addison ]

We must remember how apt man is to extremes - rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

A man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a fine woman than the gay, the giddy, the flattering coxcomb. [ Henry Home ]

Cupid's bow is, the Asiatics tell us, strung with bees, which are apt to sting sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it. [ Miss Edgeworth ]

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed upon as when they have lost their edge. [ Swift ]

Unsuccessful emulation is too apt to sink into envy, which of all sins has not even the excuse to offer of temporary gratification. [ Sydney Dobell ]

Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself. [ Shaftesbury ]

Sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men. [ Matthew Arnold ]

As a shoe, when too large, is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet; so is it with him whose fortune does not suit him. [ Horace ]

Great joy, especially after a sudden change and revolution of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue. [ Fielding ]

No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health. [ Colton ]

To doubt is an injury; to suspect a friend is breach of friendship; jealousy is a seed sown but in vicious minds: prone to distrust, because apt to deceive. [ Lord Lansdowne ]

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner: it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many. [ Seneca ]

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. [ Swift ]

How apt nature is, even in those who profess an eminence in holiness, to raise and maintain animosities against those whose calling or person they pretend to find cause to dislike! [ Bishop Hall ]

Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind. [ Montaigne ]

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low. [ Swift ]

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance; the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. [ George Eliot ]

Vanity is a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs, and chuck us over; but pride is a fine horse, that will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow-travelers. [ Marryat ]

What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make. [ Whipple ]

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones. [ Swift ]

Doubtless botany has its value; but the flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them; they are apt to stop preaching, though, so soon as we begin to dissect and botanize them. [ H. N. Hudson ]

Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast. [ Jeremy Collier ]

When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. [ Colton ]

The essence of humour is sensibility, warm, tender, fellow-feeling with all forms of existence; and unless seasoned and purified by humour, sensibility is apt to run wild, will readily corrupt into disease, falsehood, or, in one word, sentimentality. [ Carlyle ]

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. Him who is incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. [ Chesterfield ]

You must study to give colour by apt images, and warmth by natural passion and earnestness. The music of words and the cadence of sentences is a matter which depends on the ear. Above all things monotony in the form of the sentences is to be avoided; variety means wealth and always pleases. Condensation also ought to be particularly studied, and a loose, rambling, ill-compacted form of sentence avoided. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]