Pursuits become habits. [ Ovid ]

Humble things become the humble. [ Horace ]

A child is a Cupid become visible. [ Novalis ]

Weak things united, become strong. [ Proverb ]

To change sides; become a turncoat. [ Proverb ]

I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares do more is none. [ William Shakespeare ]

Injuries slighted become none at all. [ Proverb ]

A wild colt may become a sober horse. [ Proverb ]

Jest so that it may not become earnest. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home. [ Edmund Waller ]

A man must become wise at his own expense. [ Montaigne ]

A linsey-wolsey gown does not become June. [ Proverb ]

Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power, - under makers. [ Bailey ]

Young men are made wise, old men become so. [ Proverb ]

In avoiding to be diffuse, I become obscure. [ Boileau, after Horace ]

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! [ William Shakespeare ]

Pursuits assiduously prosecuted become habits.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad. [ William Shakespeare ]

Men may become old, but they never become good. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in Caesar?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? [ William Shakespeare ]

How does our will become sanctified?
By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God. [ Fenelon ]

You become milder and better as old age advances. [ Horace ]

I gave the mouse a hole, and she is become my heir. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

As we grow old we become more foolish and more wise. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. [ Hazlitt ]

The cause of our grandeur may become that of our ruin. [ Arnault ]

Live with your friend as if he might become your enemy. [ Proverb ]

If a man wishes to become rich he must appear to be rich. [ Goldsmith ]

Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions. [ Joubert ]

The strictest laws sometimes become the severest injustice. [ Terence ]

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too soon famous! [ Voltaire ]

It is in contemplating man at a distance that we become benevolent. [ Buiwer-Lytton ]

We must be careful that the bond of wedlock does not become bondage. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Love makes us thin. If a codfish were a widow, she would become fat. [ Provencal Proverb ]

An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with jewels nothing can become. [ Dryden ]

The stone which the builders refused has become the head of the corner. [ Bible ]

Women are women, but to become mothers they go to duty through pleasure. [ Joubert ]

No visor does become black villainy so well as soft and tender flattery. [ William Shakespeare ]

Our good purposes foreslowed are become our tormentors upon our deathbed. [ Bishop Hall ]

When I say, Be not a miser, I do not bid you become a worthless prodigal. [ Horace ]

What doth better become wisdom than to discern what is worthy the living. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them. [ Swift ]

In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary. [ Goldsmith ]

No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labour and economy. [ John Ruskin ]

The higher we rise, the more isolated we become, and all elevations are cold. [ De Boufflers ]

To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Physical beauty in man has become as rare as his moral beauty has always been. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine: do not become intoxicated. [ A. de Musset ]

Every unpleasant feeling is a sign that I have become untrue to my resolutions. [ J. Paul F. Richter ]

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right. [ Seneca ]

Not he who has many ideas, but he who has one conviction may become a great man. [ Cötvös ]

A lie is like a vizard, that may cover the face indeed, but can never become it. [ South ]

Words become luminous when the finger of the poet touches them with his phosphorus. [ Joubert ]

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

Rivers flow with sweet waters; but, having joined the ocean, they become undrinkable. [ Hitopadesa ]

All women become like their mothers - that is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence. [ Joubert ]

He rejoices more than an old man who has put off old age, (i.e. has become young again). [ Proverb ]

Hypocrisy has become a fashionable vice, and every fashionable vice passes for a virtue. [ Moliere ]

Be on such terms with your friend as if you knew that he might one day become your enemy. [ Laberius ]

Nothing really pleasant or unpleasant subsists by nature, but all things become so by habit. [ Epictetus ]

Inflict not on an enemy every injury in your power, for he may afterwards become your friend. [ Saadi ]

Ingersoll's atheism can never become an institution; it can never be more than a destitution. [ Robert Collyer ]

Women have become so highly educated that nothing should surprise them except happy marriages. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

The most brilliant qualities become useless when they are not sustained by force of character. [ Segur ]

Those who bestow too much application on trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. [ Rochefoucauld ]

To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger; and danger has become so rare in modern life. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Even the best things ill used become evils; and, contrarily, the worst things used well prove good. [ Bishop Hall ]

We have been thrust into the world - we know not why; and we must die to become - we know not what. [ Mme. d'Albany ]

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot. [ Chapin ]

The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world. [ Napoleon I ]

Some souls are ennobled and elevated by seeming misfortunes, which then become blessings in disguise. [ Chapin ]

In the silent night, weary mortals lull to rest their cares, and their hearts become forgetful of toil. [ Virgil ]

Do good to your friend, that he may be more wholly yours; to your enemy, that he may become your friend. [ Cleobulus ]

To become an able man in any profession, there are three things necessary, - nature, study, and practice. [ Aristotle ]

To test the Reality we must see it on the tightrope. When the verities become acrobats we can judge them. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

A bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful that the bond does not become bondage. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Nobody can continue easy in his own mind who does not endeavour to become least of all and servant of all. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

As long as you are fortunate you will have many friends, but if the times become cloudy you will be alone. [ Ovid ]

Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings. [ Kant ]

The more enthusiastic, the more liable we are to be imposed upon, and to become the tools of the designing. [ Bovee ]

There are persons who do not know how to waste their time alone, and hence become the scourge of busy people. [ De Bonald ]

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. [ Macaulay ]

Most nations, as well as men, are impressible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. [ Rousseau ]

How many languish in obscurity, who would become great if emulation and encouragement incited them to exertion! [ Fenelon ]

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die. [ C. N. Bovee ]

People first abandon reason, and then become obstinate; and the deeper they are in error the more angry they are. [ Blair ]

I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture. [ John Burroughs ]

In observing the world's movements, the most melancholy man would become merry, and Heraclitus would die of laughter. [ Chamfort ]

There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually can become right merely by their multitude. [ Ruskin ]

Lips become compressed and drawn with anxious thought, and eyes the brightest are quenched of their fires by many tears. [ S. Lover ]

No man can become largely rich by his personal toil, but only by discovery of some method of taxing the labour of others. [ John Ruskin ]

The greater number of nations, as of men, are only impressible in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. [ Rousseau ]

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness. [ Hamerton ]

Strength is natural, but grace is the growth of habit. This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting. [ Joubert ]

The highest conceptions of the sages, who, in order to arrive at them, had to live many days, have become the milk for babes. [ Ballanche ]

Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature's grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man. [ Heine ]

When worthy men fall out, only one of them may be faulty at the first; but if strife continue long, commonly both become guilty. [ Fuller ]

If you could throw as an alms to those who would use it well the time that you fritter away, how many beggars would become rich! [ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ]

No conquest can ever become permanent which does not withal show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors. [ Carlyle ]

We like morality when we are old, because we make of it a merit for the numerous privations which have become for us a necessity. [ Mme. de Salm ]

When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge. [ Dr. Watts ]

What has become of those personages who made so much noise in the world? Time has made one step, and the face of the earth is renewed. [ Chateaubriand ]

Sorrowful words become the sorrowful; angry words suit the passionate; light words a playful expression; serious words suit the grave. [ Horace ]

So many of our dreams first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. [ Christopher Reeve ]

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food, - they nourish, but at the same time they consume it. [ Bruyere ]

Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns. [ Goldsmith ]

A worthless man will always remain worthless, and a little mind will not, by daily intercourse with great minds, become an inch greater. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. [ Washington Irving ]

Those with whom we can apparently become well acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and to understand. [ Hawthorne ]

There has never been a great or beautiful character which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed by God. [ Horace Bushnell ]

There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Generosity, when once set going, knows not how to stop; as the more familiar we are with the lovely form, the more enamored we become of her charms. [ Pliny the Younger ]

The misuse of words in this literature of ungoverned or ungovernable sensibility has become so general as to threaten the validity of all definitions. [ E. P. Whipple ]

It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certainly become an enemy and one of our enemies a friend. [ Bias ]

Many have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great. [ Zimmermann ]

No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language. [ Fisher Ames ]

The post is the grand connecting link of all transactions, of all negotiations. Those who are absent, by its means become present; it is the consolation of life. [ Voltaire ]

We derive from nature no fault that may not become a virtue, no virtue that may not degenerate into a fault. Faults of the latter kind are most difficult to cure. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still. [ Caleb C. Colton ]

Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty. [ Mrs. Stowe ]

If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again. [ Thackeray ]

To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. [ Macaulay ]

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 ]

I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself. [ Dr. Arnold ]

It is better to decide a difference between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of our enemies will probably become our friend. [ Bias ]

Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely in it; what custom hath civilized is become decent, till then ridiculous; where the eye is the jury thy apparel is the evidence. [ Quarles ]

If the secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader. [ Thackeray ]

Of permanent griefs there are none, for they are but clouds. The swifter they move through the sky. the more follow after them; and even the immovable ones are absorbed by the other, and become smaller till they vanish. [ Richter ]

Those people who are always improving never become great Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps. [ Hazlitt ]

For knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God: and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit. [ William Mountford ]

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. [ Emerson ]

Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition allies itself to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vitality of earthly desires we become superstitious, and by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious. [ Mme. de Staël ]

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong. [ Henry Home ]

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults. [ Agapet ]

Not in a man's having no business with men, but in having no unjust business with them, and in having all manner of true and just business, can either his or their blessedness be found possible, and this waste world become, for both parties, a home and peopled garden. [ Carlyle ]

Imaginary evils soon become real ones, by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall, or the wainscot, can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied. [ Swift ]

The common cause of waves is the friction of the wind upon the surface of the water; little ridges or elevations first appear, which by continuance of the force gradually increase until they become the rolling mountains seen where the wind sweeps over a great extent of water. [ F. Marryatt ]

I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man. [ Beecher ]

Wealth is not acquired, as many persons suppose, by fortunate speculations and splendid enterprises, but by the daily practice of industry, frugality, and economy. He who relies upon these means will rarely be found destitute, and he who relies upon any other will generally become bankrupt. [ Wayland ]

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so. [ Ruskin ]

Pain itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent, but it is seldom both violent and long-continued; and its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. [ Paley ]

The education which has, however, made me a writer has been a living one. I have not only read much, I have seen much, and enjoyed much, and, above all, I have sorrowed much. God has put into my hands every cup of life, sweet and bitter, and the bitter has often become sweet, and the sweet bitter. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Joy wholly from without, is false, precarious, and short. From without it may be gathered; but, like gathered flowers, though fair, and sweet for a season, it must soon wither, and become offensive. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree; it is more sweet and fair, it is lasting; and, I must add, immortal. [ Young ]

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 ]

The only thing that has been taught successfully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf they received from their first mother. Everything that is said and repeated for the first eighteen or twenty years of a woman's life is reduced to this: My daughter, take care of your fig-leaf; your fig-leaf becomes you; your fig-leaf does not become you. [ Diderot ]

By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. [ Hazlitt ]

If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should imagine it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are, at the same time, loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling. [ Sir H. Davy ]

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]

I cannot look around me without being struck with the analogy observable in the works of God. I find the Bible written in the style of His other books of Creation and Providence. The pen seems in the same hand. I see it, indeed, write at times my steriously in each of these books: thus I know that mystery in the works of God is only another name for my ignorance. The moment, therefore, that I become humble, all becomes right. [ Richard Cecil ]

Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come. [ F. W. Robertson ]

You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home - home to a Father's house - to an eternal home? [ Mark Hopkins ]

Men cannot labor on always. They must have intervals of relaxation. They cannot sleep through these interTafs. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have recreation. And if they have not recreation from healthful sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or, if they have pleasures, which, though innocent, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are liable to become poisoned fountains. [ Orville Dewey ]

If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it; their influence embraces the whole of life; a wife! - a mother! - two magical words, comprising the sweetest source of man's felicity; theirs is a reign of beauty, of love, of reason, - always a reign! a man takes counsel with his wife, he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live; and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions. [ Aime Martin ]

I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Threescore years and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-tail but lights out. You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer - and without prejudice - for they are not legally collectable. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

The love of a mother is never exhausted; it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; she still remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of Iris childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [ W. Irving ]

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]

My friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to the father) - What's his name? The father hesitated, then whispered back: His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]