Bows too long bent grow weak. [ Proverb ]
Noblest minds are easiest bent. [ Homer ]
He is divinely bent on meditation. [ William Shakespeare ]
Who does know the bent of woman's fantasy. [ Spenser ]
O woman, woman, when to ill thy mind
Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend. [ Homer ]
Who does not know the bent of woman's fancy? [ Spenser ]
But inborn worth that fortune can control,
New strung and stiffer bent her softer soul.
The heroine assumed the woman's place;
Confirmed her mind, and fortified her face. [ Dryden ]
Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. [ Pope ]
'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. [ Alexander Pope ]
Bent over her babe, her eye dissolved in dew;
The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew. [ John Langhorne ]
'Tis midnight now. The bent and broken moon,
Battered and black, as from a thousand battles,
Hangs silent on the purple walls of Heaven. [ Joaquin Miller ]
Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where,
And when, and how thy business may be done,
Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller,
Though he alights sometimes, still goeth on. [ George Herbert ]
He whom passion rules, is bent to meet his death. [ Sir Philip Sidney ]
A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers. [ Seneca ]
The little babe up in his arms he bent, who with sweet pleasure and bold blandishment 'gan smile. [ Spenser ]
True merit, wherever found, is ever modest, just as the well-filled heads of grain are always bent. [ Charles Dickens ]
Rigour pushed too far is sure to miss its aim, however good; as the bow snaps that is bent too stiffly. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
From yon blue heaven above us bent, the grand old gardener and his wife smile at the claims of long descent. [ Tennyson ]
You must say and do nothing against the bent of your genius, (i.e. in default of the necessary inspiration.) [ Horace ]
The purer the golden vessel the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men. [ Jean Paul ]
The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of woman is sooner lost than that of man. [ Richter ]
For the bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation. [ Cervantes ]
A true friend embraces our objects as his own. We feel another mind bent on the same end, enjoying it, ensuring it, reflecting it, and delighting in our devotion to it. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Make a point never so clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination. [ Bishop Berkeley ]
Every man must think in his own way; for on his own pathway he always finds a truth, or a measure of truth, which is helpful to him in his life; only he must not follow his own bent without restraint; he must control himself; to follow mere naked instinct does not beseem a man. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]