Borrowed wit is the poorest wit. [ J. C. Lavater ]

Money borrowed is soon sorrowed. [ Proverb ]

Borrowed garments never sit well. [ Proverb ]

Though I am young, I scorn to flit
On the wings of borrowed wit [ George Wither ]

Borrowed garments never keep one warm. [ Lowell ]

Thou canst not fly high with borrowed wings. [ Proverb ]

Forgot the blush that virgin fears impart
To modest cheeks, and borrowed one from art. [ Cowper ]

The axe goes to that wood where it borrowed its helve. [ Proverb ]

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower. [ Lady Blessington ]

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends. [ Lavater ]

Better is little, provided it is your own, than an abundance of borrowed capital. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

Women, like roses, should wear only their own colors, and emit no borrowed perfumes. [ Rabbi Ben Azai ]

To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Amongst so many borrowed things , I am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service. [ Montaigne ]

The reason why borrowed books are so seldom returned to their owners is, that it is much easier to retain the books than what is in them. [ Montaigne ]

Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Own or Confess? The verb to own means to possess, but it has borrowed the additional and objectionable meaning of to confess, to acknowledge; as, He owned his crime. A man owns a house, but confesses a larceny, or a murder, neither of which offenses is hardly susceptible of ownership. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Few have borrowed more freely than Gray and Milton; but with a princely prodigality, they have repaid the obscure thoughts of others, with far brighter of their own - like the ocean, which drinks up the muddy water of the rivers from the flood, but replenishes them with the clearest from the shower. [ Colton ]

A town, before it can be plundered and deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one. [ Colton ]