Patch and long sit,
Build and soon flit. [ Proverb ]
Build castles in the air. [ Burton ]
To build castles in Spain. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Make a model before you build. [ Proverb ]
A good paymaster may build Paul's. [ Proverb ]
On Reason build Resolve!
That column of true majesty in man. [ Young ]
It is easier to pull down than build up. [ Proverb ]
Reason is a firm foundation to build upon. [ Proverb ]
No pleader can pervail
Who prays against the laws of Time or Fate,
No matter how we murmur and bewail.
The robins will not build in winter hail
Nor lilacs bloom in February. Wait. [ Elizabeth Akers ]
Heaven is not reached at a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit, round by round. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
Nothing to build, and all things to destroy. [ Dryden ]
Fools build houses, and wise men enjoy them. [ Proverb ]
Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,
To build a college, or to found a race,
An hospital, a church - and leave behind
Some dome surmounted by his meagre face,
Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind
Even with the very ore which makes them base;
Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,
Or revel in the joys of calculation. [ Byron ]
When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection;
Which if we find outweighs ability.
What do we then, but draw anew the model
In fewer offices; or, at least, desist
To build at all? [ William Shakespeare ]
Too low they build, who build beneath the stars. [ Edward Young ]
Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
Or what is worse, be left by it?
Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly.
Oh, man! ordained to die?
Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
Thou who art under ground to lie?
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see.
For death, alas! is reaping thee. [ Cowley ]
We build statues of snow, and weep to see them melt. [ Walter Scott ]
The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;
Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;
For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak. [ Eugene Lee-Hamilton ]
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last.
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
It is easier to build two chimneys than to maintain one. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Ah, to build, to build! that is the noblest art of all the arts. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own. [ Charlotte Bronte ]
Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks. [ Mme. de Stael ]
Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? [ Bible ]
It takes an age to build a city, but an hour involves it in ruin. A forest is long in growing, but in a moment it may be reduced to ashes. [ Seneca ]
If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Never build after you are five and forty; have five years' income in hand before you lay a brick; and always calculate the expense at double the estimate. [ Kett ]
I have all reverence for principles which grow out of sentiments; but as to sentiments which grow out of principles, you shall scarcely build a house of cards thereon. [ Jacobi ]
Many men build as cathedrals were built, - the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete. [ Beecher ]
Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it, who, half through, gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds. [ William Shakespeare ]
An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries with spire-steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and stars. [ Coleridge ]
Be not too rash in the breaking of an inconvenient custom; as it was gotten, so leave it by degrees. Danger attends upon too sudden alterations; he that pulls down a bad building by the great may be ruined by the fall, but he that takes it down brick by brick may live to build a better. [ Quarles ]
Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a 'shell' if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. [ Goethe ]
Phaeton was his father's heir; born to attain the highest fortune without earning it; he had built no sun-chariot (could not build the simplest wheel-barrow), but could and would insist on driving one; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent gig and horses spinning through infinite space, and set the universe on fire. [ Carlyle ]