Lying's a certain mark of cowardice. [ Southern ]
Certain signs precede certain events. [ Cicero ]
Who escapes the snare
Once, has a certain caution to beware. [ Chapman ]
Nothing is certain but death and taxes. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
Time is a certain fraction of eternity. [ Cicero ]
O Thou, whose certain eye foresees
The fixed event of fate's remote decrees. [ Homer ]
War cannot be put on a certain allowance. [ Archidamus III ]
There is a certain physiognomy in manners. [ Joseph Cook ]
You must bring with you certain documents. [ Law ]
There is nothing certain but the uncertain. [ French ]
Certain names always awake certain prejudices. [ Joseph Roux ]
'Tis true; 'tis certain; man though dead retains
Part of himself; the immortal mind remains. [ Homer ]
Children are certain cares, but uncertain comforts. [ Proverb ]
The Alphabet Of Success
Attend carefully to details.
Be prompt in all things.
Consider well, then decide positively.
Dare to do right, fear to do wrong.
Endure trials patiently.
Fight life's battles bravely.
Go not into the society of the vicious.
Hold your integrity sacred.
Injure not another's reputation.
Join hands only with the virtuous.
Keep your mind free from evil thoughts.
Lie not for any consideration.
Make few special acquaintances.
Never try to appear what you are not.
Observe good manners.
Pay your debts promptly.
Question not the verity of a friend.
Respect the desires of your parents.
Sacrifice money rather than principle.
Touch not, taste not, handle not intoxicating drinks.
Use your leisure for improvement.
Venture not upon the threshold of wrong.
Watch carefully over your passions.
Xtend to everyone a kindly greeting.
Yield not to discouragement.
Zealously labor for the right, and success is certain. [ Ladies Home Journal ]
The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness. [ Montaigne ]
The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts. [ Bovee ]
A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables. [ Whately ]
Death, as the psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. [ William Shakespeare ]
To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise. [ Goldsmith ]
Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them. [ Carlyle ]
In love, which is the best rewarded: respect, or certain offenses? [ A. de Musset ]
All governments are, to a certain extent, a treaty with the Devil. [ Jacobi ]
Be certain that he who has betrayed thee once will betray thee again. [ Lavater ]
There is nothing certain in man's life but this, that he must lose it. [ Owen Meredith ]
A certain degree of soul is indispensable to save us the expense of salt. [ Ben Jonson ]
There are certain epochs in art when simplicity is audacious originality. [ Achilles Poincelot ]
To endeavor to forget any one is the certain way to think of nothing else. [ La Bruyere ]
Death is a certain remedy for the injuries of fortune and vexations of life. [ Proverb ]
There is no gain so certain as that which arises from sparing what you have. [ Publius Syrus ]
Whoever is a wolf will act as a wolf; that is the most certain of all things. [ La Fontaine ]
The certain way to be cheated is to fancy one's self more cunning than others. [ Charron ]
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods. [ Hazlitt ]
In the great inconstancy and crowd of events nothing is certain except the past. [ Seneca ]
What is the end of fame? It is but to fill a certain portion of uncertain paper. [ Byron ]
For it is certain to the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant. [ Carlyle ]
Man is free as the bird in the cage: he has powers of motion within certain limits. [ Lavater ]
Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it. [ Cicero ]
To be happy, there are certain sides of our nature that must be entirely stultified. [ Chamfort ]
Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert through which rings the voice of God. [ Balzac ]
Certain importunities always please women - even when the importuner does not please.
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. [ Johnson ]
The enquiring spirit will not be controlled. We would make certain all, and all behold. [ Sprague ]
There is a certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty. [ Richter ]
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. [ Burial Service ]
There is a certain pleasure in weeping; grief finds in tears both a satisfaction and a cure. [ Ovid ]
There are certain things in which a woman's vision is sharper than a hundred eyes of the male. [ Lessing ]
Neatness, and its reverse, among the poor, are almost a certain test of their moral character. [ Dr. Whitaker ]
We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure that we find in appearing so. [ De Barthelemy ]
When a young man complains that a young lady has no heart, it is pretty certain that she has his. [ G. D. Prentice ]
Money is like an icicle, soon found at certain seasons, and soon melted under other circumstances. [ Spurgeon ]
The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. [ Emerson ]
We perfectly know what is good, and what is evil, and may be as certain in morals as in mathematics. [ Proverb ]
The modern craze for bargains has often inflicted great hardships upon a certain class of humble toilers. [ Douglas ]
It is the privilege of every human work which is well done, to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress. [ Lavater ]
It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another. [ William Shakespeare ]
The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men. [ J. de Maistre ]
Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters. [ Moliere ]
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. [ La Bruyère ]
In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views. [ Emerson ]
A society of people will cursorily represent a certain culture, though there is not a gentleman or a lady in the group. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
With poetry, as with going to sea, we should push from the shore and reach a certain elevation before we unfurl all our sails. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Great warmth at first is the certain ruin of every great achievement. Doth not water, although ever so cool, moisten the earth? [ Hitopadesa ]
It does not take twenty years for men to change their opinions of things which had seemed to them the truest, and most certain. [ La Bruyere ]
There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune. [ Rochefoucauld ]
It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of heaven infills those who are leaving the light of earth. [ Victor Hugo ]
When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge. [ Dr. Watts ]
Although it is dangerous to have too much knowledge of certain subjects, it is still more dangerous to be totally ignorant of them. [ Colombat ]
It is dangerous to discover the faults or weaknesses of certain persons: they never forgive us the knowledge of these secret ulcers. [ De Finod ]
We tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands; I believe it is a more certain position that good brothers make good sisters. [ Johnson ]
There are principles excellent for certain firm and energetic characters, which would be worth nothing for those of an inferior order. [ Chamfort ]
We learn nothing from mere hearing, and he who does not take an active part in certain subjects knows them but half and superficially. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
No character was ever rightly understood until it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance only, but of sympathy. [ Carlyle ]
It is with certain good qualities as with the senses; those who are entirely deprived of them can neither appreciate nor comprehend them. [ Rochefoucauld ]
To be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain he must die is to mourn because thy friend was not born an angel. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination. [ Hume ]
Nature has given to women fortitude enough to resist a certain time, but not enough to resist completely the inclination which they cherish. [ Dorat ]
By a certain fate, great acts, and great eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same ages. [ Milton ]
To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you. [ Cicero ]
Our minds are like certain vehicles, - when they have little to carry they make much noise about it, but when heavily loaded they run quietly. [ Elihu Burritt ]
Of what is man certain? What lasts? What passes? What is chimerical? What is real? . . . Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt. [ Victor Hugo ]
A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been blasted with excess of light.
[ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame, - when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for. [ Talleyrand ]
Whatever difference there may appear to be in men's fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal. [ Charron ]
Nothing, or almost nothing, is certain to me, except the Divine Infernal character of this universe I live in, worthy of horror, worthy of worship. [ Carlyle ]
With the possession or certain expectation of good things our demand rises, and increases our capacity for further possession and larger expectations. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery. [ Landor ]
Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them. [ Shenstone ]
Heroes are men who set out to be demi-gods in their own eyes, and who end by being so at certain moments by dint of despising and combating all humanity. [ George Sand ]
Great libraries of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats - that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners! [ Isaac Disraeli ]
In your friendship and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. [ Chesterfield ]
In misfortune, in error, and when the time appointed for certain affairs is about to elapse, a servant who hath his master's welfare at heart ought to speak unasked. [ Hitopadesa ]
Mothers are more fond of their children than fathers are; for the bringing them forth is more painful, and they have a more certain knowledge that they are their own. [ Aristotle ]
Literature consists of all the books--and they are not many--where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. [ John Morley ]
A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life. [ Willmott ]
Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true. [ John Locke ]
Neglect is enough to ruin a man; a man who is in business need not commit forgery or robbery to ruin himself; he has only to neglect his business, and his ruin is certain. [ A. Barnes ]
As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
If I ever do a book on the Amazon, I hope I am able to bring a certain lightheartedness to the subject, in a way that tell the reader we are going to have fun with this thing. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. [ George Eliot ]
What is certain in death is somewhat softened by what is uncertain; it is an indefiniteness in the time which holds a certain relation to the infinite, and what is called eternity. [ La Bruyere ]
The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning. [ Joubert ]
There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. [ Lowell ]
Women overrate the influence of fine dress and the latest fashions upon gentlemen; and certain it is that the very expensiveness of such attire frightens the beholder from all ideas of matrimony. [ Abba Goold Woolson ]
Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them. [ De Quincey ]
Some men's censures are like the blasts of rams horns before the walls of Jericho; all a man's fame they lay level at one stroke, when all they go upon is only conceit, without any certain basis. [ J. Beaumont ]
The mind has a certain vegetative power, which cannot be wholly idle. If it is not laid out and cultivated into a beautiful garden, it will of itself shoot up in weeds or flowers of a wild growth. [ Steele ]
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks in its tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. [ South ]
All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union. and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another. [ Cicero ]
It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone. [ Emerson ]
It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. [ Hume ]
Nature has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that we received it? [ Cicero ]
People seem to think themselves in some ways superior to heaven itself, when they complain of the sorrow and want round about them. And yet it is not the devil for certain who puts pity into their hearts. [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]
Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend upon such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man's hands to set the tables, yet is he not certain to win the game. [ George Herbert ]
There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. [ Cicero ]
The heart will commonly govern the head, and it is certain that any strong passion, set the wrong way, will soon infatuate even the wisest of men, therefore the first part of wisdom is to watch the affections. [ Dr. Waterland ]
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [ Thomas Jefferson ]
A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy. [ Lavater ]
No good book or good thing of any sort shows its best face at first; nay, the commonest quality in a true work of art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment. [ Carlyle ]
The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a house of mourning,
I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory. [ T. L. Cuyler ]
As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Laissez faire, the "let alone" principle, is, in all things which man has to do with, the principle of death. It is ruin to him, certain and total, if he lets his land alone, if he lets his fellow-men alone, if he lets his own soul alone. [ John Ruskin ]
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 ]
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition. [ John Neal ]
There is a certain virtue in every good man, which night and day stirs up the mind with the stimulus of glory, and reminds it that all mention of our name will not cease at the same time with our lives, but that our fame will endure to all posterity. [ Cicero ]
Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite: and this rare conjunction, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. [ Chateaubriand ]
Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they do not know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the freemasons sign - they reveal the initiated to each other. [ Mrs. Stowe ]
There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions. [ Burke ]
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]
Poetry can make even the thought of death beautiful, and the sadness of bereavement not without a certain pleasure. Great poets have elicited from the sternest suffering a principle of enjoyment. Sublime faith and earnest love can conjure spirits the most lovely from the darkest abyss. [ Tuckerman ]
He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case. [ Colton ]
We lose in depth of expression when we go to inferior animals for comparisons with human beauty. Homer calls Juno ox-eyed; and the epithet suits well with the eyes of that goddess, because she may be supposed, with all her beauty, to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you with a royal indifference. [ Leigh Hunt ]
There are certain times in our life when we find ourselves in circumstances, that not only press upon us, but seem to weigh us down altogether. They give us, however, not only the opportunity, but they impose on us the duty of elevating ourselves, and thereby fulfilling the purpose of the Divine Being in our creation. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day. [ Hawthorne ]
It unfortunately happens that no man believes that he is likely to die soon. So every one is much disposed to defer the consideration of what ought to be done on the supposition of such an emergency; and while nothing is so uncertain as human life, so nothing is so certain as our assurance that we shall survive most of our neighbors. [ Aughey ]
The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best,
has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits. [ Dr. Johnson ]
In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]
Oceans of ink, reams of paper, and disputes infinite, might have been spared, if wranglers had avoided lighting the torch of strife at the wrong end; since a tenth part of the pains expended in attempting to prove the why, the where, and the when, certain events have happened, would have been more than sufficient to prove that they never happened at all. [ Colton ]
Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]
The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all - but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum-total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered. [ Coleridge ]
I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own. [ Thackeray ]
As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]
It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result, by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence. [ G. H. Lewes ]
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art: but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning. [ Montaigne ]
Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]
A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]