In silence sad.
Trip we after the night's shade;
We the globe can compass soon.
Swifter than the wandering moon. [ William Shakespeare ]
He was a man
Versed in the world as pilot in his compass;
The needle pointed ever to that interest
Which was his loadstar; and he spread his sails
With vantage to the gale of others' passions. [ Ben Jonson ]
A rusty nail, placed near the faithful compass,
Will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy. [ Scott ]
Skill'd in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands.
And, with his compass, measures seas and lands. [ Dryden ]
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
No! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved;
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. [ William Shakespeare ]
Better live within compass, than have large comings in. [ Proverb ]
The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? The compass of the Unknown. [ Joseph Cook ]
Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea. [ Washington Irving ]
In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend. [ Pope ]
Though Fortune's malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel. [ William Shakespeare ]
I pack my troubles in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others. [ Southey ]
When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass. [ Steele ]
Reason developed and cultivated will always be the most powerful curb to the passions: this is the compass of all mankind. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
The great business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements. [ Pliny ]
Everything dies, and on this spring morning, if I lay my ear to the ground, I seem to hear from every point of the compass the heavy step of men who carry a corpse to its burial. [ Madame de Gasparin ]
It is difficult for the mind to span the career of nobody; the sphere of action opened to this wonderful person so enlarges every day that the limited faculties of anybody are too weak to compass it. [ Dickens ]
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 ]
What laborious days, what watchings by the midnight lamp, what rackings of the brain, what hopes and fears, what long lives of laborious study, are here sublimized into print, and condensed into the narrow compass of these surrounding shelves! [ Horace Smith ]
True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]
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 ]