Contend not about a goat's beard. [ Proverb ]
Not even the gods contend with necessity. [ Simonides ]
Do not trust nor contend,
Nor lay wagers nor lend,
And you will have peace to your life's end. [ Proverb ]
Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other's burden, in our share of woe. [ Milton ]
You contend about a goat's beard or lock of wool. [ Proverb ]
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine. [ Crabbe ]
Even the gods are unable to contend against necessity. [ Simonides ]
God grant me to contend with those that understand me. [ Proverb ]
Don't contend with words against wordy people; speech is given to all, wisdom to few. [ Cato ]
Who shall contend with time, - vanquished time, the conqueror of conquerors and lord of desolation? [ H. K. White ]
Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. [ Johnson ]
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. [ Bacon ]
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. [ Lord Bacon ]
There are persons who flatter themselves that the size of their works will make them immortal. They pile up reluctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors, because they are gigantic, could contend with truth and heaven! [ Junius ]
Nature gives you the impression as if there were nothing contradictory in the world; and yet, when you return back to the dwelling-place of man, be it lofty or low, wide or narrow, there is ever somewhat to contend with, to battle with, to smooth and put to rights. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Among the smaller duties of life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, the cheap defense and ornament of nations.
It produces more labor and more talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy. [ Sydney Smith ]