Step by step; by degrees.
Virtue is tied to no degrees of men. [ Proverb ]
All habits gather by unseen degrees. [ Dryden ]
Lying, like license, has its degrees. [ George Sand ]
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less. [ Prior ]
How poor are they who have not patience!
What wound did ever heal, but by degrees? [ William Shakespeare ]
Crime, as well as virtue, has its degrees. [ Racine ]
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees;
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. [ Ovid ]
Divine Philosophy, by whose pure light
We first distinguish, then pursue the right;
Thy power the breast from every error frees,
And weeds out all its vices by degrees. [ Juv ]
Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees. [ Mme. de Girardin ]
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees.
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees.
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays. [ Dryden ]
Affairs that are done by due degrees are soon ended. [ Proverb ]
Truth reaches her full action by degrees, and not at once. [ Draper ]
Man, woman, and devil, are the three degrees of comparison. [ Proverb ]
There's a method in man's wickedness: it grows up by degrees. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time. [ Voltaire ]
Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Features betray the temperament and character, but the mien indicates the degrees of fortune. [ La Bruyere ]
There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven. [ Montaigne ]
Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. [ Johnson ]
Since the invention of printing no state can now any longer be formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself. [ Jean Paul ]
Degrees of happiness vary according to the degrees of virtue, and consequently, that life which is most virtuous is most happy. [ Norris ]
Oh, that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer! [ William Shakespeare ]
Look out for a people entirely destitute of religion. If you find them at all, be assured that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. [ Hume ]
God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts. [ Locke ]
If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. [ Plutarch ]
Friendship has steps which lead up on the throne of God, through all spirits, even to the Infinite; only love is satiable, and like truth admits no three degrees of comparison; and a single being fills the heart. [ Richter ]
Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness, - these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy. [ Miss Sedgwick ]
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 ]