He first that useful secret did explain,
That pricking corns foretold the gathering rain. [ Gay ]
How can we explain the perpetuity of envy - a vice which yields no return? [ Balzac ]
Love! Love! Eternal enigma! Will not the Sphinx that guards thee find an Oedipus to explain thee? [ F. Pyat ]
Books are a sort of dumb teachers; they cannot answer sudden questions, or explain present doubts. [ J. Watts ]
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Mysteries which must explain themselves are not worth the loss of time which a conjecture about them takes up. [ Sterne ]
An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. [ Charles Dickens ]
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure. [ Emerson ]
Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. [ Tuckerman ]
If a crooked stick is before you, you need not explain how crooked it is. Lay a straight one down by the side of it, and the work is well done. Preach the truth, and error will stand abashed in its presence. [ Spurgeon ]
Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Words, those fickle daughters of the earth,
are the creation of a being that is finite, and when applied to explain that which is infinite, they fail; for that which is made surpasses not the maker; nor can that which is immeasurable by our thoughts be measured by our tongues. [ Colton ]
It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. [ Goldsmith ]
I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky.
Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]