Wisdom is only found in truth. [ Goethe ]
Lost time is never found again. [ Proverb ]
Here lies the body of John Mound
Lost at sea and never found. [ Epitaph ]
Love is not found in the market. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
What mare's nest hast thou found? [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
He has found a last for his shoe. [ Proverb ]
There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground. [ Montgomery ]
You have found what was never lost. [ Proverb ]
Faithful found among the faithless. [ Milton ]
No real happiness is found
In trailing purple over the ground. [ Parnell ]
And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound.
And curs of low degree. [ Oliver Goldsmith ]
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again. [ Browning ]
Here lies the body of Jonathan Ground,
Who was lost at sea and never found. [ Epitaph ]
Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread;
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow. [ William Cowper ]
Precious things are not found in heaps. [ Proverb ]
To-morrow morning I found a horse shoe. [ Proverb ]
Rogues are always found out in some way.
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorne and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower.
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side.
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
Many have sought roses and found thorns.
I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty -
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? [ Ellen Sturgis Hooper ]
Fixed to no spot is Happiness sincere;
'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;
'Tis never to be bought, but always free. [ Pope ]
War never leaves, where it found a nation. [ Burke ]
Where something is found there look again. [ Proverb ]
What quick wit is found in sudden straits! [ Martial ]
If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell.
And may be found too in an oyster shell. [ Bunyan ]
Within the rose I found a trembling tear,
Close curtained in a gloom of crimson night
By tender petals from the outer light. [ Boyesen ]
Wooing thee,
I found thee of more value
Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags;
And it is the very riches of thyself
That now I aim at. [ William Shakespeare ]
I awoke one morning and found myself famous. [ Byron ]
But dreams full oft are found of real events
The form and shadows. [ Joanna Baillie ]
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt. [ Milton ]
Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,
To build a college, or to found a race,
An hospital, a church - and leave behind
Some dome surmounted by his meagre face,
Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind
Even with the very ore which makes them base;
Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,
Or revel in the joys of calculation. [ Byron ]
Let not the cooings of the world allure thee;
Which of her lovers ever found her true? [ Young ]
Necessity seeks bread where it is to be found. [ Salis ]
I have found a good berth (shoes for my feet). [ French Proverb ]
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Words are like leaves, and when they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. [ Alexander Pope ]
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race, the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those have passed away. [ Homer, Pope's Iliad ]
Long while I sought to what I might compare
Those powerful eyes, which light my dark spirit;
Yet found I nought on earth, to which I dare
Resemble the image of their goodly light.
Not to the sun, for they do shine by night;
Nor to the moon, for they are changed never;
Nor to the stars, for they have purer sight;
Nor to the fire, for they consume not ever;
Nor to the lightning, for they still persevere;
Nor to the diamond, for they are more tender;
Nor unto crystal, for nought may they sever;
Nor unto glass, such baseness might offend her;
Then to the Maker's self the likest be;
Whose light doth lighten all that here we see. [ Spenser ]
Within a bony, labyrinthean cave,
Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave,
This sibyl, sweet, and mystic sense is found,
Muse, that presides over all the powers of sound. [ Abraham Coles ]
There is a strength
Deep-bedded in our hearts, of which we reck
But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced
Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent
Before her gems are found? [ Mrs. Hemans ]
You have lost your own stomach, and found a dog's. [ Proverb ]
Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth? [ Longfellow ]
You have found a colt's nest, and laugh at the eggs. [ Proverb ]
Money, thou bane and bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine. [ Herbert ]
There is nothing to be found only once in the world. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Where there is honey to be found, there will be bees. [ Plaut ]
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead.
(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think)
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor. [ William Shakespeare ]
The invention all admired, and each, how he
To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed,
Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
Impossible. [ Milton ]
All are presumed good till they are found in a fault. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
They may rail at this life - from the hour I began it,
I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And until they can show me some happier planet.
More social and bright, I'll content me with this. [ Moore ]
A day will come when fair dealing will be found a jewel. [ Proverb ]
It is a bad thing to be a knave, but worse to be found out. [ Italian Proverb ]
Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us. [ Joubert ]
The real character of a man is found out by his amusements. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
There is no pot so ugly that a cover cannot be found for it. [ Proverb ]
Zeal is fit only for wise men, but is found mostly in fools. [ Proverb ]
If I had not lifted up the stone, you had not found the jewel. [ Proverb ]
Extreme concupiscence may be found under an extreme austerity. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. [ Chesterfield ]
It will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass. [ Shakespeare ]
Diogenes found more rest in his tub than Alexander on his throne. [ Quarles ]
Like the tailor, that sewed for nothing and found thread himself. [ Proverb ]
The proof of obedience is found in small matters more than in great. [ Proverb ]
A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul. [ Hawthorne ]
How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns! [ Thomas Brooks ]
In a great river great fish are found ; but take heed lest you be drowned. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found. [ Hume ]
Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found the best. [ Smiles ]
Imitation is born with us, but what we ought to imitate is not easily found. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
I have always found that the road to a woman's heart lies through her child. [ Judge Haliburton ]
Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff and has found his own spindle. [ J. G. Holland ]
The hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness. [ Bible ]
Weeds are omnipresent; errors are to be found in the heart of the most lovable. [ George Sand ]
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Authors now find, as once Achilles found, the whole is mortal if a part's unsound. [ Young ]
There is no book so bad,
said the bachelor, but something good may be found in it.
[ Cervantes ]
Love may be found in the heart of an anchorite: never in the heart of a libertine. [ E. Legouve ]
Goodness is everywhere, and is everywhere to be found, if we will only look for it. [ P. Desjardins ]
It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. [ Demosthenes ]
Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship and fidelity may be found. [ Gay ]
Soon as man, expert from time, has found the key of life, it opes the gates of death. [ Young ]
If thy daughter marry well, thou hast found a son; if not, thou hast lost a daughter. [ Quarles ]
I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else. [ Franklin ]
A cock, having found a pearl, said that a grain of corn would be of more value to him. [ Pierre Leroux ]
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [ Thoreau ]
A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. [ Plutarch ]
The man who prates about the cruelty of angling will be found invariably to beat his wife. [ Christopher North ]
Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day. [ Seneca ]
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel, Perplex'd with the newly found fardel of life. [ Fred. Locker ]
Superior strength is found in the long-run to lie with those who had the right on their side. [ Froude ]
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without tears. [ Johnson ]
What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please. [ Johnson ]
The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found. [ Bovee ]
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found at last to be of our own producing. [ Goldsmith ]
The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year. [ Voltaire ]
Money is like an icicle, soon found at certain seasons, and soon melted under other circumstances. [ Spurgeon ]
Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other. [ Rochefoucauld ]
True merit, wherever found, is ever modest, just as the well-filled heads of grain are always bent. [ Charles Dickens ]
The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. [ Johnson ]
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. [ Johnson ]
Something like home, that is not home, is to be desired; it is to be found in the house of a friend. [ Sir W. Temple ]
It will be found that they are the weakest winded and the hardest hearted men that most love change. [ Ruskin ]
Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum. [ Madame Swetchine ]
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. [ Lamb ]
He found shelter among books, which insult not, and studies that ask no questions of a youth's finances. [ Lamb ]
Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The true prosperity and greatness of a nation is to be found in the elevation and education of its laborers. [ U. S. Grant ]
Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty. [ Emerson ]
He who climbs above the cares of this world and turns his face to his God, has found the sunny side of life. [ Spurgeon ]
Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found. [ Auerbach ]
Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savage. [ Chatfield ]
Leave it better than you found it. If we all did that, even in small ways, the world would be a much better place.
I have found the saying of the ancients true, that better is a bright comrade on a weary road than a horse-litter. [ Charles Reade ]
Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors, but they are seldom or never inventors. [ Voltaire ]
Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be found more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy in palaces. [ Horace ]
As the ant does not wend her way to empty barns, so few friends will be found to haunt the place of departed wealth.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose. Labor is life. [ Carlyle ]
Happy that heart in which no more idols are to be found, but the holy God dwelling there alone as in His holy temple. [ R. Leighton ]
In a State, pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but its prosperity will be found in righteousness. [ Confucius ]
Now-a-days friends are no longer found; good faith is dead, envy reigns supreme; and evil habits are ever more extending. [ Sannazaro ]
Tomorrow! - it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. [ Colton ]
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know it when you find it. [ Steve Jobs ]
Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature; and these will prompt very simple measures. [ Beaconsfield ]
There is no passion to be found in playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. [ Nelson Mandela ]
When we meet with a natural style, we are surprised and delighted, for we expected to find an author, and we have found a man. [ Pascal ]
Genius is rarely found without some mixture of eccentricity, as the strength of spirit is proved by the bubbles on its surface. [ Mrs. Balfour ]
Alas! alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy. [ William Shakespeare ]
Without earnestness there is nothing to be done in life; yet among the people we name cultivated, little earnestness is to be found. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Be not liquorish after fame, found by experience to carry a trumpet, that doth for the most part congregate more enemies than friends. [ Osborn ]
In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race. [ Zimmermann ]
None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves. [ Colton ]
It is safer to believe evil of everyone until people are found out to be good, but that requires a great deal of investigation nowadays. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Where men or nations have broken down, it will almost invariably be found that neglect of little things was the rock on which they split. [ Smiles ]
I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Associate with men of judgment, for judgment is found in conversation, and we make another man's judgment ours by frequenting his company. [ Thomas Fuller ]
Eloquence may be found in conversation and all kinds of writings; it is rarely where we seek it, and sometimes where it is least expected. [ La Bruyere ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. [ Macaulay ]
Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. [ Horace Mann ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas. [ Macaulay ]
The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing. [ Beecher ]
Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities. [ Colton ]
One loves because he loves: this explanation is, as yet, the most serious and the most decisive that has been found for the solution of this problem.
We know there oft is found an avarice in grief; and the war eye of sorrow loves to gaze upon its secret hoard of treasured woes, and pine in solitude. [ William Mason ]
Literature, as a field for glory, is an arena where a tomb may be more easily found than laurels; as a means of support, it is the very chance of chances. [ H. Giles ]
Men of all ages have the same inclinations, over which reason exercises no control. Thus, wherever men are found, there are follies, ay, and the same follies. [ La Fontaine ]
Wise sayings are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. [ John Morley ]
Our happiness as human beings, generally speaking, will be found to be very much in proportion to the number of things we love, and the number of things that love us. [ Samuel Smiles ]
The misfortune is that when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety. [ Knox ]
Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul; that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love; and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. [ William Ellery Channing ]
The truly great are to be found everywhere; nor is it easy to say in what condition they spring up most plentifully. Real greatness has nothing to do with a man's sphere. [ William Ellery Channing ]
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. [ Emerson ]
Sincerity is an openness of heart; it is found in a very few people, and that which we see. commonly is not it, but a subtle dissimulation, to gain the confidence of others. [ Rochefoucauld ]
How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once - through inexperience, as we now perceive - we missed that happiness we might have found! [ Cowper ]
Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. [ Washington Irving ]
No villainy or flagitious action was ever yet committed but, upon a due inquiry into the cause of it, it will be found that a lie was first or last the principal engine to effect it. [ South ]
There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found? [ Mrs. Hemans ]
No one has found out how to soothe with music and sweet symphony those bitter pangs by which death and sad misfortunes destroy families; and yet to assuage such griefs by music were wisdom. [ Euripides ]
A belief in the Bible, the fruit of deep meditation, has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found it a capital safely invested, and richly productive of interest. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]
The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there. [ J. G. Holland ]
In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him. [ Carlyle ]
It is quite as easy to give our children musical and pleasing names as those that are harsh and difficult; and it will be found by the owners, when they have grown to knowledge, that there is much in a name. [ Locke ]
When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Friendship may outlive love and its passions; for instances have not unfrequently occurred, in which parties who have ceased to regard each other as lovers, have been found necessary as friends and confidential advisers. [ Mme. de Pompadour ]
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 ]
Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe. It is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed today, it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove, perhaps, alas! as a hemlock forest, after a thousand years. [ Carlyle ]
The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography. [ Dr. Johnson ]
I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth. [ Swift ]
Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever found and in whatsoever form and accompaniment. [ Carlyle ]
Not in a man's having no business with men, but in having no unjust business with them, and in having all manner of true and just business, can either his or their blessedness be found possible, and this waste world become, for both parties, a home and peopled garden. [ Carlyle ]
How little of our knowledge of mankind is derived from intentional accurate observation! Most of it has, unsought, found its way into the mind from the continual presentations of the objects to our unthinking view. It is a knowledge of sensation more than of reflection. [ John Foster ]
There is a Russian proverb which says that misfortune is next door to stupidity; and it will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, improvidence, or want of application. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Wealth is not acquired, as many persons suppose, by fortunate speculations and splendid enterprises, but by the daily practice of industry, frugality, and economy. He who relies upon these means will rarely be found destitute, and he who relies upon any other will generally become bankrupt. [ Wayland ]
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. [ Thoreau ]
Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause. Many of its conclusions, more ingenious than sound, are like the recommendations of a people to keep full bottles, because a good many have been found dead with empty ones by them. [ Bovee ]
I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. Labor,
he in effect said, is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.
Turning then to another - And you,
I inquired, what do you consider as the great force in art?
Love,
he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth. [ Bovee ]
Remember always in painting, as in eloquence, the greater your strength the quieter will be your manner and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. [ Ruskin ]
That which I have found the best recreation both to my mind and body, whensoever either of them stands in need of it, is music, which exercises at once both body and soul; especially when I play myself; for then, methinks, the same motion that my hands make upon the instrument, the instrument makes upon my heart. [ J. Beveridge ]
From extensive acquaintance with many lands, I unhesitatingly affirm that everywhere God has provided pure water for man, and that the wines drunk are often miserable and dirty. I have found water everywhere that I have traveled, in China and India, Palestine and Egypt, - and everywhere water has been my beverage. [ Thomas Cook, the Tourist ]
O poets! what injury you have done us, and how right Plato was to banish you from his republic! How your ambrosia has rendered more bitter our absinth! How have we found our lives more barren and more desolate, after having turned our eyes toward the sublime perspectives which your dreams have opened in the infinite! [ T. Gautier ]
A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind. [ Bruyere ]
Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle; and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hardworking, and intent men - their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others. [ Samuel Smiles ]
This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition. [ Cicero ]
There is no one passion which all mankind so naturally give in to as pride, nor any other passion which appears in such different disguises. It is to be found in all habits and all complexions. Is it not a question whether it does more harm or good in the world, and if there be not such a thing as what we may call a virtuous and laudable pride? [ Steele ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]
Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould, about the roots of their vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light. [ Bacon ]
Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. What,
said the hero in reply, have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart?
He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own. [ E. L. Magoon ]
So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. [ Lamb ]
The habit of exaggeration in language should be guarded against; it misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive; it imposes on us the society of a balloon, when a moderately-sized skull would fill the place much better; it begets much evil in promising what it cannot perform, and we have often found the most glowing declarations of intended good services end in mere Irish vows. [ Eliza Cook ]
No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted he knew nothing; and that those ideas which in theory appeared the most advantageous were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. [ Terence ]
Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]
Columbus died in utter ignorance of the true nature of his discovery. He supposed he had found India, but never knew how strangely God had used him. So God piloted the fleet. The great discoverer, with all his heroic virtues, did not know whither he went. He sailed for the back door of Asia, and landed at the front door of America, and knew it not.
He never settled the continent. Thus far and no farther, said the Lord. His providence was over all. [ David James Burrell ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]
Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars - reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
Why has the beneficent Creator scattered over the face of the earth such a profusion of beautiful flowers? Why is it that every landscape has its appropriate flowers, every nation its national flowers, every rural home its home flowers? Why do flowers enter and shed their perfume over every scene of life, from the cradle to the grave? Why are flowers made to utter all voices of joy and sorrow in all varying scenes? It is that flowers have in themselves a real and natural significance; they have a positive relation to man; they correspond to actual emotions; they have their mission - a mission of love and mercy; they have their language, and from the remotest ages this language has found its interpreters. [ Henrietta Dumont ]