What is freer than gift? [ Proverb ]
Thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty. [ Byron ]
A slight gift, small thanks. [ Proverb ]
Every good gift comes from God. [ Proverb ]
A man's gift makes room for him. [ Proverb ]
Taste is the next gift to genius. [ Lowell ]
To make two friends with one gift. [ Proverb ]
The giver makes the gift valuable. [ Motto ]
Time's best gift to us is serenity. [ Bovee ]
Look not a gift horse in the mouth. [ Proverb ]
Yet he who grasps the moment's gift,
He is the proper man. [ Goethe ]
A happy genius is the gift of nature. [ Dryden ]
Hail! Independence, hail!
Heaven's next best gift,
To that of life and an immortal soul! [ Thomson ]
Life is the gift of God, and is divine. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven;
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy.
The silver link, the silken tie.
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind. [ Walter Scott ]
A gift much expected is paid, not given. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
We like the gift when we the giver prize. [ Sheffield ]
One gift well given recovers many losses. [ Proverb ]
A gift long waited for is sold, not given. [ Proverb ]
The love of praise
Fills life with fine amenities. Not all
Who live have pleasant tempers, and not all
The gift of gracious manners, or the love
Of nobler motive higher meed than praise. [ J. G. Holland ]
A quill hath proved the noblest gift to man. [ Byron ]
Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. [ William Watson ]
Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds!
Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue! [ Johnson ]
Love is ever the gift, the sacrifice of self. [ Canon Liddon ]
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine
Amid what dangers art thou doomed to shine! [ Crabbe ]
For the will and not the gift makes the giver. [ Lessing ]
Good-sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science, fairly worth the seven. [ Pope ]
That divine gift which makes a woman charming. [ Beaconsfield ]
A little given seasonably excuses a great gift. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A wicked man's gift hath a touch of his master. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Genius, thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine! [ Crabbe ]
Oh! Nature's noblest gift - my graygoose quill! [ Byron ]
For whatever man has, is in reality only a gift. [ Wieland ]
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart.
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. [ Johnson ]
Oh! nature's noblest gift - my grey goosed quill:
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men! [ Byron ]
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 ]
Commonsense is nature's gift, but reason is an art. [ Beattie ]
A gift with a kind countenance is a double present. [ Proverb ]
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. [ St. James ]
The gift derives its value from the rank of the giver. [ Ovid ]
Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory [ Longfellow ]
As vivacity is the gift of woman, gravity is that of man. [ Addison ]
A good man will requite a gift; an ill man will ask more. [ Proverb ]
Music is a gift of the, Author of Nature to the whole human race. [ Hogarth ]
Friendship is the gift of heaven, and the delight of great souls. [ Voltaire ]
No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity. [ Lavater ]
Age and sorrow have the gift of reading the future by the sad past. [ Rev. J. Farrar ]
Melancholy is a fearful gift. What is it but the telescope of truth! [ Byron ]
That is the bitterness of a gift, that it deprives us of our liberty. [ Proverb ]
To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life. [ Lowell ]
Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Not every one who has the gift of speech understands the value of silence. [ Lavater ]
Art is a gift of Heaven, yet does it borrow its fire from earthly passion. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Sometimes death is a punishment; often a gift; it has been a favor to many. [ Seneca ]
Misery and misfortune is all one; and of misfortune fortune hath only the gift [ Sir P. Sidney ]
A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise. [ Goethe ]
The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself. [ Lavater ]
Beauty is the first gift Nature gives to woman, and the first she takes from her.
All other goods by fortune's hand are given; a wife is the peculiar gift of heaven. [ Pope ]
An infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all truly great men. [ John Ruskin ]
Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind. [ Martin Luther ]
He who loves with purity considers not the gift of the lover, but the love of the giver. [ Thomas a Kempis ]
A friend gives himself to his beloved, and the higher his excellence the richer the gift. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Talent is a gift which God has imparted in secret, and which we reveal without knowing it. [ Montesquieu ]
Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised except by those to whom it has been refused. [ Gibbon ]
Right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Every gift which is given, even though it be small, is in reality great if it be given with affection. [ Pindar ]
He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. [ Bovee ]
Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great. [ Bulwer ]
Both beauty and ugliness are equally to be dreaded; the one as a dangerous gift, the other as a melancholy affliction. [ Eliza Cook ]
Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration. [ Macchiavelli ]
When thou receivest praise, take it indifferently, and return it to God, the giver of the gift, or blesser of the action. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Nothing reveals character more than self-sacrifice. So the highest knowledge we have of God is through the gift of His Son. [ William Harris ]
God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature. [ William Shakespeare ]
Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved. [ Miss Edgeworth ]
High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs then neither study nor labor. [ Bruyere ]
To him whose soul is more than ordinarily divine, and who has the gift of uttering lofty thoughts, you may justly concede the honourable title of poet. [ Horace ]
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels must give. [ George Macdonald ]
O, the eye's light is a noble gift of heaven! All beings live from light; each fair created thing. The very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light. [ Schiller ]
Every day is a gift I receive from heaven; let us enjoy today that which it bestows on me. It belongs not more to the young than to me, and tomorrow belongs to no one. [ Mancroix ]
It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. [ Sterne ]
Among all the accomplishments of life none are so important as refinement; it is not, like beauty, a gift of Nature, and can only be acquired by cultivation and practice. [ James Ellis ]
Genius never grows old - young today, mature yesterday, vigorous tomorrow, always immortal. It is peculiar to no sex or condition, and is the divine gift to woman no less than to man. [ Juan Lewis ]
The strong man is the wise man; the man with the gift of method, of faithfulness, of valour; who has insight into what is what, into what will follow out of what, the eye to see and the hand to do. [ Carlyle ]
That inexhaustible good-nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. [ Washington Irving ]
Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth; and eloquence a gift of the mind, which makes us master of the heart and spirit of others; which enables us to inspire them with, or persuade them of whatever we please. [ Bruyere ]
Music is God's best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation. [ Charles W. Landon ]
He that gives all, though but little, gives much; because God looks not to the quantity of the gift, but to the quality of the givers; he that desires to give more than he can hath equaled his gift to his desire, and hath given more than he hath. [ Quarles ]
Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased. [ Colton ]
The devil does not stay long where music is performed. Music is the best balsam for a distressed heart; it refreshes and quickens the soul. Music is a governess which makes people milder, meeker, more modest and discreet. Yes, my friends, music is a beautiful, glorious gift of God, and next to theology, I give it the highest place and the highest honor. [ Martin Luther ]
A sense of humor is a saving grace, and happy is that woman who has been blessed by birth with that rare sixth sense of seeing the funny side.
If you have it naturally, be gladly grateful, for it is a greater gift than beauty or riches. It means cheerfulness, contentment, courage and, possessing it, you are equipped with a potent weapon against the blows of fate. [ Unknown ]
Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Cheeriness is a thing to be more profoundly grateful for than all that genius ever inspired or talent ever accomplished. Next best to natural, spontaneous cheeriness is deliberate, intended and persistent cheeriness, which we can create, can cultivate and can so foster and cherish that after a few years the world will never suspect that it was not an hereditary gift. [ Helen Hunt Jackson ]
When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing was more grateful; Aristotle afirmed that beauty was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a favor bestowed by the gods. [ From the Italian ]
Gratitude is a link between justice and love. It discharges by means of affections those debts which the affections only can discharge, and which are so much the more sacred for this reason. Gratitude never springs up in the soil of selfishness, for self-interest in its eagerness to appropriate is unable to understand the impulses of generosity or to measure the true value of the gift. And, when we do understand it, we must love much to be willing to accept, we refuse when we love but little. Gratitude is the justice of the heart. [ Degerando ]
I was walking in the street, a beggar stopped me, — a frail old man. His inflamed, tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores . . . oh, how horribly poverty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch, or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited and his out-stretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it. Don't be vexed with me, brother; I have nothing with me, brother.
The beggar raised his bloodshot eyes to mine; his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. Never mind, brother,
stammered he; thank you for this — this, too, was a gift, brother.
I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother. [ Ivan Tourgueneff ]