Adversity, sage useful guest,
Severe instructor, but the best.
It is from thee alone we know
Justly to value things below. [ Somerville ]
A constant guest is never welcome. [ Proverb ]
She sits tormenting every guest,
Nor gives her tongue one moment's rest,
In phrases battered, stale, and trite,
Which modern ladies call polite. [ Swift ]
Beauty is everywhere a right welcome guest. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed.
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. [ Homer, Pope's Odyssey ]
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 ]
It is an ill guest that never drinks to his hostess. [ Proverb ]
Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master. [ Bovee ]
An infant when it gazes on the light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch over what they love while sleeping. [ Byron ]
It is more disgraceful to turn a guest out than not to admit him. [ Ovid ]
Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest. [ Theophile Gautier ]
The first day a man is a guest, the second a burden, the third a pest. [ Laboulaye ]
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast. [ Hannah More ]
Death shuns the naked throat and proffered breast; he flies when called to be a welcome guest. [ Sir Charles Sedley ]
To invite a guest is to take the responsibility of his happiness during his stay under our roof. [ Brillat-Savarin ]
At the banquet of life, an unfortunate guest, I one day appeared; now, I am dying. Dying! and none there are to shed a tear over the tomb that awaits me! [ Gilbert ]
Talking with a host is next best to talking with one's self.... He is wiser than to contradict his guest in any case; he lets him go on, he lets him travel. [ Thoreau ]