He knew what is what. [ Skelton ]
No one ever knew his own father. [ Buckley ]
He builded better than he knew -
The conscious stone to beauty grew. [ Emerson ]
If youth knew what age would crave,
It would both get and save. [ Proverb ]
O good gray head which all men knew. [ Tennyson ]
If the young knew - if the old could! [ Proverb ]
She listen'd with a flitting blush.
With downcast eyes, and modest grace,
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face. [ Coleridge ]
He thought the World to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the Town;
In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set - Mankind. [ Hannah More ]
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly. [ Butler ]
If a man but knew what would be dear,
He need be a merchant but only one year. [ Proverb ]
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. [ Tennyson ]
Deeply regretted by all who never knew him. [ Miscellaneous epitaph ]
They that knew one another salute afar off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
If my shirt knew my design, I would burn it. [ Proverb ]
The learn'd reflect on what before they knew. [ Pope ]
I knew him tyrannous, and tyrants' fears
Decrease not, but grow faster than the years. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is expectation makes a blessing dear;
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were. [ John Suckling ]
She wept to feel her life so desolate,
And wept still more because the world had made it
So desolate: yet was the world her all;
She loathed it, but she knew it was her all. [ Dr. Walter Smith ]
While words of learned length, and thundering sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all he knew. [ Goldsmith ]
He never knew pain who never felt the pangs of love. [ Platen ]
I knew exactly where it was, I just couldn't find it. [ Yogi Berra ]
If gold knew what gold is, gold would get gold, I wis. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
All things have their place, knew we how to place them. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession. [ Thackeray ]
He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back. [ Goldsmith ]
Ah, if you knew what peace there is in an accepted sorrow! [ Mme. Guyon ]
I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table. [ Lord Burleigh ]
I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early. [ Yogi Berra ]
None knew thee but to love thee, nor named thee but to praise. [ Fitz-Greene Halleck ]
Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? [ Milton ]
Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew Himself, or his own virtue. [ Mallet ]
If man knew well what life is, he would not give it so inconsiderately. [ Mme. Roland ]
I would thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. [ William Shakespeare ]
You read of but one wise man; and all that he knew was that he knew nothing. [ Congreve ]
So let them ease their hearts with prate of equal rights, which man never knew. [ Byron ]
Jack was embarrassed - never hero more. And as he knew not what to say, he swore. [ Byron ]
Women will sometimes confess their sins, but I never knew one to confess her faults. [ Haliburton ]
Be on such terms with your friend as if you knew that he might one day become your enemy. [ Laberius ]
How few friendships would be lasting if we knew what our best friends say of us in our absence. [ Pascal ]
When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only. [ Napoleon ]
Men live best upon small means. Nature has provided for all, if they only knew how to use her gifts. [ Claudianus ]
Louis XVI knew only how to love, pardon, and die; had he known how to punish, he would have known how to reign. [ Tilly ]
Men live best upon a little; Nature has given to all the privilege of being happy, if they but knew how to use their gifts. [ Claudianus ]
I never knew the old gentleman with the scythe and hour-glass bring anything but gray hairs, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth. [ Dryden ]
I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used to say. Take care of the pence; for the pounds will take care of themselves. [ Lord Chesterfield ]
Poetry is unfallen speech. Paradise knew no other, for no other would suffice to answer the need of those ecstatic days of innocence. [ Abraham Coles ]
I knew a wise man who had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion: Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.
[ Bacon ]
It was in his own home that Fielding knew and loved her (Amelia); from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction. [ Thackeray ]
If men knew all that women think, they would be twenty times more audacious. If women knew what men think, they would be twenty times more coquettish. [ A. Karr ]
I would not despair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was passed; saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity. [ Jeremy Collier ]
All men naturally hate one another. I hold it a fact, that if men knew exactly what one says of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. [ Pascal ]
Die when I may, I want it said of me, by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow. [ Lincoln ]
The good pilot knows the whereabouts of every sunken rock in the harbor; how much of joy there would be in the world if all men knew the sunken rocks in the harbor of life. [ Catherine A. Atmould ]
High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of. [ Bishop Warburton ]
A misanthrope was told of a young friend of his: Your friend has no experience of the world; he knows nothing about it.
True; but he is already as sad as if he knew all about it.
Adam knew no disease so long as temperance from the forbidden fruit secured him. Nature was his physician; and innocence and abstinence would have kept him healthful to immortality. [ South ]
I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise. [ Pascal ]
The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]
Doubtless botany has its value; but the flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them; they are apt to stop preaching, though, so soon as we begin to dissect and botanize them. [ H. N. Hudson ]
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies' wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn-door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did; and many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb and discordant but that God knew their stops. [ John Ruskin ]
Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much, by gaudy attire. Lysander knew this was in part true, and refused the rich garments that the tyrant Dionysius proffered to his daughters, saying that they were fit only to make unhappy faces more remarkable.
[ Zimmermann ]
Socrates was pronounced by the oracle of Delphos to be the wisest man in Greece, which he would turn from himself ironically, saying there could be nothing in him to verify the oracle, except this, that he was not wise and knew it, and others were not wise and knew it not. [ Bacon ]
When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, I knew he was mortal.
So we in all casualties of life should say I knew my riches were uncertain, that my friend was but a man.
Such considerations would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected. [ Plutarch ]
Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression. [ J. Beaumont ]
Most people give up before they start because they think it is too hard, there is too much against me here, I can’t do this on my own, I don’t have the resources. I was on the back to work scheme when I applied. I didn’t have resources... It never occurred to me to fail. I always knew it was part of my destiny to do that thing. [ Mary Reynolds, 2002 Gold Medal Winner of the Chelsea Flower Show ]
Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army. [ Napoleon I ]
There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
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 ]
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 ]
I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me,
I said. I'm off the team, aren't I?
Well,
said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times.
It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]