Few leaves and bad fruit. [ Proverb ]
Slander leaves a score behind. [ Proverb ]
Fun fast the leaves are dropping
Before that wandering breath. [ William Cullen Bryant ]
We wander there, we wander here,
We eye the rose upon the brier,
Unmindful that the thorn is near,
Amang the leaves. [ Burns ]
The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind. [ Wordsworth ]
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves. [ Milton ]
Deeds are fruits; words are but leaves. [ Proverb ]
Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her golden hair!),
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of autumn corn are not more fair. [ Oscar Wilde ]
Marry a widow before she leaves mourning. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The very falling of leaves frights hares. [ Proverb ]
Contempt leaves a deeper scar than anger.
The breaking of a heart leaves no traces. [ George Sand ]
A globe of dew
Filling, in the morning new.
Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world;
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless are furled
In that frail and fading sphere.
With ten millions gathered there
To tremble, gleam and disappear. [ Shelley ]
Who eats and leaves has another meal good. [ Proverb ]
War never leaves, where it found a nation. [ Burke ]
But the rose leaves herself upon the brier
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed. [ Keats ]
Procrastination is the thief of time,
Year after year it steals, till all are fled
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concourse of an eternal scene. [ Young ]
The foxglove, with its stately bells,
Of purple, shall adorn thy dells;
The wallflower, on each rifted rock,
From liberal blossoms shall breathe down,
(Gold blossoms frecked with iron-brown,)
Its fragrance; while the hollyhock,
The pink, and the carnation vie
With lupin and with lavender.
To decorate the fading year;
And larkspurs, many-hued, shall drive
Gloom from the groves, where red leaves lie.
And Nature seems but half alive. [ D. M. Moir ]
Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in our May,
And hive the thrifty sweetness for December. [ Holland ]
Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit. [ Proverb ]
Gradual sinks the breeze,
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
I heard to quiver thro' the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves,
Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods diffused?
In glassy breadth, seen through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all.
And pleasing expectation. [ Thomson ]
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining.
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay. [ Longfellow ]
When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand. [ William Shakespeare ]
God's plans like lilies pure and white unfold;
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart;
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold. [ Mary R. Smith ]
Pride seldom leaves its master without a fall. [ Proverb ]
But now the clouds in airy tumult fly;
The sun, emerging, opes an azure sky;
A fresher green the smiling leaves display,
And glittering as they tremble, cheer the day. [ Parnell ]
He that dines and leaves lays the cloth twice. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded. [ Byron ]
I know a mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world; and, vainly favored, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow. [ Robert Browning ]
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 ]
The pleasant books, that silently among
Our household treasures take familiar places,
And are to us as if a living tongue
Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces! [ Longfellow ]
And soon
Their hushing dances languished to a stand,
Like midnight leaves when, as the Zephyrs swoon.
All on their drooping stems they sink unfanned. [ Hood ]
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams. [ Shelley ]
Laughter leaves us doubly serious shortly after. [ Byron ]
Words are like leaves, and when they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. [ Alexander Pope ]
A great acacia, with its slender trunk
And overpoise of multitudinous leaves,
(In which a hundred fields might spill their dew
And intense verdure, yet find room enough)
Stood reconciling all the place with green. [ E. B. Browning ]
Her form was fresher than the morning rose
When the dew wets its leaves; unstained and pure
As is the lily, or the mountain snow. [ Thomson ]
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. [ Hawthorne ]
And glory long has made the sages smile;
It is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind -
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind. [ Byron ]
He that is afraid of leaves goes not to the wood. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
He that fears leaves, let him not go into the wood. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
And her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air. [ Byron ]
A tree is known better by its fruit than its leaves. [ Proverb ]
He quits his place well that leaves his friend there. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
My sole resources in the path I trod,
Were these - my bark - my sword - my love — my God.
The last I left in youth - He leaves me now -
And man but works His will to lay me low.
I have no thought to mock His throne with prayer,
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough - I breathe - and I can bear. [ Byron ]
Locked up from mortal eye in shady leaves of destiny. [ Crashaw ]
He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.
When the maid leaves open the door, blame not the cat. [ Proverb ]
Let us weep in our darkness - but weep not for him!
Not for him - who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him - who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him - who ascended Fame's ladder so high.
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky. [ N. P. Willis ]
He who kills the father and leaves the children is a fool. [ Proverb ]
Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength. [ Hazlitt ]
Flowers, leaves, fruit, are the airwoven children of light. [ Moleschott ]
A bushel of March dust on the leaves, is worth a king ransom. [ Proverb ]
He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons. [ GoldonL ]
He that leaves the highway to cut short, commonly goes about. [ Proverb ]
I'll seek a four-leaved shamrock in all the fairy dells,
And if I find the charmed leaves, oh, how I'll weave my spells! [ Samuel Lover ]
The leaves of memory seem to make a mournful rustle in the dark. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
A book like a grape-vine should have good fruit among its leaves. [ E. P. Day ]
A little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no relish of the sweet. [ Locke ]
Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes. [ Schiller ]
The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
The whispering breeze pants on the leaves, and dies upon the trees. [ Pope ]
One gets easier accustomed to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves. [ Auerbach ]
No gale disturb the trees, nor aspen leaves confess the gentle breeze. [ Gay ]
Drunkenness turns a man out of himself, and leaves a beast in his room. [ Proverb ]
Death once seen at our hearth, leaves a shadow which abides there forever. [ Lady Willoughby ]
Thought is like opium: it can intoxicate us while it leaves us broad awake. [ Amiel ]
All June I bound the rose in sheaves. Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves. [ Robert Browning ]
The tanager flies through the green foliage as if he would ignite the leaves. [ Thoreau ]
Next to ye both I love the palm, with his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm. [ Bayard Taylor ]
On this side and on that, men see their friends drop off like leaves in autumn. [ Blair ]
A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it. [ Tacitus ]
Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull. [ Bulwer Lytton ]
I find the doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans. [ George MacDonald ]
Words are like leaves; some wither every year, and every year a younger race succeed. [ Roscommon ]
The poet's leaves are gathered one by one, in the slow process of the doubtful years. [ Bayard Taylor ]
A tardiness in Nature, which often leaves the history unspoke, that it intends to do. [ William Shakespeare ]
Time well employed is Satan's deadliest foe; it leaves no opening for the lurking fiend. [ Wilcox ]
A cigarette is the perfect type of pleasure; it is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
When men once reach their autumn, sickly joys fall off apace, as yellow leaves from trees. [ Young ]
Covetousness, like jealousy, when it has once taken root, never leaves a man but with his life. [ Thomas Hughes ]
The rosebuds lay their crimson lips together, and the green leaves are whispering to themselves. [ Amelia B. Welby ]
Hushed as the falling dews, whose noiseless showers impearl the folded leaves of evening flowers. [ Congreve ]
The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come. [ Dante ]
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall: A mother's secret hope outlives them all. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. [ Buddha ]
I sit where the leaves of the maple and the gnarled and knotted gum are circling and drifting around me. [ Alice Cary ]
The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off, and ignorance begins. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
The words of men are like the leaves of trees; when they are too many they hinder the growth of the fruit. [ Steiger ]
Everything that happens to us leaves some trace behind; everything contributes imperceptibly to make us what we are. [ Goethe ]
The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the thorns for the husband.
A passion for flowers is, I really think, the only one which long sickness leaves untouched with its chilling influence. [ Mrs. Hemans ]
The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him. [ Sterne ]
To educate a man is to form an individual who leaves nothing behind him; to educate a woman is to form future generations. [ E. Laboulaye ]
We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions. [ Goethe ]
Leaves are the Greek, flowers the Italian, phase of the spirit of beauty that reveals itself through the flora of the globe. [ T. Starr King ]
The least degree of ambiguity which leaves the mind in suspense as to the meaning ought to be avoided with the greatest care. [ Blair ]
The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things. [ Madame Swetchine ]
Truly unhappy is the man who leaves undone what he can do, and undertakes what he does not understand; no wonder he comes to grief. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
A summer friendship, whose flattering leaves, that shadowed us in our prosperity, with the least gust drop off in the autumn of adversity. [ Massinger ]
The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory. [ Emerson ]
Her cheeks blushing, and withal, when she was spoken to. a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a little breath stirred. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever. [ Burke ]
A human heart can never grow old, if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]
Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those that are yet unborn. [ Addison ]
No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it, who, half through, gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds. [ William Shakespeare ]
Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies; the man who consumes his days without obtaining it leaves such mark of himself on earth as smoke in air or foam on water. [ Dante ]
Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person. [ Jeremy Collier ]
There are treasures laid up in the heart - treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. [ Buddhist Scriptures ]
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained love will die at the roots. [ Hawthorne ]
Then was I as a tree whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night, a storm or robbery, call it what you will, shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, and left me bare to weather. [ Shakespeare ]
Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet. [ Landor ]
Men commonly injure one another without cause, and simply to do something: as an idle promenader in a garden, breaks the young branches, and strips off the leaves of the most beautiful flowers. [ E. Souvestre ]
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night. It is the shadow that cleaves to us, go where we will, and which leaves us only when we leave the light of life. [ William Ewart Gladstone ]
The day of life spent in honest and benevolent labor comes in hope to an evening calm and lovely; and though the sun declines, the shadows that he leaves behind are only to curtain the spirit unto rest. [ Henry Giles ]
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]
A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. [ Izaak Walton ]
Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. [ Bacon ]
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing. [ Isaac Disraeli ]
If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her case is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex. [ Colton ]
The friendship of the world is like the leaves falling from their trees in autumn; while the sap of maintenance lasts, friends swarm in abundance; but in the winter of our need, they leave us naked. He is a happy man that hath a true friend at his need; but he is more truly happy that hath no need of a friend. [ Arthur Warwick ]
The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. [ Ruskin ]
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-travelling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor; the ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise; odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold. [ R. A. Willmott ]
You will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others faults. In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it ; as you can, try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. [ Ruskin ]
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge! [ Beecher ]
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment placing its victim naked on a bed of briars and bristles, thinly covered with rose-leaves, adorning his brow with a crown of gold, which burns into his brain; teasing, and fretting, and riddling him through and through with incessant discharges of hot shot from a masked battery; laying bare the most sensitive and shrinking nerves of his mind, and then blandly touching them with ice, or smilingly pricking them with needles. [ E. P. Whipple ]
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. [ Charles Lamb ]
The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems. [ Coleridge ]
The first being that rushes to the recollection of a soldier or a sailor, in his heart's difficulty, is his mother; she clings to his memory and affection in the midst of all the f orgetf ulness and hardihood induced by a roving life; the last message he leaves is for her; his last whisper breathes her name. The mother, as she instills the lessons of piety and filial obligation into the heart of her infant son, should always feel that her labor is not in vain. She may drop into the grave, but she has left behind her influences that will work for her. The bow is broken, but the arrow is sped, and will do its ofiice. [ A. H. Motte ]
All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]