Little gear, less care. [ Scotch Proverb ]
Peace hath her victories,
No less renowned than war. [ Milton ]
Great griefs medicine the less. [ William Shakespeare ]
The more wit, the less courage. [ Proverb ]
All griefs with bread are less. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Dine on little, and sup on less. [ Cervantes ]
Love me more, and honour me less. [ Proverb ]
The less heart, the more comfort. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
Two in distress make sorrow less. [ Proverb ]
Greater than man, less than woman. [ Essex, of Queen Elizabeth ]
So sweet the blush of bashfulness
Even pity scarce can wish it less. [ Byron ]
Men are less forgiving than women. [ Richardson ]
The less routine the more of life. [ A. B. Alcott ]
Go - let thy less than woman's hand
Assume the distaff - not the brand. [ Byron ]
The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind. [ Wordsworth ]
What costs little is less esteemed. [ Proverb ]
He that hath little is the less dirty. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less. [ Prior ]
The less men think the more they talk. [ Montesquieu ]
My birthday! - what a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears;
And how each time the day comes round.
Less and less white its mark appears. [ Moore ]
Then never less alone than when alone. [ Samuel Rogers ]
Our rocks are rough, but smiling there
The acacia waves her yellow hair,
Lonely and sweet, nor loved the less
For flow'ring in a wilderness. [ Moore ]
Life is less than nothing without love. [ Bailey ]
Novelties please less than they impress. [ Dickens ]
The more one judges, the less one loves. [ Balzac ]
Company in distress make the sorrow less. [ Proverb ]
Let us think less of men and more of God. [ Bailey ]
I cannot be content with less than heaven. [ Bailey ]
There is nothing costs less than civility. [ Cervantes ]
I was never less alone than when by myself. [ Edward Gibbon ]
Can gold calm passion or make reason shine?
Can we dig peace, or wisdom, from the mine?
Wisdom to gold prefer; for 'tis much less
To make our fortune, than our happiness. [ Young ]
Doubting charms me not less than knowledge. [ Dante ]
Could I love less, I should be happier now. [ Bailey ]
And teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night. [ William Shakespeare ]
A little more than kin, and less than kind. [ William Shakespeare ]
Loud clamour is always more or less insane. [ Carlyle ]
Love that can flow, and can admit increase,
Admits as well an ebb, and may grow less. [ Suckling ]
Silence is less injurious than a weak reply. [ Colton ]
For youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears,
Than settled age his sables, and his weeds
Importing health and graveness. [ William Shakespeare ]
Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree;
Love is a present for a mighty king,--
Much less make any one thine enemy.
As guns destroy, so may a little sling. [ George Herbert ]
The love of praise, however concealed by art,
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart. [ Young ]
Words are less needful to sorrow than to joy. [ Helen Jackson ]
Ignorance is less hateful than conceitedness. [ Proverb ]
Of two evils the less is always to be chosen. [ Thomas A Kempis ]
Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress;
And, as the evening twilight fades away.
The stars are seen by night, invisible by day. [ Longfellow ]
Less base the fear of death than fear of life. [ Young ]
The absent danger greater still appears
Less fears he, who is near the thing he fears. [ Daniel ]
Men seek less to be instructed than applauded. [ Proverb ]
Great God, I had rather be
A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. [ Wordsworth ]
A wise man is never less alone than when alone. [ Proverb ]
The less clothing Love wears, the warmer he is.
The deeper the sorrow, the less tongue hath it. [ Talmud ]
The love of praise, however concealed by art
Reigns, more or less, and glows, in every heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure. [ Young ]
True friends appear less moved than counterfeit. [ Roscommon ]
Laugh not too much: the witty man laughs least:
For wit is news only to ignorance.
Less at thine own things laugh: lest in the jest
Thy person share, and the conceit advance. [ George Herbert ]
Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill nature. [ Dupuy ]
Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion. [ Shenstone ]
Death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die;
The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality. [ Millman ]
Much would have more, but often meets with less. [ Proverb ]
Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]
We take less pains to be happy than to appear so. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
That what they have not, that which they possess,
They scatter and unloose it from their bond.
And so, by hoping more, they have but less. [ William Shakespeare ]
Habit, to which all of us are more or less slaves. [ La Fontaine ]
Silver is of less value than gold, gold than virtue. [ Horace ]
The way to avoid great faults, is to beware of less. [ Proverb ]
Ignorance is less distant from truth than prejudice. [ Diderot ]
Greater and less don't change the nature of a thing.
Imperious Venus is less potent than caressing Venus.
Silver is less valuable than gold, gold than virtue. [ Horace ]
He led on; but thoughts
Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins
Grew visible upon his swarthy brow,
And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain.
He trod less firmly; and his restless eye
Glanc'd forward frequently, as if some ill
He dared not meet were there. [ Willis ]
I have heard they are the most lewd impostors,
Made of all terms and shreds, no less beliers
Of great men's favours than their own vile medicines,
Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths;
Selling that drug for two pence ere they part.
Which they have valued at twelve crowns before. [ Ben Jonson ]
Men have less lively perception of good than of evil. [ Livy ]
Less of your courtship, I pray, and more of your coin. [ Proverb ]
Hatred is keener than friendship, less keen than love. [ Vauvenargues ]
The less power a man has, the more he likes to use it. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
The more light a torch gives, the less while it lasts. [ Proverb ]
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice. [ Diderot ]
None are less eager to learn than they who know nothing. [ Suard ]
The fewer the thoughtless words spoken, the less regret.
Still seems it strange that thou should'st live forever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all? [ Young ]
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains. [ Hume ]
Our wisdom is no less at fortune's mercy than our wealth. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live for ever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle, and that no more. [ Young ]
Reputation depends less upon ourselves than upon fortune. [ Proverb ]
The more you are talked about, the less powerful you are. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it. [ Moliere ]
Our happiness is but an unhappiness more or less consoled. [ Ducis ]
Suspicion is no less an enemy to virtue than to happiness. [ Johnson ]
We laugh but little in our days, but are we less frivolous? [ Beranger ]
The least wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it. [ Proverb ]
Men do less than they ought unless they do all that they can. [ Carlyle ]
Men take less care of their conscience than their reputation. [ Proverb ]
Youth might be wise; we suffer less from pains than pleasures. [ Bailey ]
Though I am a religious man, I am not therefore the less a man. [ Mol ]
Were she perfect, one would admire her more, but love her less. [ Grattan ]
It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age. [ Proverb ]
The less we parade our misfortunes the more sympathy we command. [ Orville Dewey ]
Old houses mended cost little less than new before they're ended. [ Gibber ]
The more honest a man is, the less he affects the air of a saint. [ Lavater ]
A universal applause is seldom less than two thirds of a scandal. [ L'Estrange ]
The king is greater than each singly, but less than all unitedly. [ Bracton ]
Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it. [ Lord Bacon ]
Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions. [ Rochefoucauld ]
That city cannot prosper where an ox is sold for less than a fish. [ Proverb ]
True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes. [ Lord Halifax ]
Light is no less favourable to merit than unfavourable to imposture. [ H. Home ]
The dearer it is, the cheaper it is to me, for I shall buy the less. [ Proverb ]
He that considers in prosperity will be less afflicted in adversity. [ Proverb ]
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity. [ La Bruyere ]
The more women look in their glass the less they look to their house. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning. [ Colton ]
She has less beauty than her picture hath, and truly not much more wit. [ Proverb ]
Men are less eager for what they may have, than what they cannot obtain. [ Proverb ]
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Weaknesses, so called, are nothing more nor less than vices in disguise! [ Lavater ]
Liberality consists less in giving profusely than in giving judiciously. [ Bruygre ]
What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain? [ Mrs. Oliphant ]
The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude. [ Rousseau ]
I envy no man that knows more than my self, but pity them that know less. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
The more women look into their glass, the less they look into their hearts. [ Proverb ]
Sorrows when shared are less burdensome, though joys divided are increased. [ J. G. Holland ]
Man is nothing but contradiction; the less he knows it the more dupe he is. [ Amiel ]
Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to possess it. [ Reynard ]
The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Marriage has in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The total loss of reason is less deplorable than the total depravation of it. [ Cowley ]
Truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. [ Locke ]
If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
The more anyone speaks of himself the less he likes to hear another talked of. [ Lavater ]
He who has less than he desires should know that he has more than he deserves. [ Lichtenberg ]
I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see. [ Herodotus ]
Time is like money; the less we have of it to spare, the further we make it go. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Men who flatter women do not know them; men who abuse them know them still less. [ Mme. de Salm ]
The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are. [ Beecher ]
Nothing in nature, much less conscious being, was ever created solely for itself. [ Young ]
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering. [ Quintilian ]
It requires less character to discover the faults of others than to tolerate them. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
The better you understand yourself, the less cause you will find to love yourself. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
A man who pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less. [ Voltaire ]
Manners are the hypocrisies of nations: the hypocrisies are more or less perfected. [ Balzac ]
Oh, the little more, and how much it is! and the little less, and what worlds away! [ Browning ]
One loves wholly but once - the first time: loves that follow are less involuntary. [ La Bruyere ]
The path of genius is not less obstructed with disappointment than that of ambition. [ Voltaire ]
Gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite the man that mocks at it, and sets it light. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged. [ Chamfort ]
Another life, if it were not better than this, would be less a promise than a threat. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion. [ John Sterling ]
That each from other differs, first confess; next that he varies from himself no less. [ Pope ]
He is never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when he is alone. [ Cicero ]
Had we not faults of our own we should take less pleasure in observing those of others. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit. [ Fenelon ]
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity. [ Johnson ]
The brain women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red. [ Holmes ]
Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure. [ Hamerton ]
Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. [ Willmott ]
The obstinacy of the indolent and weak is less conquerable than that of the fiery and bold. [ Lavater ]
To be without passion is worse than a beast; to be without reason is to be less than a man. [ A. Warwick ]
To fight with its neighbours never was, and is now less than ever, the real trade of England. [ Carlyle ]
Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires. [ Chesterfield ]
Wine and other luxuries have a tendency to enervate the mind and make men less brave in battle. [ Caesar ]
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent, still less how to act with vigour and decision. [ Lavater ]
The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend. [ Joseph Roux ]
There is more or less sorrow in the word goodbye, and yet how we like to hear some people say it. [ Emerson ]
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world. [ Carlyle ]
The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and, far from commanding it, we are forced to obey it. [ Rousseau ]
A circumnavigator of the globe is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse. [ Jean Paul ]
Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk. [ Montesquieu ]
Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great soul; and great souls are not common things. [ John Ruskin ]
Genius, like a torch, shines less in the broad daylight of the present than in the night of the past. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Those who have few things to attend to are great babblers; for the less men think, the more they talk. [ Montesquieu ]
The less one sees and knows men, the higher one esteems them; for experience teaches their real value. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
The world is full of love and pity. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness. [ Thackeray ]
A body may as well lay too little as too much stress upon a dream; but the less he heed them the better. [ L'Estrange ]
Mediocrity is less sensitive than genius, and therefore suffers less under nearly any possible exigency. [ William Winter ]
There is an English song beginning, Love knocks at the door.
He knocks less often than he finds it open. [ Mme. Swetchine ]
Trust him little who praises all, him less who censures all, and him least who is indifferent about all. [ Lavater ]
Experience teaches us again and again that there is nothing men have less command over than their tongues. [ Spinoza ]
Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws so far as we can read them. [ Froude ]
We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
He that boasts of his ancestors, the founders and raisers of a family, doth confess that he hath less virtue. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Madame X. is a woman of too much wit and cleverness to be ever despised as much as some women less despicable. [ Chamfort ]
Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little. [ La Bruyere ]
If women are naturally more superstitious than men, it is because they are more sensitive and less enlightened. [ Beauchene ]
Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours. [ Lord Greville ]
One should sympathize with the joy, the beauty, the color of life - the less said about life's sores the better. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
In ill-matched marriages, the fault is less the woman's than the man's, as the choice depended on her the least. [ Mme. de Rieux ]
Men are guided less by conscience than by glory: and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience. [ Henry Home ]
The less you can enjoy, the poorer, the scantier yourself, - the more you can enjoy, the richer, the more vigorous. [ Lavater ]
A man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a fine woman than the gay, the giddy, the flattering coxcomb. [ Henry Home ]
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. [ Lowell ]
Were there but one man in the world, he would be a terror to himself; and the highest man not less so than the lowest. [ Carlyle ]
A grandam's name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are as children but one step below. [ William Shakespeare ]
Prudery is often immodestly modest; its habit is to multiply sentinels in proportion as the fortress is less threatened. [ G. D. Prentice ]
Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence, because they have less trouble to speak well than to speak little. [ Father Du Bosc ]
Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved. [ Johnson ]
It is no less merit to keep what you have got than to gain it. In the one there is chance; the other will be a work of art. [ Ovid ]
Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure. [ Tacitus ]
Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. [ Addison ]
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 ]
Women dress less to be clothed than to be adorned. When alone before their mirrors, they think more of men than of themselves. [ Rochebrune ]
Great souls are not those which have less passion and more virtue than common souls, but only those which have greater designs. [ La Roche ]
The art of conversation consists less in showing one's own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. [ La Bruyere ]
Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant. [ Pascal ]
Talk not to me of the wisdom of women, - I know my own sex well; the wisest of us all are but little less foolish than the rest. [ Mary, Queen of Scots ]
Whatever the world may say, there are some mortal sorrows; and our lives ebb away less through our blood than through our tears. [ P. Juillerat ]
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul. [ Charles Buxton ]
Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much but wants more. [ Colton ]
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. [ Lavater ]
Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation. [ Swift ]
As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Persons of fine manners make behaviour the first sign of force,--behaviour, and not performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less. [ Whately ]
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Ideas once planted in the brain fructify, and bear their harvest more or less bountiful and rich as they are fertilized by thought. [ Bartol ]
Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and beasts, by nature. [ Cicero ]
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out. [ Pope ]
Literature has her quacks no less than medicine: those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth. [ Colton ]
Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals, if in power or splendor less, in freedom equal? [ Milton ]
Sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men. [ Matthew Arnold ]
If he could only see how small a vacancy his death would leave, the proud man would think less of the place he occupies in his lifetime. [ Legouve ]
Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former. [ Horace Mann ]
To a father waxing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter; sons have spirits of a higher pitch, but less inclined to endearing fondness. [ Euripides ]
When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthenware. [ Seneca ]
A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing. [ Colton ]
It has long seemed to me that it would be more honorable to our ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. [ Horace Mann ]
Many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation. [ Sheridan ]
The better a man is morally, the less conscious he is of his virtues. The greater the artist, the more aware he must be of his shortcomings. [ Froude ]
At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women: he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be. [ Ritif de la Bretonne ]
There is not less wit, nor less invention, in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. [ Pierre Boyle ]
There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now. [ J. C. Hare ]
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 ]
Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts. [ John Ruskin ]
Live on what you have; live if you can on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure--the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret. [ Johnson ]
Self-love is always the mainspring, more or less concealed, of our actions; it is the wind which swells the sails, without which the ship could not go. [ Mme. du Chatelet ]
Travelling is like gambling; it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
No earnest thinker is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. [ C. Kingsley ]
The stroke that comes transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, is it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck and sent flying? [ Carlyle ]
There are women so hard to please that it would seem as if nothing less than an angel would suit them; and hence it comes that they often encounter devils. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Some things will not bear much zeal; and the more earnest we are about them, the less we recommend ourselves to the approbation of sober and considerate men. [ Tillotson ]
It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]
In all the world there is no vice Less prone to excess than avarice; It neither cares for food nor clothing; Nature's content with little - that with nothing. [ Butler ]
Qualities of a too superior order render a man less adapted to society. One does not go to market with big lumps of gold; one goes with silver or small change. [ Chamfort ]
All those observers who have spent their lives in the study of the human heart, know less about the signs of love than the most brainless, yet sensitive woman. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
All religions are more or less mixed with superstitions. Man is not reasonable enough to content himself with a pure and sensible religion, worthy of the Deity. [ Voltaire ]
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more. [ Greville ]
Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crash of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment and undermine security. [ Dr. Johnson ]
To smell a fresh turf of earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.
[ Fuller ]
It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinion at all upon important subjects. [ Sydney Smith ]
Three letters! but one syllable! Still less, a single motion of the head, and all is done! one is married for ever! I do not know any breakneck comparable to it. [ A. Ricard ]
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 ]
Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more since yesterday. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has received her welcome, and is resting on the bosom of her Saviour. [ Hawthorne ]
A man explodes with indignation when a woman ceases to love him, yet he soon finds consolation; a woman is less demonstrative when deserted, and remains longer inconsolable.
There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an indefinable, and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. [ Tuckerman ]
There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to expect from the one as the other. [ Butler ]
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it. [ Ben Jonson ]
For as much as to understand and to be mighty are great qualities, the higher that they be, they are so much the less to be esteemed if goodness also abound not in the possessor. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]
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 ]
History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Does the man live who has not felt this spur to action, in a more or less generous spirit? Emulation lives so near to envy that it is sometimes difficult to establish the boundary-lines. [ Henry Giles ]
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand. [ Bacon ]
There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them. [ Joubert ]
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. [ Colton ]
Enthusiasm is an evil much less to be dreaded than superstition. Superstition is the disease of nations; enthusiasm that of individuals: the former grows inveterate by time: the latter is cured by it. [ Robert Hall ]
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less. [ Colton ]
Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily; for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one. [ Chesterfield ]
Diligence is the mistress of learning, without which nothing can either be spoken or done in this life with commendation, and without which it is altogether impossible to prove learned, much less excellent in any science. [ Madeleine Guerchois ]
Melancholy, or low spirits, is that hysterical passion which forces unbidden sighs and tears; it falls upon a contented life, like a drop of ink on white paper, which is not the less a stain that it carries no meaning with it. [ Sir W. Scott ]
Certainly the highest and dearest concerns of a temporal life are infinitely less valuable than those of an eternal; and consequently ought, without any demur at all, to be sacrificed to them, whenever they come in competition. [ South ]
The widow who has been bereft of her children may seem in after years no whit less placid, no whit less serenely gladsome; nay, more gladsome than the woman whose blessings are still round her. I am amazed to see how wounds heal. [ Charles Buxton ]
Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears otherwise gives advantage to the danger; it is less folly not to endeavor the prevention of the evil thou fearest than to fear the evil which thy endeavor cannot prevent. [ Quarles ]
Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand one cannon ball than a volley of bullets. [ Colton ]
Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked path looks straighter as we approach the end. [ Richter ]
Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by the light at waking, if we have been dreaming of visible objects. Happy are those who have here dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come. [ Novalis ]
A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof if carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung. [ Greville ]
Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. [ Colton ]
It seems as if all classes and conditions in life might learn to get more happiness out of their work. To accomplish this, more sentiment and less worry must be put into our efforts, which must also be viewed in their larger relations and possibilities. [ Henry D. Chapin ]
Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. But the direct contrary I believe to be the case. Rude periods have that grossness of manners, which is as unfriendly to virtue as luxury itself. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished. [ Warton ]
There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. [ Sir John Herschel ]
The man makes the circumstances, and is spiritually as well as economically the artificer of his own fortune, but the man's circumstances are the element he is appointed to live and work in; so that in a no less genuine sense it can be said circumstances make the man. [ Carlyle ]
Civilized society feels that manners are of more importance than morals, and the highest respectability is of less value than the possession of a good chef. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for cold entrees, nor an irreproachable private life for a bad dinner and poor wines. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]
Portion or Part? The distinction between these words is usually unheeded. A portion is a part assigned, allotted, or set aside for a special purpose; part has a less limited meaning. Hence, we may say correctly:
In what part of the city do you live?
What portion of the estate do you inherit?
. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them. There is cheating on both sides of the counter, and generally less behind it than before it. [ Beecher ]
We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit; at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England, and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream. [ Bartol ]
The failure of his mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence: indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy. [ Sir Benjamin Brodie ]
Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing; sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world. [ Carlyle ]
Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation. [ Coleridge ]
As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. [ E. Law ]
In some exquisite critical hints on Eurythmy.
Goethe remarks, that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story.
And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot. [ Montaigne ]
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 ]
I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore. [ Melmoth ]
All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman. Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. [ Colton ]
Personal attachment is no fit ground for public conduct, and those who declare they will take care of the rights of the sovereign because they have received favours at his hand, betray a little mind and warrant the conclusion that if they did not receive those favours they would be less mindful of their duties, and act with less zeal for his interest. [ C. Fox ]
To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same condition, to keep friends with himself: here is a task for all a man has of fortitude and delicacy. [ Robert Louis Stevenson ]
Association is the delight of the heart not less than of poetry. Alison observes that an autumn sunset, with its crimson clouds, glimmering trunks of trees, and wavering tints upon the grass, seems scarcely capable of embellishment. But if in this calm and beautiful glow the chime of a distant bell steal over the fields, the bosom heaves with the sensation that Dante so tenderly describes. [ Willmott ]
Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he boasted, The less you speak of your greatness, the more I shall think of it.
Mirrors are the accompaniments of dandies, not heroes. The men of history were not perpetually looking in the glass to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it, and did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labeled them accordingly. [ Rev. S. Coley ]
Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness. [ Johnson ]
Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce. [ Willmott ]
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? [ Emerson ]
Consistent characters are those which in social intercourse are easy, sure, and gentle. We do not clash with them, and they are never wanting nor contradictory to themselves; their stability incites confidence, their frankness induces self-surrendering openness. We feel at ease with them, we are not offended at their superiority, doubtless we admire them less, but we also hardly dream of feeling envious of them, and they seem almost to disdain malignity by the peaceful influence of their presence. [ Degerando ]
Threescore years and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-tail but lights out.
You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer - and without prejudice - for they are not legally collectable. [ 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 ]
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 ]