With might and main. [ French ]
By force and arms; by main force.
As the ancients wisely say
Have a care o' the main chance,
And look before you ere you leap;
For as you sow you are like to reap. [ Butler ]
To glean the broken ears after the man
That the main harvest reaps. [ William Shakespeare ]
For gold the merchant ploughs the main.
The farmer ploughs the manor. [ Burns ]
Your main fault is, you are good for nothing. [ Proverb ]
The quiet night, now dappling, began to wane,
Dividing darkness from the dawning main. [ Byron ]
A little of every thing is nothing in the main. [ Proverb ]
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys.
Society, cut off, is left alone
Amid this world of death. Day after day.
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave.
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless. [ Thomson ]
Live thou! and of the grain and husk, the grape,
And ivy berry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do. [ Emerson ]
Ye who dwell at home, ye do not know the terrors of the main. [ Southey ]
It is of no use running, to set out betimes is the main point. [ La Fontaine ]
Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none. [ Emerson ]
Nature provides without stint the main requisites of human happiness. [ Sir John Lubbock ]
The main enterprise of the world for splendour, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The falling-out of wits is like the falling-out of lovers: we agree in the main, like treble and bass. [ Congreve ]
Cheerfulness accompanies patience, which is one of the main conditions of happiness and success in life. [ Samuel Smiles ]
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 ]
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 ]
The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. [ Wm. Hazlitt ]
The main thing in writing is to have distinct, and clear, and well-marshalled ideas, and then to express them simply and without affectation. This forms what we may call the bones of a good style. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, What was that?
! [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Error soon passes away, unless upheld by restraint on thought. History tells us (and the lesson is invaluable) that the physical force which has put down free inquiry has been the main bulwark of the superstitions and illusions of past ages. [ Channing ]
'Tis, in fact, utter folly to ask whether a person has anything from himself, or whether he has it from others, whether he operates by himself, or operates by means of others. The main point is to have a great will, and skill and perseverance to carry it out. All else is indifferent. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together - a main plot and an underplot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. [ Colton ]
We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
The man who makes a success of an important venture never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticised. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done. [ C. V. White ]
In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]