To miss the mark.
Life is too short to waste.
It will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark! [ Emerson ]
A great mark is soonest hit. [ Proverb ]
The first mark of valor is defense. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom. [ Jeremy Collier ]
Lying's a certain mark of cowardice. [ Southern ]
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 ]
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. [ Collect ]
Here quench your thirst, and mark in me
An emblem of true charity;
Who, while my bounty I bestow.
Am neither seen, nor heard to flow. [ Hone ]
Fool's bolts may sometimes hit the mark. [ Proverb ]
Antiquity is not always a mark of verity. [ Proverb ]
A fool's bolt may sometimes hit the mark. [ Proverb ]
Pluck the acacia's golden balls.
And mark where the red pomegranate falls. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue in his outward parts. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. [ William Shakespeare ]
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow. [ Young ]
Make your mark, but mind what your mark is. [ Proverb ]
Mark her majestic fabric; she's a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine;
Her soul's the Deity that lodges there;
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God. [ Dryden ]
If love be blind, love can not hit the mark. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc.1 ]
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state.
Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate. [ Pope ]
The sea! the sea!- the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies. [ Barry Cornwall ]
So lightly walks, she not one mark imprints,
Nor brushes off the dews, nor soils the tints. [ Churchill ]
He must be a good shot who always hits the mark. [ Dutch Proverb ]
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are;
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. [ Browning ]
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. [ Swift ]
Silver, though white.
Yet it draws black lines; it shall not rule my palm
There to mark forth its base corruption. [ Middleton and Rowley ]
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
No! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved;
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. [ William Shakespeare ]
Look on the bee upon the wing among flowers;
How brave, how bright his life! then mark him hiv'd,
Cramp'd, cringing in his self-built, social cell,
Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men
Lie deep in cities as in drifts. [ Bailey ]
He is wide of the mark; has gone quite out of his sphere.
To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. [ Amiel ]
Mark how there still has run, inwoven from above,
Through thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of love. [ R. C. Trench ]
Be thankful for your ennui; it is your last mark of manhood. [ Carlyle ]
One man may as much miss the mark by aiming too high as too low. [ Proverb ]
What is failure except feebleness?
And what is it to miss one's mark except to aim widely and weakly? [ Ouida ]
It is better to fall short of a high mark, than to reach a low one. [ H. C. Payne ]
Wherever the devil makes a purchase, he never fails to set his mark. [ Goldsmith ]
If the ball does not stick to the wall, yet it will leave some mark. [ Proverb ]
Set but this feather well to my arrow and he'll certainly shoot the mark. [ Proverb ]
Great events are the hour-hands of time, while small events mark the minutes. [ Ramsay ]
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions. [ Cicero ]
There is no vice so simple, but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts. [ William Shakespeare ]
I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others. [ Lord Greville ]
Calumny spreads like an oil-spot: we endeavor to cleanse it, but the mark remains. [ Mlle de Lespinasse ]
Let our lives be pure as snow-fields, where our footsteps leave a mark, but not a stain. [ Madame Swetchine ]
No labor is hard, no time is long, wherein the glory of eternity is the mark we level at. [ Quarles ]
It is sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come. [ Byron ]
The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it constrained to praise. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Not all the pumice of the polish'd town
Can smooth the roughness of the barnyard clown; Rich, honor'd, titled, he betrays his race
By this one mark - he's awkward in his face. [ Holmes ]
In running their race, men of birth look back too much, which is the mark of a bad runner. [ Bacon ]
It is the mark of a great man to treat trifles as trifles, and important matters as important. [ Lessing ]
The frequent recourse to finesse is always the effect of incapacity and the mark of a small mind. [ French ]
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, especially the eyes. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Mark what and how great blessings flow from a frugal diet; in the first place, thou enjoyest good health. [ Horace ]
He will shoot higher that shoots at the moon, than he that shoots at a dunghill, though he miss the mark. [ Proverb ]
No two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; dispatch, of a strong one. [ Caleb C. Colton ]
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold. [ Shelley ]
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence. [ S. Bailey ]
He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the mark is to keep the eye fixed upon it. [ Bishop Horne ]
To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, - this is the mark and character of intelligence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say, nothing. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
I'll give thrice so much land. To any well deserving friend; But in the way of bargain, mark me, I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair. [ William Shakespeare ]
There is no merit where there is no trial; and, till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, faith for falsehood. [ Aaron Hill ]
The highest mark of esteem a woman can give a man is to ask his friendship; and the most signal proof of her indifference is to offer him hers.
Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best, may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all, will never hit it. [ Owen Feltham ]
O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken! [ Scott ]
Who shoots at the midday sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is that he shall shoot higher than he who aims but at a bush. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess. [ Zimmermann ]
The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it. [ Burke ]
Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. [ Emerson ]
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 ]
Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken; there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, - they make their mark. [ Joubert ]
Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the noise is heard, so that it maketh a noise not by way of warning, but of triumph. [ Fuller ]
It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence. [ Swedenborg ]
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. [ Washington Irving ]
There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time. [ Quintilian ]
As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. [ Plutarch ]
Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions. [ Feltham ]
Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]
Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]