Definition of may

"may" in the noun sense

1. May

the month following April and preceding June

2. whitethorn, English hawthorn, may, Crataegus laevigata, Crataegus oxycantha

thorny Eurasian shrub of small tree having dense clusters of white to scarlet flowers followed by deep red berries established as an escape in eastern North America

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for may

Come what may! [ French ]

You may supersede. [ Law ]

He that hath thriven
May lie till seven. [ Proverb ]

Truth may be blamed,
But cannot be shamed. [ Proverb ]

What has been, may be. [ Proverb ]

He that runs may read. [ Tennyson ]

One may live and learn. [ Proverb ]

He that runs may rally. [ Proverb ]

Fancy may kill or cure. [ Proverb ]

You may wink and choose. [ Proverb ]

Our desires may undo us. [ Proverb ]

It may be, if it is true. [ French Proverb ]

A good marksman may miss. [ Proverb ]

A cat may look at a king. [ Title of a Pamphlet (published 1652) ]

Bind so as you may unbind. [ Proverb ]

One kindly deed may turn
The fountain of thy soul
To love's sweet day-star,
That shall over thee burn
Long as its currents roll. [ Holmes ]

Kindness is wisdom.
There is none in life
But needs it and may learn. [ Bailey ]

Darkness which may be felt. [ Bible ]

Wit may be bought too dear. [ Proverb ]

The best cart may overthrow. [ Proverb ]

A small wound may be mortal. [ Proverb ]

One brother may help another. [ Proverb ]

Look at your own corn in May,
And you'll come weeping away. [ Proverb ]

A stumble may prevent a fall. [ Proverb ]

As welcome as flowers in May. [ Proverb ]

A shroved tree may stand long. [ Proverb ]

Wherever a book may be opened.

A fine diamond may be ill set. [ Proverb ]

By steps we may ascend to God. [ Milton ]

May earth lie light upon thee.

He that fights and runs away
May live to fight another day. [ Goldsmith ]

He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day.
But he who is in battle slain,
Can never rise to fight again. [ Goldsmith ]

If you trust before you try,
You may repent before you die. [ Proverb ]

Make your hay as best you may. [ Proverb ]

An open door may tempt a saint. [ Proverb ]

Even an emmet may seek revenge. [ Proverb ]

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act that each tomorrow
May find us farther than today. [ Longfellow ]

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed. [ Tennyson ]

A wise man may learn of a fool. [ French Proverb ]

To the wise a word may suffice. [ Proverb ]

Every may-be hath a may-not-be. [ Proverb ]

Two eyes may see more than one. [ Proverb ]

If today will not, tomorrow may. [ Proverb ]

A hot May fills the church-yard. [ Proverb ]

An ill cow may have a good calf. [ Proverb ]

Beggars may sing before a thief. [ Proverb ]

April showers bring May flowers. [ Proverb ]

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river.
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever. [ Tennyson ]

Surgeons cut that they may cure. [ Proverb ]

The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower. [ William Cowper ]

Young men may die, old men must. [ Proverb ]

In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe. [ Isaac De Benserade ]

I may not to the world impart
The secret of its power,
But treasured in my inmost heart
I keep my faded flower. [ Ellen C Howarth ]

A fortunate man may be any where. [ Proverb ]

Nought may endure but mutability. [ Shelley ]

Misgive that you may not mistake. [ Whately ]

The May of life only blooms once. [ Schiller ]

One may see day at a little hole. [ Proverb ]

Small habits well pursued betimes
May reach the dignity of crimes. [ Hannah More ]

An oyster may be crossed in love. [ Sheridan ]

A man may buy even gold too dear. [ Proverb ]

So may a glory from defect arise. [ Robert Browning ]

Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand. [ Bishop Coxe ]

Wise men may chance to be caught. [ Proverb ]

A bad Jack may have as bad a Jill. [ Proverb ]

A fair face may hide a foul heart. [ Proverb ]

We may be good in every condition. [ Proverb ]

Little serpents may bite mortally. [ Proverb ]

Ragged colts may make fine horses. [ Proverb ]

Little birds may pick a dead lion. [ Proverb ]

Oh, may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see.
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll.
We banish quiet from the soul.
It is thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care. [ Dyer ]

Our pleasures and our discontents
Are rounds by which we may ascend. [ Longfellow ]

A good paymaster may build Paul's. [ Proverb ]

A good garden may have some weeds. [ Proverb ]

Defeat may be victory in disguise. [ Longfellow ]

May mankind enjoy universal peace. [ Chin Lun ]

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been and may be again. [ Wordsworth ]

A fool may give a wise man counsel. [ Proverb ]

One may think that dares not speak. [ Proverb ]

The soul may be trusted to the end. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

What by duty's voice is bidden.
There, where duty's star may guide,
Thither follow, that accomplish,
Whatsoever else betide. [ R. C. Trench ]

A two penny cat may look at a king. [ Proverb ]

Yet, no - not words, for they
But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
What passion fears revealing:
A once bright rose's wither'd leaf,
A tow'ring lily broken -
Oh, these may paint a grief
No words could ever have spoken. [ Moore ]

Here am I a man, here may I be one. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Wickedness may prosper for a while. [ L'Estrange ]

A small shop may have a good trade. [ Proverb ]

There may be blue, and better blue. [ Proverb ]

Old buildings may fall in a moment. [ Proverb ]

A foul morn may turn to a fair day. [ Proverb ]

For those that fly may fight again.
Which he can never do that's slain. [ Butler ]

He that complies against his will.
Is of his own opinion still.
Which he may adhere to, yet disown,
For reasons to himself best known. [ Butler ]

Make every bargain clear and plain,
That none may afterwards complain. [ Proverb ]

If you brew well you may drink well. [ Proverb ]

Lay things by, they may come to use. [ Proverb ]

The young may die, but the old must! [ Longfellow ]

I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares do more is none. [ William Shakespeare ]

Art may err, but nature cannot miss. [ Dryden ]

Our youth we can have but today;
We may always find time to grow old. [ Bishop Berkeley ]

Virtue may be gay, yet with dignity. [ Statius ]

Over-niceness may be under-niceness. [ Richardson ]

At a good table we may go to school. [ Proverb ]

A cripple may possibly catch a hare. [ Proverb ]

Few may play with the devil and win. [ Proverb ]

A misty morning may have a fine day. [ Proverb ]

Though stars in skies may disappear,
And angry tempests gather,
The happy hour may soon be near
That brings us pleasant weather. [ Burns ]

You may be witty, but not satirical. [ Horace Greeley ]

That you may be beloved, be amiable. [ Ovid ]

Men may bear till their backs break. [ Proverb ]

A wise man may be kind without cost. [ Proverb ]

Small wounds if many, may be mortal. [ Proverb ]

A small rain may allay a great storm. [ Proverb ]

The belly that is full may well fast. [ Proverb ]

Be first, that you may be of service. [ Motto ]

You may bring up the body to satisfy. [ Law Writ ]

A downright fact may be briefly told. [ John Ruskin ]

By the husk you may guess at the nut. [ Proverb ]

A wild colt may become a sober horse. [ Proverb ]

All may do what has by man been done. [ Edward Young ]

Great weight may hang on small wires. [ Proverb ]

The best cloth may have a moth in it. [ Proverb ]

Hearts may agree though heads differ. [ Proverb ]

This, or any moment may be your last. [ Proverb ]

Having is having, come whence it may. [ German Proverb ]

Among our crimes oblivion may be Bet. [ Dryden ]

Strive
In offices of love how me may lighten
Each other's burden. [ Milton ]

Within the oyster's shell uncouth
The purest pearl may hide,
Trust me you'll find a heart of truth
Within that rough outside. [ Mrs. Osgood ]

The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man. [ Burns ]

Lay her in the earth;
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! [ William Shakespeare ]

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise,
Tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise. [ William Congreve ]

Three may keep counsel if two be away. [ Proverb ]

The fox may grow grey, but never good. [ Proverb ]

Dust, to its narrow house beneath!
Soul, to its place on high!
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

A brave man may fall but cannot yield.

The brave man may yield to braver man.

Friends may meet, but mountains never. [ Proverb ]

Black plums may eat as sweet as white. [ Proverb ]

No joy so great but runneth to an end;
No hap so hard but may in time amend. [ Robert Southwell ]

Men may rise on steppingstones
Of their dead selves to higher things. [ Tennyson ]

Prodigious actions may as well be done
By weaver's issue, as by prince's son. [ Dryden ]

A drop of ink may make a million think. [ Byron ]

Wickedness may be safe, but not secure. [ Seneca ]

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May. [ Keats ]

A poor pleader may do in a plain cause. [ Proverb ]

No distance breaks the tie of blood:
Brothers are brothers evermore;
Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood,
That magic may o'erpower. [ Keble ]

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore may be won. [ William Shakespeare ]

Two may keep counsel, putting one away. [ Proverb ]

The cure may be worse than the disease. [ Proverb ]

Jest so that it may not become earnest. [ Spanish Proverb ]

May you live all the days of your life. [ Swift ]

Fancy may bolt bran and think it flour. [ Proverb ]

Time's waters will not ebb nor stay;
Power cannot change them, but Love may;
What cannot be, Love counts it done. [ Keble ]

The rich man's son inherits cares;
The bank may break, the factory burn,
A breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft, white hands could hardly earn
A living that would serve his turn. [ Lowell ]

Gather the rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying. [ Herrick ]

A pure conscience may defy city gossips. [ Earl Of Beaconsfield ]

Wisdom and fortune combating together,
If that the former dare but what it can,
No chance may shake it. [ William Shakespeare ]

Bitter pills may have wholesome effects. [ Proverb ]

Man's work is to labor, and leaven -
As best he may - earth here with heaven. [ Robert Browning ]

Excess of obligations may lose a friend. [ Proverb ]

You may be on land, yet not in a garden. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Yelping curs may anger mastiffs at last. [ Proverb ]

When the cat is away, the mice may play. [ Proverb ]

'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking. [ Lowell ]

A verse may find him whom a sermon flies
And turn delight into a sacrifice. [ George Herbert ]

Taste may change, but inclination never. [ La Roche ]

If I shoot at the sun, I may hit a star. [ P. T. Barnum ]

We may see a prince, but not search him. [ Proverb ]

Even sugar itself may spoil a good dish. [ Proverb ]

Wanton kitlings may make sober old cats. [ Proverb ]

Well may he smell fire whose gown burns. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Fool's bolts may sometimes hit the mark. [ Proverb ]

Every door may be shut but death's door. [ Proverb ]

One may know your meaning by your gaping. [ Proverb ]

One may hold one's tongue in an ill time. [ Proverb ]

One wrong step may give you a great fall. [ Proverb ]

Truth may languish, but can never perish. [ Proverb ]

An enemy may chance to give good counsel. [ Proverb ]

To-morrow a new scene of things may open. [ Proverb ]

A fool's bolt may sometimes hit the mark. [ Proverb ]

You may have worse offers before May-day. [ Proverb ]

A man may be strong and yet not mow well. [ Proverb ]

Oaks may fall when reeds stand the storm. [ Proverb ]

One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc.1 ]

You may bring up the body to make answer. [ Law Writ ]

A single moment may transform everything. [ Wieland ]

Who knows who may keep sheep another day? [ Proverb ]

The highest power may be lost by misrule. [ Syrus ]

Wise men may well be mistaken in futures. [ Proverb ]

Crimes may be secret, but yet not secure. [ Proverb ]

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign.
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine. [ Pope ]

There is, sir, a critical minute in
Every man's wooing, when his mistress may
Be won, which if he carelessly neglect
To prosecute, he may wait long enough
Before he gain the like opportunity. [ Marmion ]

We promise much, that we may give little. [ Vauvenargues ]

You may know by a handful the whole sack. [ Proverb ]

He that worst may still holds the candle. [ Proverb ]

Pride may lurk under a thread-bare cloak. [ Proverb ]

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. [ Tennyson ]

Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save. [ Byron ]

How much an ill word may empoison liking! [ William Shakespeare ]

I know
The past and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]

Thy sum of duty let two words contain
(O! May they graven in thy heart remain!)
Be humble and be just. [ Prior ]

He that runs in the dark may well stumble. [ Proverb ]

In an easy matter any man may be eloquent. [ Ovid ]

One may be confuted and yet not convinced. [ Proverb ]

He that loses hope may part with anything. [ Congreve ]

One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor. [ William Shakespeare ]

Fortune makes quick dispatch, and in a day
May strip you bare as beggary itself. [ Cumberland ]

He's gone, and who knows how he may report
Thy words by adding fuel to the flame? [ Milton ]

A mischievous plot may produce a good end. [ Proverb ]

Fools may sometimes give wise men counsel. [ Proverb ]

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude;
But grant me still a friend in my retreat.
Whom I may whisper - solitude is sweet. [ Cowper ]

One may come soon enough to an ill market. [ Proverb ]

There is no man but may make his paradise. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

What a day may bring, a day may take away. [ Proverb ]

April and May are the key of alt the year. [ Proverb ]

A deformed body may have a beautiful soul. [ Proverb ]

A good sailor may mistake in a dark night. [ Proverb ]

A subject's faults a subject may proclaim,
A monarch's errors are forbidden game. [ William Cowper ]

That good diffused may more abundant grow. [ Cowper ]

Even a child may beat a man that is bound. [ Proverb ]

Bought wit is best, but may cost too much. [ Proverb ]

Good advice may be given, but manners not. [ Turkish Proverb ]

A man may provoke his own dog to bite him. [ Proverb ]

Policy may be virtuous as well as vicious. [ Proverb ]

Praise a fool and you may make him useful. [ Danish Proverb ]

Things may serve long, but not serve ever. [ William Shakespeare ]

He that is innocent may well be confident. [ Proverb ]

Murder may pass unpunish'd for a time.
But tardy justice will o'ertake the crime. [ Dryden ]

Tears may be dried up, but the heart never. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

May bees flee not at this time of the year. [ Proverb ]

Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
But in my heart her several torments dwell. [ William Shakespeare ]

Traverse the desert, and then ye can tell
What treasures exist in the cold deep well,
Sink in despair on the red parch'd earth,
And then ye may reckon what water is worth. [ Miss Eliza Cook ]

A fool may now and then be right by chance. [ Cowper ]

A lion may come to be beholding to a mouse. [ Proverb ]

Two may keep counsel when the third's away. [ William Shakespeare ]

A good merchant may meet with a misfortune. [ Proverb ]

Old cats may lap as well as young children. [ Proverb ]

Now our fates from unmomentous things
May rise like rivers out of little springs. [ Campbell ]

More strange than true, I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. [ William Shakespeare ]

No vernal blooms their tropid rocks array
But winter lingering chills the lap of May. [ Goldsmith ]

If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell.
And may be found too in an oyster shell. [ Bunyan ]

Love that can flow, and can admit increase,
Admits as well an ebb, and may grow less. [ Suckling ]

Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud. [ William Shakespeare ]

For virtue's self may too much zeal be had:
The worst of madmen is a saint run mad. [ Pope ]

A good man's fortune may grow out at heels. [ William Shakespeare ]

From little spark may burst a mighty flame. [ Dante ]

To be ungrateful is to be unnatural.
The head may be thus guilty, not the heart. [ Rivarol ]

Ill wounds may be cured, but not ill names. [ Proverb ]

Cloudy mornings may turn to clear evenings. [ Proverb ]

Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill;
We may be independent if we will. [ Churchill ]

A small sum may serve for a small reckoning. [ Proverb ]

No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast.
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. [ Goldsmith ]

He that gallops his horse on Blackstone edge
May chance to catch a fall. [ Old song ]

A mouse, in time, may shear a cable asunder. [ Proverb ]

Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters. [ William Shakespeare ]

You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those. [ William Shakespeare ]

He that makes one basket may make a hundred. [ Proverb ]

Fate made me what I am, may make me nothing;
But either that or nothing must I be;
I will not live degraded. [ Byron ]

Chance will not do the work -
Chance sends the breeze;
But if the pilot slumber at the helm.
The very wind that wafts us towards the port
May dash us on the shelves.
The steersman's part is vigilance.
Blow it or rough or smooth. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Philosophy may be feigned, eloquence cannot. [ Quinct ]

Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

The devil may be bullied, but not the Deity. [ W. R. Alger ]

The youth fights that the old man may enjoy. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

May that soldier a mere recreant prove
That means not, hath not, or is not in love! [ William Shakespeare ]

One may point at a star, but not pull at it. [ Proverb ]

Death is the port where all may refuge find,
The end of labor, entry into rest;
Death hath the bounds of misery confin'd
Whose sanctuary shrouds affliction best. [ Earl of Stirling ]

Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. [ Milton ]

Tomorrow even may bring the final reckoning. [ Spurgeon ]

The fairest looking shoe may pinch the foot. [ Proverb ]

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too. [ William Shakespeare ]

When driving ceases, may we still be able
To play the shorts, putt and be comfortable. [ G. F. Carnegie ]

Existence may be borne, and the deep root
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
The camel labors with the heaviest load.
And the wolf dies in silence: Not bestowed
In vain should such examples be; if they.
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear - it is but for a day. [ Byron ]

A very good woman may make but a paltry man. [ Pope ]

What is my turn today may be yours tomorrow. [ Proverb ]

A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain. [ William Shakespeare ]

Not where death hath power may love be blest. [ Mrs. Ilemans ]

Once a year a man may say, On his conscience. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Good for the liver may be bad for the spleen. [ Proverb ]

Hail, blooming Youth!
May all your virtues with your years improve,
Till in consummate worth you shine the pride,
Of these our days, and succeeding times,
A bright example. [ Wm. Somerville ]

Think that you may make a friend of an enemy. [ Seneca ]

Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in our May,
And hive the thrifty sweetness for December. [ Holland ]

A common jeerer may have wit, but not wisdom. [ Proverb ]

What we admire we praise; and when we praise,
Advance it into notice, that its worth
Acknowledged, others may admire it too. [ Cowper ]

Words learned by rote, a parrot may rehearse;
But talking is not always to converse. [ William Cowper ]

Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal. [ Thomas Paine ]

You may truss up all his wit in an egg-shell. [ Proverb ]

The flush of youth soon passes from the face,
The spells of fancy from the mind depart;
The form may lose its symmetry, its grace.
But time can claim no victory over the heart. [ Mrs. Dinnies ]

The fire that all things else consumeth clean
May hurt and heal. [ Sir Thomas Wyatt ]

See what money can do: that can change
Men's manners; alter their conditions!
How tempestuous the slaves are without it!
O thou powerful metal! what authority
Is in thee! thou art the key to all mens
Mouths: with thee, a man may lock up the jaws
Of an informer; and without thee, he
Cannot open the lips of a lawyer. [ Richard Brome ]

How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul! [ Bailey ]

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 ]

Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering. [ Alfred de Musset ]

Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink;
So may he cease to write, and learn to think. [ Prior ]

If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep.
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. [ William Shakespeare ]

That will not make a pot, may make a pot lid. [ Proverb ]

Ride softly that you may get home the sooner. [ Proverb ]

Seven may be company, but nine are confusion. [ Proverb ]

An ape may chance to sit amongst the Doctors. [ Proverb ]

He that falls today may be up again tomorrow. [ Proverb ]

Heresy may be easier kept out than shook off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

An hour may destroy what an age was building. [ Proverb ]

Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. [ Joseph Gerrald ]

A heady man and a fool may wear the same cap. [ Proverb ]

May widows wed as often as they can,
And ever for the better change their man;
And some devouring plague pursue their lives,
Who will not well be governed by their wives. [ Dryden ]

Let thy alms go before, and keep heaven's gate
Open for thee, or both may come too late. [ George Herbert ]

Since all the riches of this world
May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings.
I should suspect that I worshipped the devil
If I thanked my God for worldly things. [ Wm. Blake ]

Lands mortgaged may return, and more esteemed;
But honesty once pawned is never redeemed. [ Middleton ]

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps,
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps. [ Longfellow ]

Luck, mere luck, may make even madness wisdom. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Old men and travellers may lie with authority. [ Proverb ]

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust. [ Byron ]

Gold thou may'st safely touch; but if it stick
Unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick. [ Herbert ]

The law, - it has honored us, may we honor it. [ Daniel Webster ]

We'll leave a proof, by that which we will do,
Wives may be merry, and yet honest too. [ William Shakespeare ]

A wise look may secure a fool, if he talk not. [ Proverb ]

Well may he stumble, that chooses a stony way. [ Proverb ]

Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels
When the tired player shuffles off the buskin;
A page of Hood may do a fellow good
After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin. [ Lowell ]

You may know by a penny how a shilling spends. [ Proverb ]

Though a lie may be swift, truth overtakes it. [ Italian Proverb ]

You have done your day's work, you may unyoke. [ Proverb ]

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die. [ Young ]

One may say too much even on the best subject. [ Proverb ]

I hope I may tie up my own sack when I please. [ Proverb ]

Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit. [ Proverb ]

He that hath the spices may season as he list. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He that is in a town in May loseth his spring. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

What you keep by you, you may change and mend;
But words once spoken can never be recalled. [ Roscommon ]

Even peace may be purchased at to high a price. [ Franklin ]

We may print, but not stereotype, our opinions. [ Whately ]

That anxious torture may I never feel,
Which doubtful, watches over a wandering heart.
O, who that bitter torment can reveal.
Or tell the pining anguish of that smart! [ Byron ]

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,
Be the skies above or dark or fair,
There is ever a song that our hearts may hear -
There is ever a song somewhere, my dear -
There is ever a song somewhere. [ James Whitcomb Riley ]

Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain-top,
A child may first impel, a giant cannot stop. [ Trench ]

That I might live alone once with my gold!
Oh 't is a sweet companion I kind and true!
A man may trust it, when his father cheats him,
Brother, or friend, or wife. O wondrous pelf.
That which makes all men false, is true itself. [ Jonson ]

And genius hath electric power,
Which earth can never tame;
Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower -
Its flash is still the same. [ Lydia M. Child ]

Never give up! or the burden may sink you,
Providence wisely has mingled the cup;
And in all trials and troubles bethink you,
The watchword of life should be, Never give up! [ M. F. Tupper ]

From a single instance you may infer the whole.

Lip honour costs little, yet may bring in much. [ Proverb ]

May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name.
And glorify what else is damned to fame. [ Richard Savage ]

A shrew profitable, may serve a man reasonable. [ Proverb ]

Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other's burden, in our share of woe. [ Milton ]

Sweet, good night!
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. [ William Shakespeare ]

Stillness accompanied with sound so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give an useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books. [ Cowper ]

One hand may wash the other, but both the face. [ Proverb ]

Stay awhile that we may make an end the sooner. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

In the land of promise a man may die of hunger. [ Dutch Proverb ]

Philip. Madam, a day may sink or save a realm.
Mary. A day may save a heart from breaking too. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

Now the bright Morning-star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose. [ Milton ]

You may be more prodigal of time than of money. [ Mme. Necker ]

Men may become old, but they never become good. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

When gold speaks you may even hold your tongue. [ Proverb ]

Scream as we may at the bad, the good prevails. [ Bartol ]

We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May;
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away. [ R. Southwell ]

He may be trusted with a houseful of millstones. [ Proverb ]

Riches may at any time be left, but not poverty. [ Proverb ]

A good book may be as great a thing as a battle. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

When your name is up you may lie abed till noon. [ Proverb ]

From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains.
Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains;
These first induce him the vile trash to try,
Then lend his name that other men may buy. [ Crabbe ]

As this auspicious day began the race
Of every virtue join'd with every grace;
May you, who own them, welcome its return,
Till excellence, like yours, again is born.
The years we wish, will half your charms impair;
The years we wish the better half will spare;
The victims of your eyes will bleed no more,
But all the beauties of your mind adore. [ Jeffrey ]

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. [ William Shakespeare ]

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar. [ Tennyson ]

Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine.
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience. [ Milton ]

A joyful evening may follow a sorrowful morning. [ Proverb ]

Come what, come may:
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. [ William Shakespeare ]

Long while I sought to what I might compare
Those powerful eyes, which light my dark spirit;
Yet found I nought on earth, to which I dare
Resemble the image of their goodly light.
Not to the sun, for they do shine by night;
Nor to the moon, for they are changed never;
Nor to the stars, for they have purer sight;
Nor to the fire, for they consume not ever;
Nor to the lightning, for they still persevere;
Nor to the diamond, for they are more tender;
Nor unto crystal, for nought may they sever;
Nor unto glass, such baseness might offend her;
Then to the Maker's self the likest be;
Whose light doth lighten all that here we see. [ Spenser ]

He that bites on every weed may light on poison. [ Proverb ]

They may sit in the chair who have malt to sell. [ Proverb ]

What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves.
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. [ Armstrong ]

Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image of the mind!
Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing.
Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring;
But Man alone has skill and power to send
The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend;
'Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise
Ages remote, and nations yet to rise. [ Crabbe ]

A man may say even his pater-noster out of time. [ Proverb ]

One may know by his nose what porridge he loves. [ Proverb ]

Truth may lie in laughter, and wisdom in a jest. [ Dr. W. Smith ]

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Little things blame not: Grace may on them wait.
Cupid is little; but his godhead's great. [ Anon ]

One may tell lies without the danger of the law. [ Proverb ]

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass. [ William Shakespeare ]

In thy heart there is a holy spot,
As 'mid the waste an isle of fount and palm,
Forever green! - the world’s breath enters not.
The passion-tempest may not break its calm,
'Tis thine, all thine. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

Though this may be play to you, 'Tis death to us. [ Roger L'Estrange ]

A man may be young in years and yet old in hours. [ Proverb ]

A spirit may be known from only a single thought. [ Swedenborg ]

What is good in the mouth, may be bad in the maw. [ Proverb ]

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. [ John Howard Payne ]

A tragical plot may produce a comical conclusion. [ Proverb ]

Trust me, that for the instructed, time will come
When they shall meet no object but may teach
Some acceptable lesson to their minds
Of human suffering or human joy.
For them shall all things speak of man. [ Wordsworth ]

He may find fault, but let him mend it if he can. [ Proverb ]

And where we love is home.
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts. [ Holmes ]

A good salad may be the prologue to a bad supper. [ Proverb ]

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. [ Pope ]

Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away?
The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky,
Thou still canst find the color of thy wing.
The hue of May.
Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why,
Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring?
Whither away? [ E. C. Stedman ]

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up. [ Ruskin ]

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]

Boil stones in butter, and you may sip the broth. [ Proverb ]

Though the sore be healed, yet a scar may remain. [ Proverb ]

You may be godly, but you would never be cleanly. [ Proverb ]

You know not what ladle your dish may come under. [ Proverb ]

Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where,
And when, and how thy business may be done,
Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller,
Though he alights sometimes, still goeth on. [ George Herbert ]

Gardener, for telling me these news of woe.
Pray God the plants thou graft'st may never grow. [ Shakespeare ]

What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid within an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us? [ William Shakespeare ]

Where there are boots ready spurs may be wanting. [ Proverb ]

Gold! gold! in all ages the curse of mankind,
Thy fetters are forged for the soul and the mind.
The limbs may be free as the wings of a bird.
And the mind be the slave of a look and a word.
To gain thee men barter eternity's crown,
Yield honour, affection, and lasting renown. [ Park Benjamin ]

Truth may sometimes come out of the devil's mouth. [ Proverb ]

You may dance on the ropes without reading Euclid. [ Proverb ]

Things all are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein ...
Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour. [ George Herbert ]

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow. [ Colton ]

Fools may invent fashions that wise men will wear. [ Proverb ]

Wranglers never want words though they may matter. [ Proverb ]

Wolves may lose their teeth, but not their nature. [ Proverb ]

Knavery may serve a turn, but honesty never fails. [ Proverb ]

Who hath none to still him, may weep out his eyes. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

An apple may happen to be better given than eaten. [ Proverb ]

An opinion may be controverted; a prejudice, never. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. [ Socrates ]

Rashness may conquer, but its not likely it should. [ Proverb ]

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]

She that hath spice enough may season as she likes. [ Proverb ]

Men may second fortune, but they cannot thwart her. [ Machiavelli ]

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy mother's lap. [ Milton ]

Still all great souls still make their own content;
We to ourselves may all our wishes grant;
For, nothing coveting, we nothing want. [ Dryden ]

A physician may not turn his back even on an enemy. [ Gutzkow ]

He that fears not the future may enjoy the present. [ Proverb ]

A child may have too much of its mother's blessing. [ Proverb ]

A good candle-snuffer may come to be a good player. [ Proverb ]

A loyal heart may be landed under traitor's bridge. [ Proverb ]

He that waits for dead men's shoes may go barefoot. [ Proverb ]

Calumny and conjecture may injure innocence itself. [ Proverb ]

Style may be defined, proper words in proper places. [ Swift ]

Slow may that day approach, and long after our time. [ Ovid ]

Men may be ungrateful, but the human race is not so. [ De Boufflers ]

He that has feathered his nest may fly when he will. [ Proverb ]

A man may say too much even on the best of subjects. [ Proverb ]

These wickets of the soul are placed so high,
Because all sounds do highly move aloft;
And that they may not pierce too violently,
They are delay'd with turns and twinings oft.
For should the voice directly strike the brain,
It would astonish and confuse it much;
Therefore these plaits and folds the sound restrain,
That it the organ may more gently touch. [ Sir John Davies ]

Too much care may be as bad as downright negligence. [ Proverb ]

Necessity and opportunity may make a coward valiant. [ Proverb ]

Even beauty may present a prism wearying to the eye. [ Prince de Ligne ]

From what has happened we may infer what may happen.

Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit. [ Willmott ]

Gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell. [ Shakespeare ]

An old cart well used may last out a new one abused. [ Proverb ]

Fiction may be said to be the caricature of history. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Play may be good, but folly can never be of any use. [ Proverb ]

Why may a man not speak the truth in a jocular vein? [ Horace ]

One may understand like an angel and yet be a devil. [ Proverb ]

He that is won with a nut may be lost with an apple. [ Proverb ]

Wise men may look ridiculous in the company of fools. [ Proverb ]

A hare may draw a lion if she have but a golden cord. [ Proverb ]

When the barn's full, you may thresh before the door. [ Proverb ]

At the end of the work, you may judge of the workman. [ Proverb ]

Where a chest lies open a reputed honest man may sin. [ Proverb ]

He that protects an ill man may live to repent of it. [ Proverb ]

A colt you may break, but an old horse you never can. [ Proverb ]

Retreat may be success, -
Delay, best speed, - half loss, at times, whole gain. [ Robert Browning ]

Charity may be mistaken, but shall never be rewarded. [ Proverb ]

A good shift may serve long but cannot serve forever. [ Proverb ]

You may follow him long ere a shilling drop from him. [ Proverb ]

Make haste to an ill way, that you may get out of it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A short prayer may reach up to the Heaven of Heavens. [ Proverb ]

Time past may be repented, but can never be recalled. [ Proverb ]

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for pebbles. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

A man may come to market though he do not buy oysters. [ Proverb ]

Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear. [ William Shakespeare ]

The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken. [ Napoleon ]

You may know by the market-folks, how the market goes. [ Proverb ]

We may despise the world, but we cannot do without it. [ French Proverb ]

What may be done at any time, will be done at no time. [ Proverb ]

Begin nothing without considering what the end may be. [ Lady M. Montague ]

The cause of our grandeur may become that of our ruin. [ Arnault ]

A windy March and a rainy April, make a beautiful May. [ Proverb ]

That which we may live without we need not covet much. [ Proverb ]

They may rail at this life - from the hour I began it,
I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And until they can show me some happier planet.
More social and bright, I'll content me with this. [ Moore ]

That which may fall out at any time may fall out today. [ Proverb ]

Enemies may serve for witnesses as well as friends may. [ Proverb ]

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day. [ A. de Musset ]

We may say his wit shines at the expense of his memory. [ Le Sage ]

One may forgive infidelity, but one does not forget it. [ Mlle. de Lafayette ]

A man may love his house and yet not ride on the ridge. [ Proverb ]

The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he would. [ Spanish Proverb ]

A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools. [ Proverb ]

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Honest men and knaves may possibly wear the same cloth. [ Proverb ]

He that knows what may be gained in a day never steals. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space. [ Beecher ]

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. [ William Shakespeare ]

You may gape long enough ere a bird fly into your mouth. [ Proverb ]

Prayer is the chief thing that man may present unto God. [ Hermes ]

By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may drown a nation. [ Edward Burke ]

He that is a cuckold, and allows it, may be so for ever. [ Proverb ]

They that have good store of butter may lay it on thick. [ Proverb ]

Men may blush to hear what they were not ashamed to act. [ Proverb ]

Business may be troublesome, but idleness is pernicious. [ Proverb ]

O merciful Heaven! may my last season be still a spring! [ Beranger ]

We may be as good as we please, if we please to be good. [ Barrow ]

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

A man may be good in the camp and yet bad in the church. [ Proverb ]

You may believe anything that is good of a grateful man. [ Proverb ]

You may bring up the body for the purpose of prosecution. [ Law Writ ]

Secret mines may take the town, when open battery cannot. [ Proverb ]

You may love your neighbour and yet not hold his stirrup. [ Proverb ]

One may as soon break his neck as his fast at your house. [ Proverb ]

A bird may be caught with a snare, that will not be shot. [ Proverb ]

The sun may do its duty, though your grapes are not ripe. [ Proverb ]

Bad examples may be as profitable to virtue as good ones. [ Montaigne ]

All may have, if they dare try, a glorious life or grave. [ Herbert ]

Let us be silent, so we may hear the whisper of the gods. [ Emerson ]

This and better may do, but this and worse will never do. [ Proverb ]

That which was bitter to endure may be sweet to remember. [ Proverb ]

A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit. [ Victor Hugo ]

The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness. [ Zimmerman ]

As you do to others, you may expect another to do to you. [ Laber ]

He that hath good corn may be content with some thistles. [ Proverb ]

Whoever may
Discern true ends will grow pure enough
To love them, brave enough to strive for them,
And strong enough to reach them, though the road be rough. [ E. B. Browning ]

A fool may chance to put something into a wise man's head. [ Proverb ]

In my dominions every one may be happy in his own fashion. [ Frederick the Great ]

He that wants business may fit out a ship, or take a wife. [ Proverb ]

A countryman may be as warm in kersey as a king in velvet. [ Proverb ]

Good news may be told at any time, but ill in the morning. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

An emmet may work its heart out, but can never make honey. [ Proverb ]

When an ass climbs a ladder, you may find wisdom in women. [ Proverb ]

He that hews above his height, may have chips in his eyes. [ Proverb ]

You may have a good memory but have a confounded judgment. [ Proverb ]

Those who have even studied good books may still be fools. [ Hitopadesa ]

Wounds may heal, but not those that are made by ill words. [ Proverb ]

The highest spoke in fortune's wheel may soon turn lowest. [ Proverb ]

Be silent before a great man, or speak what may please him. [ Proverb ]

Roughness may turn one's humor, but flattery one's stomach. [ Proverb ]

No man can guess in cold blood what he may do in a passion. [ Proverb ]

A fool may make money, but it takes a wise man to spend it. [ Proverb ]

However talkative a woman may be, love teaches her silence. [ Rochebrune ]

A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others. [ La Roche ]

To see may be easy, but to foresee, that is the fine thing. [ Proverb ]

You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar. [ William Shakespeare ]

We must recoil a little, to the end we may leap the better. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A little stream may quench thirst as well as a great river. [ Proverb ]

Who knows what may be slumbering in the background of time! [ Schiller ]

A beggar that is dumb, you know, may challenge double pity. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

You may be a wise man, and yet not know how to make a watch. [ Proverb ]

Greatness may be present in lives whose range is very small. [ Phil. Brooks ]

A man may have a just esteem of himself without being proud. [ Proverb ]

+{Instruction} Seek to, delight, that they may mend mankind.
And, while they captivate, inform the mind. [ Cowper ]

It may be necessary sometimes to hold a candle to the devil. [ Proverb ]

A fool may sometimes have talent, but he never has judgment. [ La Roche ]

A man may lead his horse to water but cannot make him drink. [ Proverb ]

Hate furroweth the brow, and a man may frown till he hateth. [ Tupper ]

There may be such things as old fools and young counsellors. [ Proverb ]

He may very well be contented that need not buy nor flatter. [ Proverb ]

You may keep wool till it is dirt, and flax till it is silk. [ Proverb ]

Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell. [ Beecher ]

You may offer a bribe without fear of having your throat cut. [ Proverb ]

A man may write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. [ Sam'l Johnson ]

The venom of a viperous tongue may be converted into treacle. [ Proverb ]

Were embroidery is wanting, perhaps a patched coat may serve. [ Proverb ]

Childhood may do without a grand purpose, but manhood cannot. [ J. G. Holland ]

Suspicion may be no fault, but shewing it may be a great one. [ Proverb ]

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain to feel much anger. [ George Eliot ]

There is no reputation so clear but a slanderer may stain it. [ Proverb ]

A broken friendship may be soldered, but will never be sound. [ Proverb ]

Let a man be never so wise, he may be caught with sober lies. [ Swift ]

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables. [ Whately ]

Bounty may be bounty, and yet not go a-begging for admittance. [ Proverb ]

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God will never. [ Cowper ]

When the christening is over, you may have godfather's enough. [ Proverb ]

Extreme concupiscence may be found under an extreme austerity. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Nothing is strong that may not be endangered even by the weak. [ Quintus Curtius Rufus ]

A man may be an artist though he have not his tools about him. [ Proverb ]

Give only so much to one that you may have to give to another. [ Danish Proverb ]

He that is fed at another's hand may stay long ere he be full. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none. [ Fielding ]

Perhaps you may have such broth sent you as you will not like. [ Proverb ]

Cleanliness may be defined to be the emblem of purity of mind. [ Addison ]

Whosoever values not his own Life, may be master of another's. [ Proverb ]

He that shews a passion, tells his enemy where he may hit him. [ Proverb ]

The fish may be caught in a net, that will not come to a hook. [ Proverb ]

A little time may be enough to catch a great deal of mischief. [ Proverb ]

Human reason may cure illusions, but it cannot cure sufferings. [ A. de Musset ]

Opposition, may inflame the enthusiast, but never converts him. [ Schiller ]

If you have done no ill the six days, you may play the seventh. [ Proverb ]

Between promising and performing, a man may marry his daughter. [ Proverb ]

Nothing is so strong but may be endangered even by the weakest. [ Rufus ]

He that pries into the clouds may be struck with a thunderbolt. [ Proverb ]

Oh! how seldom the soul is silent, in order that God may speak. [ Fenelon ]

Mouth civility is no great pains, but may turn to good account. [ Proverb ]

Honesty may be dear bought, but can never be a dear pennyworth. [ Proverb ]

He may make a will upon his nail, for any thing he has to give. [ Proverb ]

Honesty may be dear bought, but can ne'er be an ill pennyworth. [ Scotch Proverb ]

The grass may be greener on the other side but it is still grass
An ass may be laden with gold but it is still an ass. [ Unknown ]

We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Some who are eclipsed in the first rank may shine in the second. [ Voltaire ]

No fountain so small but that heaven may be imaged in its bosom. [ Hawthorne ]

Virtue may be overclouded a while, but 'twill shine at the last. [ Proverb ]

He pities not the poor, who relieves them not, when he well may. [ Proverb ]

One man may as much miss the mark by aiming too high as too low. [ Proverb ]

A thing that may not happen in a year may happen in two minutes. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Give where I may sit down, and I will make where I may lie down. [ Spanish Proverb ]

If hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a hero [ Carlyle ]

Promises may get friends, but it is performances that keep them. [ Proverb ]

You may pay for your schooling more than your learning is worth. [ Proverb ]

In doubtful matters, courage may do much, in desperate, patience. [ Proverb ]

Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. [ Whipple ]

Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money. [ Proverb ]

One may surfeit with too much, as well as starve with too little. [ Proverb ]

He who sleeps all the morning may go a begging all the day after. [ Proverb ]

Let us not strive to rise too high, that we may not fall too low. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

And one may say that his wit shines at the expense of his memory. [ Alain Rene Le Sage ]

Fools may ask more in an hour, than wise men can answer in seven. [ Proverb ]

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other. [ Pascal ]

A fool may speer (ask) more questions than a wise man can answer. [ Scotch Proverb ]

You may row your heart out, if the wind and tide set against you. [ Proverb ]

You may give him good advice, but who can give him wit to take it? [ Proverb ]

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent. [ Cicero ]

The chapel is not so little, but the priest may say service in it. [ Proverb ]

The king may bestow offices, but cannot bestow wit to manage them. [ Proverb ]

Between a woman's Yes and No you may insert the point of a needle. [ German Proverb ]

One man may better steal a horse than another look over the hedge. [ Proverb ]

With cost, good pottage may be made out of a leg of a joint stool. [ Proverb ]

He that would have a bad night may injure his conscience that day. [ Proverb ]

We may give more offense by our silence than even by impertinence. [ Hazlitt ]

In times of anarchy one may seem a despot in order to be a saviour. [ Mirabeau ]

He who is the cause of his own misfortunes may bewail them himself. [ Italian Proverb ]

You may go to the court. A writ to remove a case to a higher court. [ Law Term ]

In friendship, we see only the faults which may injure our friends. [ Du Coeur ]

May no good Christian ever see an ugly woman that affects niceness. [ Proverb ]

Oh, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side! [ William Shakespeare ]

May it please God not to make our friends so happy as to forget us. [ Proverb ]

The ruins of a house may be repaired; why cannot those of the face? [ La Fontaine ]

Silence is a good receipt against such faults as may cause offense. [ Proverb ]

If you make your wife a goldfinch, she may prove in time a wagtail. [ Proverb ]

He that sins that he may repent, surfeits that he may take a vomit. [ Proverb ]

An hypocrite pays tribute to God, only that he may impose upon men. [ Proverb ]

If you be angry, you may turn the buckle of your girdle behind you. [ Proverb ]

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid.
Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate. [ Horace Greeley ]

A man may be happy here and hereafter, without much fame or wealth. [ Proverb ]

Who would keep a cow, when he may have a quart of milk for a penny? [ Proverb ]

The eyes are the windows of a woman's heart; you may enter that way! [ Eugene Sue ]

Undipped people may be as good as dipped, if their hearts are clean. [ Ruskin's rendering of the faith of St. Martin ]

No single action creates, however it may exhibit, a man's character. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

You may turn nature out of doors with violence, but she will return. [ Horace ]

Flowers may beckon towards us, but they speak toward heaven and God. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

One may show himself great in good fortune, but exalted only in bad. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

One enemy may do us more harm than a hundred friends can do us good. [ Proverb ]

One may discern an ass shrouded in a lion's skin without spectacles. [ Proverb ]

Much more may a judge overweigh himself in cruelty than in clemency. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Conscience is a sacred sanctuary where God alone may enter as judge. [ Lamennais ]

The wisest man may always learn something from the humblest peasant. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth. [ Cobbett ]

Who knows but that my private watch may go truer than the town-clock? [ Proverb ]

He that would have a bad morning may walk out in a fog after a frost. [ Proverb ]

The king may give the honour, but you are to make thyself honourable. [ Proverb ]

A cat may look at a king, but can it see a king when it looks at him? [ John Ruskin ]

The most chaste woman may be the most voluptuous, if she truly loves. [ Mirabeau ]

Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears. [ Johnson ]

A man of parts may lie hid all his life, unless fortune calls him out. [ Proverb ]

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers may be heaven's distant lamps. [ Longfellow ]

A good principle not rightly understood may prove as hurtful as a bad. [ Milton ]

Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors than from his virtues. [ Longfellow ]

God gives sleep to the bad, in order that the good may be undisturbed. [ Saadi ]

We must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is. [ Chapin ]

Poor men may think well, but rich men may both think well and do well. [ Proverb ]

Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We die that we may die no more. [ Hooker ]

Youth and Will may resist excess, but Nature takes revenge in silence. [ A. de Musset ]

Pleasure may come of illusion, but happiness can only come of reality. [ Chamfort ]

Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

If your luck goes on at this rate, you may very well hope to be hanged. [ Proverb ]

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur. [ Disraeli ]

We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot forgive those whom we bore. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Candor may be considered as a compound of justice and the love of truth. [ T. Abercrombie ]

We will obey the voice of the Lord our God, that it may be well with us. [ Bible ]

No condition so low but may have hopes, none so high but may have fears. [ Proverb ]

Men are less eager for what they may have, than what they cannot obtain. [ Proverb ]

All you'll get by it, you may put into your eyes, and not see the worse. [ Proverb ]

More credit may be thrown down in a moment, than can be built in an age. [ Proverb ]

A man as he manages himself may die old at thirty and a child at eighty. [ Proverb ]

Unjust gains may be sweet in the mouth, but will be bitter in the belly. [ Proverb ]

Ever keep thy promise, cost what it may; this it is to be true as steel. [ Charles Reade ]

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune. [ Shenstone ]

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. [ Thomas Jefferson ]

There should be such gladness and joy in life that all may partake of it. [ Lilian Whiting ]

That may happen in a moment which may not occur again in a hundred years. [ Italian Proverb ]

Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow! [ William Shakespeare ]

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. [ Bible ]

Learn on how little man may live, and how small a portion nature requires. [ Lucan ]

A fool may have his coat embroidered, but it will always be a fool's coat. [ Rivarol ]

No man, be he who he may, but experiences a last happiness and a last day. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

There is no creature so contemptible but by resolution may gain his point. [ L'Estrange ]

Whatever is made by the hand of man, by the hand of man may be overturned. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

War should be so undertaken that nothing but peace may seem to be aimed at. [ Cicero ]

Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. [ William Shakespeare ]

Love labour; for if thou dost not want it for food, thou may'st for physic. [ Wm. Penn ]

Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be. [ Quintilian ]

He speaks home; you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar. [ William Shakespeare ]

That ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. [ Bible ]

Wise men sometimes avoid the world, that they may not be surfeited with it. [ La Bruyere ]

The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore. [ C. N. Bovee ]

One adversary may do us more harm than a great many friends can do us good. [ Proverb ]

O love, when thou gettest dominion over us, we may bid good-by to prudence. [ La Fontaine ]

Such is the constitution of man that labor may be said to be its own reward. [ Dr. Johnson ]

I pray God that I may never find my will again.
Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet. [ Rutherford ]

Faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called weakest. [ Mme. de Staël ]

There is no place invincible, wherein an ass loaden with gold may not enter. [ Collett ]

Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor. [ Sterne ]

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life. [ Lucan ]

We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloyed? [ Colton ]

Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found the best. [ Smiles ]

Dreams cannot picture a world so fair; sorrow and death may not enter there. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

He may rate himself a happy man who lives remote from the gods of this world. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne. [ Landor ]

Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also. [ Cervantes ]

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count never made a man. [ Southern ]

It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. [ Chamfort ]

A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever. [ Zimmermann ]

A father or a brother may be hated zealously, and loved civilly or naturally. [ Milton ]

The head, however strong it may be, can accomplish nothing against the heart. [ Mlle. de Scuderi ]

Such eyes as may have looked from heaven, but never were raised to it before! [ Moore ]

Though fancy may be the patient's complaint, necessity is often the doctor's. [ Zimmermann ]

To praise great actions with sincerity may be said to be taking part in them. [ Rochefoucauld ]

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years. [ Tennyson ]

A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool's coat still. [ Rivarol ]

Genius may at times want the spur, but it stands as often in need of the curb. [ Longinus ]

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. [ Richard Hooker ]

A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them. [ Owen Feltham ]

You may beat the devil into your wife, but you would never bang him out again. [ Proverb ]

The tears of a whore, and the oaths of a bully, may be put in the same bottle. [ Proverb ]

Whatever beauty may be, it has for its basis order, and for its essence unity. [ Father Andre ]

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only that it may fall. [ Seneca ]

Once more for pity, that I may keep the flavor upon my lips till we meet again. [ Dryden ]

One may live as a conquerer, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man. [ Daniel Webster ]

Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day. [ Goethe ]

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. [ Bible ]

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration. [ Hazlitt ]

A slip of the foot may be soon recovered; but that of the tongue perhaps never. [ Proverb ]

I do beseech you - chiefly that I may set it in my prayers - what is your name? [ William Shakespeare ]

A fool may throw a stone into a well, which a hundred wise men cannot pull out. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Care may acquire wealth, which, when acquired, care must guard and worry about. [ Quesnel ]

Not he who has many ideas, but he who has one conviction may become a great man. [ Cötvös ]

Find earth where grows no weed, and you may find a heart wherein no error grows. [ Knowles ]

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendour, can never confer real happiness. [ Scott ]

A lie is like a vizard, that may cover the face indeed, but can never become it. [ South ]

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at and lose by overrunning. [ William Shakespeare ]

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of ages may be preserved by quotation. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she may give birth to one. [ Jean Paul ]

You may bring a horse to the river, but he will drink when and what he pleaseth. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Abstinence is whereby a man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully take. [ Elyot ]

The firmest purpose of a woman's heart to well-timed, artful flattery may yield. [ Lillo ]

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good. [ J. C. Lavater ]

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative, but is the death of poetical invention. [ Shenstone ]

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. [ Schiller ]

Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell Character. [ J. C. Lavater ]

Actions, looks, words, steps from the alphabet by which you may spell characters. [ Lavater ]

Money is a bottomless sea, in which honour, conscience, and truth may be drowned. [ Kazlay ]

No one is allowed to do on his own premises what may injure those of a neighbour. [ Law ]

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy. [ Joubert ]

One may ruin himself by frankness, but one surely dishonors himself by duplicity. [ Vieillard ]

Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face. [ Beecher ]

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom. [ Cicero ]

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. [ Southey ]

There is no book so bad, said the bachelor, but something good may be found in it. [ Cervantes ]

Love may be found in the heart of an anchorite: never in the heart of a libertine. [ E. Legouve ]

Men are like money: we must take them for their value, whatever may be the effigy. [ Mme. Necker ]

Sins may be forgiven through repentance, but no act of wit will ever justify them. [ Sherlock ]

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink. [ Bible ]

There dwelleth in the sinlessness of youth a sweet rebuke that vice may not endure. [ Mrs. Embury ]

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish. [ Dr. Johnson ]

No accidents are so unlucky that the prudent may not draw some advantage from them. [ La Roche ]

Friends are the thermometers by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes. [ Lady Blessington ]

Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship and fidelity may be found. [ Gay ]

Whatever sorrows may be thy doom, bear them with patience, if necessity entail them. [ Homer ]

I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it. [ Thomas Paine ]

God may, by almighty grace, hinder the absolute completion of sin in final obduracy. [ South ]

Women, like men, may be persuaded to confess their faults; but their follies, never. [ Alfred de Musset ]

Everything in the world may be endured, except only a succession of prosperous days. [ Goethe ]

He who does evil that good may come pays a toll to the devil to let him into heaven. [ Hare ]

Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged. [ Horace Walpole ]

May we be satisfied with nothing that shall not have in it something of immortality. [ H. W. Beecher ]

He that sets his net betimes, may expect a fuller draught than he that fishes later. [ Proverb ]

In all you write be neither low nor vile: The meanest theme may have a proper style. [ Dryden ]

I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history. [ John Foster ]

However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species. [ Seneca ]

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once. [ Rousseau ]

He whose pride oppresses the humble may perhaps be humbled, but will never be humble. [ Lavater ]

He that gives himself leave to play with his neighbour's fame, may soon play it away. [ Proverb ]

Wars should be undertaken in order that we may live in peace without suffering wrong. [ Cicero ]

When an old man will not drink, you may safely promise him a visit in the next world. [ Proverb ]

A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow. [ Lowell ]

Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is. [ John Selden ]

For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I'll gild it' with the happiest terms I have. [ William Shakespeare ]

Anger may glance into the breast of a wise man, but rests only in the bosoms of fools. [ Proverb ]

Mend your clothes and you may hold out this year." Press a stick and it seems a youth. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Hell is both sides of the tomb, and a, devil may be respectable and wear good clothes. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

An affectionate mother wishes that her offspring may be wiser and better than herself. [ Horace ]

Hatred itself may be a praiseworthy emotion if provoked in us by a lively love of good. [ Joubert ]

Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs. [ Sir J. Stephen ]

If we love one another, nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

That happiness may enter the soul, we must first sweep it clean of all imaginary evils. [ Fontanelle ]

A charmed life old goodness hath; the tares may perish, but the grain is not for death. [ Whittier ]

Born of God, attach thyself to Him, as a plant to its root, that ye may not be withered. [ Demophilus ]

Fortune's wings are made of Time's feathers, which stay not whilst one may measure them. [ Lilly ]

I have hope that society may be reformed, when I see how much education may be reformed. [ Leibnitz ]

Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]

Knowledge is the hill which few; may hope to climb; duty is the path that all may tread. [ Lewis Morris ]

The wise man will commit no business of importance to a proxy when he may do it himself. [ L'Estrange ]

Press on! - for in the grave there is no work And no device - Press on! while yet ye may! [ N. P. Willis ]

A wound may, perhaps, through time be closed, but, when fresh, it shrinks from the touch. [ Ovid ]

A man may as well expect to be well, and at ease without wealth, as happy without virtue. [ Proverb ]

To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may. [ Henry Ward Beechen ]

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it [ Carlyle ]

A stern discipline pervades all Nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind. [ Spenser ]

Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty. [ Lowell ]

He that is ungrateful has no guilt but one; all other crimes may pass for virtues in him. [ Young ]

He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center, and enjoy bright day. [ Milton ]

When I am dead, may earth be mingled with fire! Ay, said Nero, and while I am living, too. [ From a Greek Tragedian ]

Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason. [ William Penn ]

Do thoroughly whatever work God may give you to do, and cultivate all your talents besides. [ Archibald A. Hodge ]

Ye may trace my step over the wakening earth by the winds which tell of the violet's birth. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

Nature cannot but always act rightly, quite unconcerned as to what may be the consequences. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigor to resolution. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, wealth may seek us; but wisdom must be sought. [ Young ]

By diligent and laborious examination of things past, we may easily foresee things to come. [ King ]

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles. [ Latena ]

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present. [ Miss Edgeworth ]

Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie, but that which warmed it once shall never die. [ Campbell ]

You may be liberal in your praise where praise is due: it costs nothing; it encourages much. [ Horace Mann ]

He that lets his fish escape into the water, may cast his net often yet never catch it again. [ Proverb ]

Inflict not on an enemy every injury in your power, for he may afterwards become your friend. [ Saadi ]

Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. [ William Shakespeare ]

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be. [ Hare ]

We cannot let our angels go; we do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. [ Emerson ]

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Whatever government is not a government of laws is a despotism, let it be called what it may. [ Daniel Webster ]

Night comes, that another morning, with all its glory and freshness, may dawn upon the earth. [ Fanny Fern ]

Wrinkles of the face may be successfully hidden by art; not so with the wrinkles of the heart. [ Mme. Dufresnoy ]

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline. [ Seneca ]

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy. [ L'Estrange ]

Nature had made occupation a necessity; society makes it a duty; habit may make it a pleasure. [ Capelle ]

A friend that you have to buy won't be worth what you pay for him, no matter what that may be. [ George D. Prentice ]

The mind ought sometimes to be amused, that it may the better return to thought, and to itself. [ Phaedrus ]

Thought in the mind may come forth gold or dross; when coined in words, we know its real worth. [ Young ]

Wise sayings are as saltpits; you may extract salt out of them, and sprinkle it where you will. [ Cicero ]

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries. [ Bishop Berkeley ]

The good-finder (if such a barbaric sounding word may be used), is thankful for whatever comes. [ Ossian Lang ]

Nobody knows who may be listening; say nothing which you would not wish put in the daily paper. [ Spurgeon ]

Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath. [ Thomas Fuller ]

May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers. [ Themistocles ]

The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found. [ Bovee ]

A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories. [ George Eliot ]

Reckon no vice so small that you may commit it, and no virtue so small that you may overlook it. [ Confucius ]

Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture. [ Goldsmith ]

The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit. [ L'Estrange ]

The greatest misfortune one can wish his enemy is that he may love without being loved in return. [ Labouisse ]

The quivering flesh, though torture-torn, may live, but souls, once deeply wounded, heal no more. [ Ebenezer Elliott ]

That a country may be truly free, the people should be all philosophers, and the rulers all gods. [ Napoleon I ]

However virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure. [ Prince de Ligne ]

Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth. [ George Bancroft ]

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world. [ Carlyle ]

Free people, remember this rule: you may acquire liberty, but never regain it if you once lose it. [ Rousseau ]

The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture. [ Sterne ]

May-flowers blooming around him. Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all. [ Johnsoniana ]

The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness. [ Joubert ]

God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again. [ South ]

When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass. [ Steele ]

Few people are wise enough to prefer censure which may be useful, to flattery which may betray them. [ La Roche ]

Gratitude which consists in good wishes may be said to be dead, as faith without good works is dead. [ Cervantes ]

I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him. [ Goethe ]

We perfectly know what is good, and what is evil, and may be as certain in morals as in mathematics. [ Proverb ]

The general of a large army may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined will of a peasant. [ Confucius ]

Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed. [ Colton ]

There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something. [ La Bruyere ]

Suns may set and rise; we, when our short day is closed, must sleep on during one never-ending night. [ Catullus ]

The cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile, though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while. [ Moore ]

If a man can play the true logician, and have judgment as well as invention, he may do great matters. [ Lord Bacon ]

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king. [ Theodore Parker ]

Men may say of marriage and women what they please: they will renounce neither the one nor the other.

The moment past is no longer: the future may never be: the present is all of which man is the master. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field. [ Lowell ]

The angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. [ John Bright ]

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes the object may be. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our character. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water. [ Cervantes ]

No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to love, for then God has her by the hand. [ J. M. Barrie ]

Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

Do good to your friend, that he may be more wholly yours; to your enemy, that he may become your friend. [ Cleobulus ]

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 ]

The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will reappear. [ Carlyle ]

Learn now of the treachery of the Greeks, and from one example the character of the nation may be known. [ Virgil ]

Be not too familiar with thy servants; at first it may beget love, but in the end it will breed contempt. [ Fuller ]

Infirmity and sickness may excite our pity; but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health. [ Rousseau ]

Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament. [ Sterne ]

Individuals may deceive and be deceived; no one has deceived every one, and every one has deceived no one. [ Bonhours ]

To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the sear of it will remain. [ Sadi ]

Love is a malicious blind boy, who seeks to blind the eyes of his guide, that both may go astray together.

No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. [ John Ruskin ]

A blemish may be removed from a diamond by careful polishing, but evil words once spoken cannot be effaced. [ Confucius ]

We must endure our doom as easily as may be, knowing as we do, that the power of necessity is irresistible. [ Aeschylus ]

Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings. [ Kant ]

No man has a claim to credit upon his own word, when better evidence, if he had it, may be easily produced. [ Johnson ]

Every alphabet now in use may be traced with historical certainty to one original, the Phoenician or Syriac. [ Chatfield ]

Who can speak broader than he that has no house to put his head in? - Such may rail against great buildings. [ William Shakespeare ]

We cannot all serve our country in the same way, but each may do his best, according as God has endowed him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein. [ Beecher ]

It is a blessing to be fair, yet such a blessing as if the soul answer not to the face, may lead to a curse. [ Bishop Hall ]

Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are only to be fixed by those that are real. [ De Moy ]

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship. [ Thoreau ]

Man's conviction should be strong, and so well timed that worldly advantages may seem to have no share in it. [ Addison ]

Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be. Custom will render it easy and agreeable. [ Pythagoras ]

As much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it. [ Emerson ]

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy. [ Motherwell ]

Luxury possibly may contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor. [ H. Home ]

Much in the world may be done by severity, more by love, but most of all by discernment and impartial justice. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Every trait of beauty may be traced to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, and heroism. [ St. Pierre ]

Mild May's eldest child, the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. [ Keats ]

Give me flattery - flattery, the food of courts, that I may rock him, and lull him in the down of his desires. [ Beaumont ]

Every day is a rampart breach which many men are storming; fall in it who may, no pile is forming of the slain. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Natural intelligence may make up almost every step in culture, but no culture make up for natural intelligence. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Happiness is a sunbeam, which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Wisdom consists not in seeing what is directly before us, but in discerning those things which may come to pass. [ Terence ]

We may neglect the wrongs which we receive, but be careful to rectify those which we are the cause of to others. [ Dewey ]

Haste me to know it; that I with wings as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. [ William Shakespeare ]

Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are not to be fixed but by those which are real. [ De Moy ]

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination. [ Dr. I. Watts ]

Stern is the on-look of necessity. Not without a shudder may the hand of man grasp the mysterious urn of destiny. [ Schiller ]

The temper of the pedagogue suits not with the age; and the world, however it may be taught, will not be tutored. [ Shaftesbury ]

Life was never a May-game for men; not play at all, but hard work, that makes the sinews sore and the heart sore. [ Carlyle ]

Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from beings felt, may prevent them from being shown. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. [ William Shakespeare ]

I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men. [ Virgil ]

It is by no means improbable that the national character of human societies may be modified by their favorite diet. [ Chatfield ]

Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. [ William Shakespeare ]

Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a death-bed repentance is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all upon. [ Sterne ]

Marble, pearl, rose, dove, all may disappear: the pearl melts, the marble breaks, the rose fades, the bird escapes. [ T. Gautier ]

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunders. [ Mme. de Stael ]

I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts. [ Dryden ]

Live up to the best that is in you: live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercyseat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys. [ T. L. Cuyler ]

Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be found more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy in palaces. [ Horace ]

Life was spread as a banquet for pure, noble, unperverted natures, and may be such to them, ought to be such to them. [ W. R. Greg ]

The loss of a friend is like that of a limb. Time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired. [ Southey ]

Great revolutions, whatever may be their causes, are not lightly commenced, and are not concluded with precipitation. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Why, at this rate, a fellow that has but a groat in his pocket may have a stomach capable of a ten-shilling ordinary. [ Congreve ]

The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrow we have undergone. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men. [ Langford ]

So long as people are subject to disease and death, they will run after physicians, however much they may deride them. [ La Bruyere ]

An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. [ Colton ]

He who commits a wrong will himself inevitably see the writing on the wall, though the world may not count him guilty. [ Tupper ]

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. [ Dickens ]

The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven. [ Lavater ]

To attack vices in the abstract without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. [ Junius ]

Man may go from aversion to love; but, when he has begun by loving, and has reached aversion, he never returns to love. [ Balzac ]

All the thinking in the world does not bring us to thought; we must be right by nature, so that good thoughts may come. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Do not weep, my dear lady! Your tears are too precious to shed for me; bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. [ Sterne ]

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ! [ Plato ]

You may set it down as a truth, which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

That two men may be real friends, they must have opposite opinions, similar principles, and different loves and hatreds. [ Chateaubriand ]

Flints may be melted - we see it daily - but an ungrateful heart cannot; no, not by the strongest and the noblest flame. [ South ]

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream - it may be so the moment after death. [ Hawthorne ]

When you give, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give. [ Henry Taylor ]

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its Cause. [ Beecher ]

The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him. [ Sterne ]

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. [ Swift ]

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. [ Ben Jonson ]

There is but one solid basis of happiness, and that is the reasonable hope of a happy futurity. This may be had everywhere. [ Johnson ]

Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended. [ Thackeray ]

A man of genius may sometimes suffer a miserable sterility; but at other times he will feel himself the magician of thought. [ John Foster ]

Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy. [ Seneca ]

There is no tomorrow; though before our face the shadow named so stretches, we always fail to overtake it, hasten as we may. [ Margaret J. Preston ]

As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil. [ Dr. Johnson ]

It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many. [ Swift ]

A woman who plays with the love of a loyal man is a curse; she may close his heart forever against all confidence in her sex.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye, that we may always advance towards it. though we know it can never be reached. [ Dr. Johnson ]

All day the rain bathed the dark hyacinths in vain; the flood may pour from morn till night, nor wash the pretty Indian white. [ Hafiz ]

Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything. [ Colton ]

Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk, and truth the root. [ Colton ]

There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them, - by laying them out in charity. [ Tillotson ]

But Christian faith knows that wealth means responsibility, and that responsibility may come to mean only heavy arrears of sin. [ H. P. Liddon ]

Forbear to inquire, thou mayst not know, Leuconoë, for you may not know what the gods have appointed either for you or for me. [ Horace ]

No man is justified in resisting by word or deed the authority he lives under for a light cause, be such authority what it may. [ Carlyle ]

He that would reckon up all the accidents preferments depend upon, may as well undertake to count the sands or sun up infinity. [ South ]

One can never know at the first moment what may, at a future time, separate itself from the rough experience as true substance. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

And when no longer we can see Thee, may we reach out our hands, and find Thee leading us through death to immortality and glory. [ H. W. Beecher ]

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 ]

When worthy men fall out, only one of them may be faulty at the first; but if strife continue long, commonly both become guilty. [ Fuller ]

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology. [ Hare ]

A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love. [ Shenstone ]

Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust. [ George Washington ]

That a liaison between a man and a woman may be truly interesting, there must be between them enjoyment, remembrance, or desire. [ Chamfort ]

God sometimes washes the eyes of His children with tears in order that they may read aright His providence and His commandments. [ T. L. Cuyller ]

Resolution is the youngest and dearest daughter of Destiny, and may win from the fond mother almost any favor she chooses to ask. [ Lowell ]

An aged Christian with the snow of time on his head may remind us that those points of earth are whitest that are nearest heaven. [ E. H. Cbapin ]

Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own. [ John Dryden ]

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are characters decidedly bad. [ Callenberg ]

There is nothing so small but that we may honour God by asking his guidance of it, or insult him by taking it into our own hands. [ John Ruskin ]

Houses are built to live in more than to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. [ Bacon ]

Sir Amyas Pawlet, when he saw too much haste made in any matter, was wont to say, Stay awhile, that we may make an end the sooner. [ Bacon ]

Of many imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Mediocre people fear exaltation for the harm that may result from it; though it is something that can not be communicated to them. [ Mme. de Krudener ]

Never hunt trouble. However dead a shot one may be, the gun he carries on such expeditions is sure to kick, or go off half-cocked. [ Artemus Ward ]

Some kind of pace may be got out of the veriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the thoroughbred has the spur in his blood. [ Lowell ]

Man is at bottom a savage animal and an object of dread, as we may see (it is added) he still is when emancipated from all control. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time. [ Horace Mann ]

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings. [ Addison ]

You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill. [ Sir W. Temple ]

Something of a person's character may be discovered by observing when and how he smiles. Some people never smile; they merely grin. [ Bovee ]

True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself - if I may be allowed the expression - than to itself. [ Greville ]

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to what our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. [ Gibbon ]

Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself: for every guilty person is his own hangman. [ Seneca ]

A look of intelligence in men is what regularity of features is in women; it is a style of beauty to which the most vain may aspire. [ La Bruyere ]

Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well established authors. [ Whately ]

In the mind, as in a field, though some things may be sown and carefully brought up, yet what springs naturally is the most pleasing. [ Tac ]

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 ]

Obedience, we may remember, is a part of religion, and therefore an element of peace; but love which includes obedience is the whole. [ George Sewell ]

The prejudices of men emanate from the mind, and may be overcome; the prejudices of women emanate from the heart, and are impregnable.

I consider your very testy and quarrelsome people in the same light as I do a loaded gun, which may, by accident, go off and kill one. [ William Shenstone ]

Tendency to sentimental whining or fierce intolerance may be ranked among the surest symptoms of little souls and inferior intellects. [ Jeffrey ]

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing. [ Chapin ]

There may come a day when there shall be no more curse; in the meantime you must be humble and honest enough to take your share of it. [ John Ruskin ]

When a woman pronounces the name of a man but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to the nature of her sentiments; but three times! [ Balzac ]

Riches should be admitted into our houses, but not into our hearts; we may take them into our possession, but toot into our affections. [ Charron ]

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind without cultivation can never produce good fruit. [ Seneca ]

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action. [ Hare ]

A book may be compared to the life of your neighbor; if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early. [ Brooke ]

Rules may teach us not to raise the arms above the head; but if passion carries them, it will be well done; passion knows more than art. [ Baron ]

He that does not know those things which are of use and necessity for him to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever he may know besides. [ Tillotson ]

The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it, and this in either case is equally incurable. [ Fielding ]

No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning. [ Addison ]

Mathematics does not exercise the judgment, and if too exclusively pursued, may leave the student very ill qualified for moral reasoning. [ R. Whately ]

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exert herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may have another by a defeat. [ Colton ]

You may fail to shine, in the opinion of others, both in your conversation and actions, from being superior, as well as inferior to them. [ Greville ]

Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one. [ Feltham ]

The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy. [ Moliere ]

It takes an age to build a city, but an hour involves it in ruin. A forest is long in growing, but in a moment it may be reduced to ashes. [ Seneca ]

Eloquence may be found in conversation and all kinds of writings; it is rarely where we seek it, and sometimes where it is least expected. [ La Bruyere ]

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 ]

No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. [ Selden ]

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 ]

Time is given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it. [ Fenelon ]

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. [ Nathaniel Hawthorne ]

Truth should be strenuous and bold; but the strongest things are not always the noisiest, as any one may see who compares scolding with logic. [ Chapin ]

We are told to walk noiselessly through the world, that we may waken neither hatred nor envy; but, alas! what can we do when they never sleep! [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Thoughts take up no room. When they are right, they afford a portable pleasure, which one may travel with, without any trouble or encumbrance. [ Jeremy Collier ]

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 ]

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop-window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within. [ Spurgeon ]

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 ]

Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after. [ Landor ]

There may be some tenderness, in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart. [ Richard Alleine ]

Give, and you may keep your friend if you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man may have authority over others, but he can never have their heart but by giving his own. [ Thomas Wilson ]

Never shrink from doing anything which your business calls you to do. The man who is above his business may one day find his business above him. [ Drew ]

Steal! to be sure they may, and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, - disfigure them to make them pass for their own. [ Sheridan ]

We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people. [ Chamfort ]

It may serve as a comfort to us in all our calamities and afflictions that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss. [ L'Estrange ]

Artists may produce excellent designs, but they will avail little, unless the taste of the public is sufficiently cultivated to appreciate them. [ George C. Mason ]

Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction. [ Jonson ]

With temperance, health, cheerfulness, friends, a chosen task, one pays the cheapest fees for living, and may well dispense with other physicians. [ A. B. Alcott ]

Whatever difference there may appear to be in men's fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal. [ Charron ]

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 ]

Oppose kindness to perverseness. The heavy sword will not cut soft silk; by using sweet words and gentleness you may lead an elephant with a hair. [ Saadi ]

Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts. [ Zimmermann ]

What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may? [ Thackeray ]

Fame may be compared to a scold; the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet. [ Fuller ]

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities. [ Colton ]

It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one; a great deal may arouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure. [ Lord Greville ]

Words may be counterfeit, false coined, and current only from the tongue, without the mind; but passion is in the soul, and always speaks the heart. [ Southern ]

Whatever distrust we may have of the sincerity of those who converse with us, we always believe they will tell us more truth than they do to others. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge; it may be a development of the logical or other handicraft faculty, but is no culture of the soul of a man. [ Carlyle ]

When the tongue is the weapon, a man may strike where he cannot reach; and a word shall do execution both further and deeper than the mightiest blow. [ South ]

The fate of a man of feeling is, like that of a tuft of flowers, twofold; he may either mount upon the head of all, or go to decay in the wilderness. [ Hitopadesa ]

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it doth singe yourself. We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning. [ William Shakespeare ]

In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. [ Barrow ]

Literature positively has other aims than this of amusing from hour to hour; nay, perhaps this, glorious as it may be, is not its highest or true aim. [ Carlyle ]

These two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together, - manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance. [ Wordsworth ]

Invective may be a sharp weapon, but overuse blunts its edge. Even when the denunciation is just and true it is an error of art to indulge it too long. [ Tyndall ]

To him whose soul is more than ordinarily divine, and who has the gift of uttering lofty thoughts, you may justly concede the honourable title of poet. [ Horace ]

Books produce the same effect on the mind that diet does on the body; they may either impart no salutary nutriment, or convey that which is pernicious. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]

The reputation of a woman may also be compared to a mirror of crystal, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it. [ Cervantes ]

Error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one from which we must first erase. [ Colton ]

O youth! ephemeral song, eternal canticle! The world may end, the heavens fall, yet loving voices would still find an echo in the ruins of the universe! [ Jules Janin ]

Even out of a cloudless heaven the flaming thunderbolt may strike; therefore in thy days of joy have a fear of the spiteful neighbourhood of misfortune. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Men of humor are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

Science is an ocean. It is as open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. [ Bulwer Lytton ]

We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality. [ Joubert ]

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 ]

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that it may be said to possess him. [ Bacon ]

As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food. [ Dr. I. Watts ]

Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

Literature, as a field for glory, is an arena where a tomb may be more easily found than laurels; as a means of support, it is the very chance of chances. [ H. Giles ]

A man or a woman may be highly irritable, and yet be sweet, tender, gentle, loving, sociable, kind, charitable, thoughtful for others, unselfish, generous. [ Charles Buxton ]

Rejected lovers need never despair! There are four and twenty hours in a day, and not a moment in the twenty-four in which a woman may not change her mind. [ De Finod ]

The friendship I have conceived will not be impaired by absence; but it may be no unpleasing circumstance to brighten the chain by a renewal of the covenant. [ George Washington ]

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much; but what in these dull, unimaginative days are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the liver! [ Carlyle ]

Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance. [ Landor ]

I do not believe in luck in war, any more than in luck in business. Luck is a small matter; may affect a battle or a movement, but not a campaign or a career. [ U. S. Grant ]

There may be as much courage displayed in enduring with resignation the sufferings of the soul, as in remaining firm under the showers of shot from a battery. [ Napoleon I ]

We may have the confidence of another without possessing his heart. If his heart be ours, there is no need of revelation or of confidence, - all is open to us. [ Du Coeur ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have leisure and a quiet mind. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Mountains never shake hands.
Their roots may touch; they may keep together some way up; but at length they part company, and rise into individual, insulated peaks. So is it with great men. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

In order that a love-letter may be what it should be, one should begin it without knowing what he is going to say, and end it without knowing what he has said. [ Raison ]

A true friend is distinguished in the crisis of hazard and necessity; when the gallantry of his aid may show the worth of his soul and the loyalty of his heart. [ Ennius ]

O Love! when thou findest thy true apostles on earth united in kisses, thou commandest their eyelids to close like veils, that they may not see their happiness! [ A. de Musset ]

He that loves reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform. [ William Godwin ]

That man is an ill husband of his honour that entereth into any action, the failing wherein may disgrace him more than the carrying of it through can honour him. [ Bacon ]

Our illusions fall one after the other like the parings of fruit: the fruit is experience; its savor may be bitter, still it contains something that strengthens. [ G. de Nerval ]

We may hold it slavish to dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs; but are we not ourselves both when we are singular in our attire? [ Chatfield ]

In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people. [ Beaconsfield ]

As whole caravans may light their lamps from one candle without exhausting it, so myriads of tribes may gain wisdom from the great Book without impoverishing it. [ Rabbi Ben Azai ]

Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due contemplation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty. [ Boyle ]

We derive from nature no fault that may not become a virtue, no virtue that may not degenerate into a fault. Faults of the latter kind are most difficult to cure. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Take all reasonable advantage of that which the present may offer you. It is the only time which is ours. Yesterday is buried forever, and tomorrow we may never see. [ Victor Hugo ]

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon. [ Coleridge ]

Seek not proud riches, but such as thou may'st get justly use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly; yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them. [ Bacon ]

The way out of our narrowness may not be so easy as the way in. The weasel that creeps into the corn-bin has to starve himself before he can leave by the same passage. [ Bartol ]

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as tbey ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were. [ Cervantes ]

Superstition is in its death-lair; the last agonies may endure for decades or for centuries; but it carries the iron in its heart, and will not vex the earth any more. [ Carlyle ]

All the makers of dictionaries, all the compilers of opinions already printed, we may term plagiarists, but honest plagiarists, who arrogate not the merit of invention. [ Voltaire ]

Speak with contempt of no man. Every one hath a tender sense of reputation. And every man hath a sting, which he may, if provoked too far, dart out at one time or other. [ Burton ]

It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. [ Sterne ]

Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul; that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love; and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. [ William Ellery Channing ]

The fool maintains an error with the assurance of a man who can never be mistaken: the sensible man defends a truth with the circumspection of a man who may be mistaken. [ De Bruix ]

Busy not yourself in looking forward to the events of tomorrow; but whatever may be those of the days Providence may yet assign you neglect not to turn them to advantage. [ Horace ]

Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty. [ Shenstone ]

Truth may work mightily though in the hand of the sorriest instrument; in the case of the beautiful alone the casket constitutes the jewel (the vessel makes the content). [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. He who is endowed with it may perform very good or very bad actions; all depends upon the principles which direct him. [ Napoleon ]

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end. [ Colton ]

Opportunity has hair in front; behind she is bald. If you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her; but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again. [ Seneca ]

Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. [ Bacon ]

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion. [ Henry Home ]

Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow. [ Buddha ]

To the diamond is attributed the virtue of the talisman, and it is even said that he who wears the stone is always assured of victory, however numerous his enemies may be. [ Garcias ab Horto ]

Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer. [ Feltham ]

Those who are too idle to read, save for the purpose of amusement, may in these works acquire some acquaintance with history, which, however inaccurate, is better than none. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

We content ourselves to present to thinking minds the original seeds from whence spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged. [ Chevalier Ramsay ]

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination. [ Dr. Johnson ]

A grave aspect to a grave character is of much more consequence than the world is generally aware of; a barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry. [ Fielding ]

No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be. [ Landor ]

For the first time, the best may err, art may persuade, and novelty spread out its charms. The first fault is the child of simplicity; but every other the offspring of guilt. [ Goldsmith ]

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman, I care not what his stamp may be in society; I care not what clothes be wears, or what culture he boasts. [ Chapin ]

Genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot keep pace with its evolutions. [ Holmes ]

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is the noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest. [ Confucius ]

Genius, without religion, is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in. darkness. [ Hannah More ]

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin. [ Lowell ]

We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of our Freethinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned. [ Carlyle ]

As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works. [ Bishop Hall ]

A man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach, either of real good breeding or good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute points of fashionable etiquette. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far-reaching, while the former is altogether wanting. [ Joubert ]

Superstition is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars in the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. [ Carlyle ]

Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment. [ H. T. Tuckerman ]

Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. [ Washington Irving ]

Literature is a mere step to knowledge; and the error often lies in our identifying one with the other. Literature may, perhaps, make us vain; true knowledge must make us humble. [ Mrs. John Sanford ]

Extremes touch: he who wants no favors from Fortune may be said to have obtained the very greatest that she can bestow, in realizing an independence which no changes can diminish. [ Chatfield ]

A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

The female heart is just like a new india-rubber shoe; you may pull and pull at it till it stretches out a yard long; and then let go, and it will fly right back to its old shape. [ Judge Haliburton ]

Oratory may be symbolized by a warrior's eye, flashing from under a philosopher's brow. But why a warrior's eye rather than a poet's? Because in oratory the will must predominate. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness. [ Pliny the Elder ]

Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords. [ Rousseau ]

The passage of Providence lies through many crooked ways; a despairing heart is the true prophet of approaching evil; his actions may weave the webs of fortune, but not break them. [ Quarles ]

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. [ Hamerton ]

To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim.

Every man may be, and at some time is, lifted to a platform whence he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth, and in that mood he strings words like beads upon his thought. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

There is but one case wherein a man may commend himself with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another, especially if it be such a virtue whereunto himself pretendeth. [ Bacon ]

All the good things of this world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and whatever we may heap up to give to others, we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more. [ De Foe ]

Wickedness may well be compared to a bottomless pit, into which it is easier to keep one's self from falling, then, being fallen, to give one's self any stay from falling infinitely. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp - gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station. [ Colton ]

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace, or after ages of conflict and war; but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred. [ Edward Everett ]

Other blessings may be taken away, but if we have acquired a good friend by goodness, we have a blessing which improves in value when others fail. It is even heightened by sufferings. [ William Ellery Channing ]

In oratory, affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. [ Lord Herbert ]

It may be remarked for the comfort of honest poverty that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow in a barren soil. [ Hughes ]

He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die. [ Owen Feltham ]

My principal method for defeating error and heresy is by establishing the truth. One purposes to fill a bushel with tares, but if I can fill it first with wheat, I may defy his attempts. [ Newton ]

Mountains never shake hands. Their roots may touch; they may keep company some way up; but at length they part company, and rise into individual, isolated peaks. So it is with great men. [ Hare ]

It may be laid down as a general rule that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only a second place. [ Fielding ]

Life may as properly be called an art as any other, and the great incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than the severest members of a fine statue or a noble poem. [ Fielding ]

Haste turns usually upon a matter of ten minutes too late, and may be avoided by a habit like that of Lord Nelson, to which he ascribed his success in life, of being ten minutes too early. [ Bovee ]

Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. [ Tuckerman ]

We may deserve grief; but why should women be unhappy? - except that we know heaven chastens those whom it loves best, being pleased by repeated trials to make these pure spirits more pure. [ Thackeray ]

I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narration; grow weary of preparation and connection and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But unlike other tombs, it is enlarged by repletion and strengthened by age. [ Colton ]

Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions. [ Colton ]

No man can force the harp of his own individuality into the people's heart; but every man may play upon the chords of the people's heart, who draws his inspiration from the people's instinct. [ Kossuth ]

A good name is properly that reputation of virtue that every man may challenge as his right and due in the opinions of others, till he has made forfeit of it by the viciousness of his actions. [ South ]

Men with gray eyes are generally keen, energetic, and at first cold; but you may depend upon their sympathy with real sorrow. Search the ranks of our benevolent men and you will agree with me. [ Dr. Leask ]

Poverty breeds wealth; and wealth in its turn breeds poverty. The earth, to form the mould, is taken out of the ditch; and whatever may be the height of the one will be the depth of the other. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

Receive with a thankful hand every hour that God may have granted you, and defer not the comforts of life to another year; that in whatever place you are, you may say you have lived agreeably. [ Horace ]

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 ]

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 ]

All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union. and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another. [ Cicero ]

Men are what their mothers made them; you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, wiry it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber. [ R. W. Emerson ]

He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations. [ La Bruyere ]

The tongue tells the thought of one man only, whereas the face expresses a thought of nature itself; so that every one is worth attentive observation, even though every one may not be worth talking to. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb. [ Dr. Johnson ]

It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. [ Hume ]

When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted. [ Colton ]

Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenhoeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer. [ Colton ]

Valor and power may gain a lasting memory, but where are they when the brave and mighty are departed? Their effects may remain, but they live not in them any more than the fire in the work of the potter. [ Hartley Coleridge ]

What is grief? It is an obscure labyrinth into which God leads man, that he may be experienced in life, that he may remember his faults and abjure them, that he may appreciate the calm which virtue gives. [ Leopold Scheffer ]

Gold is called the bait of sin, the snare of souls, and the hook of death; which being aptly applied may be compared to a fire, whereof a little is good to warm one, but too much will burn him altogether. [ Sir R. Filmer ]

Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making. [ Sydney Smith ]

She was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood; at the age when, if ever angels be for God's good purpose enthroned in mortal form, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers. [ Dickens ]

The greatest chastisement that a man may receive who hath outraged another, is to have done the outrage; and there is no man who is so rudely punished as he that is subject to the whip of his own repentance. [ Seneca ]

The great moments of life are but moments like others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak. [ Thackeray ]

Delusive ideas are the motives of the greatest part of mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are incited. The world in the eye of a philosopher may be said to be a large madhouse. [ Mackenzie ]

The two most precious things on this side the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. [ Colton ]

To see each other, to profess to love each other, to prove it, to quarrel, to hate, then to separate, that one may seek a new love: this is the history of a moment, and of every day in the comedy of the world. [ De Varennes ]

However powerful one may be, whether one laughs or weeps, none can make thee speak, none can open thy hand before the time, O mute phantom, our shadow! specter always masked, ever at our side, called Tomorrow. [ Victor Hugo ]

That constant desire of pleasing, which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this, that it scarcely ever fails of attaining its ends, when not disgraced by affectation. [ Fielding ]

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips though they cannot speak. [ Thackeray ]

When God will educate a man, he compels him to learn bitter lessons; He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations. [ Celia Burleigh ]

No receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. [ Bacon ]

An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman. [ Addison ]

No man is so foolish but he may give another good counsel sometimes, and no man so wise but he may easily err, if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that was taught only by himself had a fool for a master. [ Ben Jonson ]

In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this. [ Mark Twain, from The Story Of A Speech ]

In public affairs, we may usually infer the weakness of the cause by the excessive price that ministers have freely paid to those whose eloquence, or whose sophistry, has enabled them to make that weakness triumph. [ Colton ]

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. Rut to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. [ Hume ]

To know by rote is no knowledge: it is only a retention of what is intrusted to the memory. That which a man truly knows may be disposed of without regard to the author, or reference to the book from whence he had it. [ Montaigne ]

Of all varieties of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Title, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid. [ Burton ]

Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. [ Carlyle ]

Friendship may outlive love and its passions; for instances have not unfrequently occurred, in which parties who have ceased to regard each other as lovers, have been found necessary as friends and confidential advisers. [ Mme. de Pompadour ]

Truth only is prolific. Error, sterile in itself, produces only by means of the portion of truth which it contains. It may have offspring, but the life which it gives, like that of the hybrid races, cannot be transmitted. [ Madame Swetchine ]

A man may kill a tender and delicate wife by cold neglect, and ruin himself and her too by debauchery; but if he keeps within his own dwellings and does not disturb his neighbors, the law would be slow to move against him. [ A. S. Roe ]

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. [ Lowell ]

Food, improperly taken, not only produces originnl diseases, but affords those that are already engendered both matter and sustenance; so that, let the father of disease be what it may. In temperance is certainly its mother. [ Burton ]

At the age when the faculties droop, when stern experience has destroyed all sweet illusions, man may seek solitude; but, at twenty, the affections which he is compelled to repress are a tomb in which he buries himself alive. [ E. de Girardin ]

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter it is deceptive. [ Whately ]

Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket. [ Goldsmith ]

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 ]

Great men are the fire-pillars in this dark pilgrimage of mankind; they stand as heavenly signs, ever-living witnesses of what has been, prophetic tokens of what may still be, the revealed, embodied possibilities of human nature. [ Carlyle ]

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention. [ Sterne ]

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it, - feel it, and hate in silence. [ Washington Allston ]

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind. [ Johnson ]

Love and the Soul, working together, might go on producing Venuses without end, each different, and all beautiful; but divorced and separated, they may continue producing indeed, yet no longer any being, or even thing, truly godlike. [ Ed ]

Give us the man who sings at his work! Be his occupation what it may, he will be equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time; he will do it better; he will persevere longer. [ Carlyle ]

A spark is a molecule of matter, yet may it kindle the world; vast is the mighty ocean, but drops have made it vast. Despise not thou small things, either for evil or for good; for a look may work thy ruin, or a word create thy wealth. [ Tupper ]

When at last the angels come to convey your departing spirit to Abraham's bosom, depend upon it, however dazzling in their newness they may be to you. you will find that your history is no novelty, and you yourself no stranger to them. [ James Hamilton ]

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling. [ Izaak Walton ]

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. [ Dr. Johnson ]

With a pretty face and the freshness of twenty, a woman, however shallow she may be, makes many conquests, but does not retain them: with cleverness, thirty years, and a little beauty, a woman makes fewer conquests but more durable ones. [ A. Dupuy ]

To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do today that you may enjoy tomorrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Thinkers who trace systems of philosophy are merely impelled by an innate instinct; they know that their precepts, however excellent, are not suitable to the majority: the wisdom may be admired by many, but few will follow the principles. [ De Finod ]

Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself: but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day. [ Goethe ]

Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true, but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom be flatters of consequence enough to be flattered. [ Johnson ]

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 ]

Abridge your hopes in proportion to the shortness of the span of human life; for while we converse, the hours, as if envious of our pleasure, fly away. Enjoy, therefore, the present time, and trust not too much to what tomorrow may produce. [ Horace ]

There is nothing so sure of succeeding as not to be over brilliant, as to be entirely wrapped up in one's self, and endowed with a perseverance which, in spite of all the rebuffs it may meet with, never relaxes in the pursuit of its object. [ Baron de Grimm ]

Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us. There does not live on earth the man, be his station what it may, that I despise myself compared with him. Man is made great or little by his own will. [ Schiller ]

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the richness of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Perhaps God does with His heavenly garden as we do with our own. He may chiefly stock it from nurseries, and select for transplanting what is yet in its young and tender age - flowers before they have bloomed, and trees ere they begin to bear. [ Rev. Dr. Guthrie ]

Oddities and singularities of behavior may attend genius; when they do, they are its misfortunes and its blemishes. The man of true genius will be ashamed of them; at least he will never affect to distinguish himself by whimsical peculiarities. [ S. W. Temple ]

The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature. [ Guizot ]

Are we capable of so intimate and cordial a coalition of friendship as, that one man may pour out his bosom - his very inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of losing part of that respect which man deserves from man. [ A. Burn ]

Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soulmoving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow. [ Peter Bayne ]

The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death. [ Martial ]

Ordinary or Common? A distinction may be thus drawn between these terms; what is common is done by many persons; what is ordinary is repeated many times. Ordinary has to do with the repetition of the act; common, with the persons who perform it. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

There is before the eyes of men, on the brink of dissolution, a glassy film, which death appears to impart, that they may have a brief prospect of eternity when some behold the angels of light, while others have the demons of darkness before them. [ Cockton ]

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 ]

Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself. [ Buffon ]

The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented. [ Addison ]

Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. [ Franklin ]

Whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. [ Ruskin ]

He that is ambitious for his son, should give him untried names, For those have served other men, haply may injure by their evils; Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; therefore set him by himself. To win for his individual name some clear praise. [ Tupper ]

Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit: but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures. [ Thucydides ]

Hath fortune dealt thee ill cards? let wisdom make thee a good gamester. In a fair gale, every fool may sail, but wise behavior in a storm commends the wisdom of a pilot; to bear adversity with an equal mind is both the sign and glory of a brave spirit. [ Quarles ]

I may grieve with the smart of an evil as soon as I feel it, but I will not smart with the grief of an evil as soon as I hear of it. My evil, when it Cometh, may make my grief too great; why, then, should my grief, before it comes, make my evil greater? [ Arthur Warwick ]

Noted or Notorious? As adjectives, these terms are sometimes misused; as, He is a noted criminal. The better word here would be notorious, the meaning of which is restricted to that which is bad; while noted may be used in either a good or a bad sense. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

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 ]

A little neglect may breed great mischief. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

Some very dull and sad people have genius though the world may not count it as such; a genius for love, or for patience, or for prayer, maybe. We know the divine spark is here and there in the world: who shall say under what manifestations, or humble disguise! [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]

The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Beauty in dress, as in other things, is largely relative. To admit this is to admit that a dress which is beautiful upon one woman may be hideous worn by another. Each should understand her own style, accept it, and let the fashion of her dress be built upon it. [ Miss Oakey ]

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness around us at so little expense. Some of them will inevitably fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others; and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring. [ Bentham ]

If life has not made you by God's grace, through faith, holy - think you, will death without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them. [ Alexander Maclaren ]

Local esteem is far more conducive to happiness than general reputation. The latter may be compared to the fixed stars which glimmer so remotely as to afford little light and no warmth. The former is like the sun, each day shedding his prolific and cheering beams. [ W. B. Clulow ]

All the makers of dictionaries, all compilers who do nothing else than repeat backwards and forwards the opinions, the errors, the impostures, and the truths already printed, we may term plagiarists: but honest plagiarists, who arrogate not the merit of invention. [ Voltaire ]

All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. [ Thomas Paine ]

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it. [ Voltaire ]

A man's name is not like a mantle, which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which like the skin has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself. [ Goethe ]

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. [ St. Augustine ]

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet has it many points in common therewith ... I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demonic, Inspiration or Insanity. [ Carlyle ]

Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past. [ Lowell ]

The young man may applaud the negligent and pusillanimous instructor; but when that man, no longer young, suffers the result of that neglect and pusillanimity, it is well if a better spirit had taught him to mention the name of that instructor without bitter execration. [ F. Wayland ]

There is a false gravity that is a very ill symptom: and it may be said, that as rivers, which run very slowly, have always the most mud at the bottom: so a solid stiffness in the constant course of a man's life, is a sign of a thick bed of mud at the bottom of his brain. [ Saville ]

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased. [ Colton ]

There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. [ Ruskin ]

Pale, Pallid, or Wan? All these terms denote an absence of color, but vary in degree, pallid rising upon pale, and wan upon pallid. Paleness in the countenance may be temporary, but pallidness and wanness are caused by sickness, hunger, or fatigue, and are of longer duration. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it may be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. [ Cowley ]

A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt and support them through great actions. A cloak should be of three-pile, to keep its gloss in wear. [ Hare ]

I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man. [ Beecher ]

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarcely in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct. Remember this; they that will not be counseled cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you over your knuckles. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to appreciate both. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Young women, the glory of your life is to do something, and to be something. You may have formed the idea that ease and personal enjoyment are the ends of your life. This is a terrible mistake. Development, in the broadest sense and in the highest direction, is the end of your life. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]

Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of. [ Pascal ]

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him. [ Thomas Hobbes ]

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]

My May of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. [ William Shakespeare ]

Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is more infallible than that of the body. To imitate the style of another is said to be wearing a mask. However beautiful it may be, it is through its lifelessness insipid and intolerable, so that even the most ugly living face is more engaging. [ Schopenhauer ]

It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]

Be not too rash in the breaking of an inconvenient custom; as it was gotten, so leave it by degrees. Danger attends upon too sudden alterations; he that pulls down a bad building by the great may be ruined by the fall, but he that takes it down brick by brick may live to build a better. [ Quarles ]

It is averse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]

A mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age; and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God ever gives us. [ Bovee ]

Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of daily virtuous living; he who trains us to see old truth under academic formularies may be wise or not, as it chances, but we love to see wisdom in unpretending forms, to recognise her royal features under a week-day vesture. [ Carlyle ]

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions - these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term experience. [ G. H. Lewes ]

Some are so close and reserved that they will not show their wares but by a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that which they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may not well speak. [ Bacon ]

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 lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one's own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend. [ Plautus ]

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say that Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger? [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Much that is published as a novel is only anonymous biography. Many a man who is a bore in conversation may have qualities which give indescribable charms to narrative; and the egotist, if he only have the art to conceal his identity, can then hold the reader by the powerful grasp of sympathy. [ R. S. Mackenzie ]

Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage. [ Victor Cousin ]

Pain itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent, but it is seldom both violent and long-continued; and its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. [ Paley ]

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 ]

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 ]

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent. [ Colton ]

It may be too much to expect that nations should be governed in their relations towards each other by the precepts of Christian morality, but surely it is not too much to ask that they should conform to the code of courtesy and good breeding recognized among gentlemen in the intercourse of social life. [ Geo. S. Hillard ]

It is in the time of trouble, when some to whom we may have looked for consolation and encouragement regard us with coldness, and others, perhaps, treat us with hostility, that the warmth of the friendly heart and the support of the friendly hand acquire increased value and demand additional gratitude. [ Bishop Mant ]

Occasion or Opportunity? The occasion is that which determines our conduct, and amounts to a degree of necessity; the opportunity is that which invites to action. We do things as the occasion requires, or as the opportunity offers. We may have occasion to write a letter without having the opportunity. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Sudden blaze of kindness may, by a single blast of coldness, be extinguished; but that fondness which length of time has connected with many circumstances and occasions, though it may for a while be suppressed by disgust or resentment, with or without cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection. [ Johnson ]

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 first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, - a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colors is very properly called the language of the art. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]

Let every mother consider herself as an instrument in the hands of Providence - let her reflect on the immense importance the proper education of one single family may eventually prove; and that, while the fruit of her labors may descend to generations yet unborn, she will herself reap a glorious reward. [ Miss Hamilton ]

There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles - that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith - be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support. [ Southey ]

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 ]

We lose in depth of expression when we go to inferior animals for comparisons with human beauty. Homer calls Juno ox-eyed; and the epithet suits well with the eyes of that goddess, because she may be supposed, with all her beauty, to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you with a royal indifference. [ Leigh Hunt ]

The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him. [ Seneca ]

Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind. [ Lowell ]

We may be sure that cheerful beliefs about the unseen world, framed in full harmony with the beauty of the visible universe, and with the sweetness of domestic affections and joys, and held in company with kindred and friends, will illuminate the dark places on the pathway of earthly life and brighten all the road. [ Charles W. Eliot ]

Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its luster; but when they have sunk in the earth again, the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on. [ James A. Garfield ]

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails. [ Humboldt ]

His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require. [ Erasmus ]

Joy wholly from without, is false, precarious, and short. From without it may be gathered; but, like gathered flowers, though fair, and sweet for a season, it must soon wither, and become offensive. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree; it is more sweet and fair, it is lasting; and, I must add, immortal. [ Young ]

Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is the parent of many sins, and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, where you may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, what means this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can your solicitude alter the cause or unravel the intricacy of human events? [ Blair ]

Neutrality in things good or evil is both odious and prejudicial; but in matters of an indifferent nature is safe and commendable. Herein taking of parts maketh sides, and breaketh unity. In an unjust cause of separation, he that favoreth both parts may perhaps have least love of either side, but hath most charity in himself. [ Bishop Hall ]

The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. [ Locke ]

How sacred, how beautiful, is the feeling of affection in pure and guileless bosoms! The proud may sneer at it, the fashionable may call it fable, the selfish and dissipated may affect to despise it; but the holy passion is surely of heaven, and is made evil by the corruptions of those whom it was sent to bless and to preserve. [ Mordaunt ]

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. [ Hazlitt ]

What we call genius may, perhaps, in more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. For this reason it is called a seer, and hence its songs have been prophecies. [ Simms ]

Partake or Eat? Partake, meaning to take a part of in common with others, to participate, is often affectedly used as a synonym of eat. It is correct to say that two or more persons partake of dinner, as they may partake of anything else. But, for the individual who eats alone, to say he partook of refreshments is an egregious blunder. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The man who will share his purse with you in the days of misfortune and distress, and like the good Samaritan, be surety for your support to the landlord, you may admit to your confidence, incorporate into the very core of your heart, and call him friend; misfortunes cannot shake him from you; a prison will not conceal you from his sight. [ J. Bartlett ]

Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet; if she has five grains of commonsense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value. [ Sydney Smith ]

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern. [ Fielding ]

There is no one passion which all mankind so naturally give in to as pride, nor any other passion which appears in such different disguises. It is to be found in all habits and all complexions. Is it not a question whether it does more harm or good in the world, and if there be not such a thing as what we may call a virtuous and laudable pride? [ Steele ]

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar; the case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor toward the latter part of life. [ Shenstone ]

It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be obtained or retained. [ Beaconsfield ]

Under the influence of music we are all deluded in some way; we imagine that the performers must dwell in the regions to which they lift their hearers; we are reluctant to admit that a man may blow the most soul-animating strains from his trumpet and yet be a coward; or melt an audience to tears with his violin, and yet be a heartless profligate. [ H. W. Hillard ]

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it. [ Hazlitt ]

It is all very well to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph, but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial. [ Charles James Fox ]

Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould, about the roots of their vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light. [ Bacon ]

Surely you will not calculate any essential difference from mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool! [ Chapin ]

Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature, - may almost say, I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now. [ Leigh Hunt ]

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. [ Ruskin ]

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. [ Swift ]

Nominate or Name? To nominate is to mention for a specific purpose. To name is to mention for a general purpose. Persons only are nominated; things, as well as persons, are named. To be nominated is a public act; to be named is generally private. To be nominated is always an honor; to be named may, according to circumstances, be either honorable or dishonorable. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him. [ Heinrich Heine ]

Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. [ Hillard ]

When the first time of love is over, there comes a something better still; then comes that other love; that faithful friendship which never changes, and which will accompany you with its calm light through the whole of life; it is only needful to place yourself so that it may come, and then it comes of itself; and then everything turns and changes itself for the best. [ Frederika Bremer ]

The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness. [ Zimmermann ]

I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky. Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second; for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. [ Bacon ]

It is a hasty conclusion, and one which marks an inadequate apprehension of the nature of friendship, to say we lose a friend when he dies; death is not only unable to quench the genuine sense of friendship between the living and the dead, but it is also unable to prevent the going forth of a real feeling of friendship for the dead whom, it may be, we have never known at all. [ H. C. Trumbull ]

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 ]

Take the title of nobility which thou hast received by birth, but endeavor to add to it another, that both may form a true nobility. There is between the nobility of thy father and thine own the same difference which exists between the nourishment of the evening and of the morrow. The food of yesterday will not serve three for today, and will not give thee strength for the next. [ Jamakchari ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]

If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should imagine it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are, at the same time, loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling. [ Sir H. Davy ]

We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind. [ Johnson ]

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life. [ Lord Greville ]

When the great Kepler had at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself. [ Macaulay ]

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them, - for every one sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, and may live or dress as they please. [ Colton ]

Music may be classed into natural, social, sacred, and martial; it is the twin sister of poetry, and like it has the power to sway the feelings and command the mind; in devotion it breathes the pure spirit of inspiration and love; in martial scenes it rouses the soul to fearless deeds of daring and valor, while it alleviates the cares, and enhances the innocent and cheerful enjoyments of domestic life. [ Acton ]

We readily excuse paralytics from labor; and shall we be angry with a hypochondriac for not being cheerful in company? Must we stigmatize such an unfortunate person as peevish, positive, and unfit for society? His disorder may no more suffer him to be merry, than the gout will suffer another to dance. The advising a melancholic to be cheerful is like bidding a coward to be courageous, or a dwarf be taller. [ Wollaston ]

O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever! [ The last prayer of Voltaire ]

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven. [ Daniel Webster ]

A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns of expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression. Words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring. [ Whipple ]

The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all - but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum-total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered. [ Coleridge ]

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]

Your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Weakness can never be beautiful, either morally or physically: and though the feminine type may possess greater softness and more feeling, it must be active, firm, and healthy, or it cannot be beautiful; the weak mind, distracted by alternations of feeling, and constant craving for help and sympathy from others, cannot at the same time possess that tenderness and unselfish devotion which is the loveliest trait of the female character. [ M. Martell ]

The mother, under whose sole influence the child is for years, from whom it acquires its tastes and character, should not only be educated, but educated in the most thorough manner, and have her mind stored with varied learning, so that she may be able to answer the multitude of questions that will be put to her by her inquisitive child on art, science, literature, and religion, and thus to stimulate his curiosity, and awaken his mind. [ E. B. Ramsay ]

As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanketmaking and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace. [ Ruskin ]

Posture or Attitude? Each of these words has its appropriate place, and one should not be misapplied for the other. Posture is the mode of placing the body, and may be either natural or assumed. Attitude is always assumed, and is intended to display some grace of the body, or some affection or purpose of the mind. Postures, when natural, accommodate themselves to the convenience of the body; when assumed they may be either serious or ridiculous. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Superstition is the fear of a spirit whose passions and acts are those of a man, who is present in some places, and not in others; who makes some places holy, and not others; who is kind to one person, and unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrificing a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. [ John Ruskin ]

The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale. [ Colton ]

How fitting to have every day, in a vase of water on your table, the wild flowers of the season which are just blossoming. Can any house be said to be furnished without them? Shall we be so forward to pluck the fruits of Nature and neglect her flowers? These are surely her finest influences. So may the season suggest the thoughts it is fitted to suggest. Let me know what pictures Nature is painting, what poetry she is writing, what ode composing now. [ Thoreau ]

A town, before it can be plundered and deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one. [ Colton ]

Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come. [ F. W. Robertson ]

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art: but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning. [ Montaigne ]

There is a story of some mountains of salt in Cumana, which never diminished, though carried away in much abundance by merchants; but when once they were monopolized to the benefit of a private purse, then the salt decreased, till afterward all were allowed to take of it, when it had a new access and increase. The truth of this story may be uncertain, but the application is true; he that envies others the use of his gifts decays then, but he thrives most that is most diffusive. [ Spencer ]

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 ]

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts, - the ifirst and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind, - just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. [ Coleridge ]

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 ]

Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. . . . We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. [ Dialogues, Theaetetus ]

I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

When we turn away from some duty or some fellow-creature, saying that our hearts are too sick and sore with some great yearning of our own, we may often sever the line on which a Divine message was coming to us. We shut out the man, and we shut out the angel who had sent him on to open the door . . . There is a plan working in our lives; and if we keep our hearts quiet and our eyes open, it all works together; and, if we don't, it all fights together, and goes on fighting till it comes right, somehow, somewhere. [ Annie Keary ]

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 ]

Who can fathom the depth of a mother's love! No friendship so pure, so devoted; the wild storm of adversity and the bright sunshine of prosperity are all alike to her; however unworthy we may be of that affection, a mother never ceases to love her erring child. Often, when alone, as we gaze up to the starry heaven, can we in imagination catch a glimpse of the angels around the great white throne, and among the brightest and fairest of them all is our sweet mother, ever beckoning us onward and upward to her celestial home. [ R. Smith ]

There is a hand that has no heart in it, there is a claw or paw, a flipper or fin, a bit of wet cloth to take hold of, a piece of unbaked dough on the cook's trencher, a cold clammy thing we recoil from, or greedy clutch with the heat of sin, which we drop as a burning coal. What a scale from the talon to the horn of plenty, is this human palmleaf! Sometimes it is what a knifeshaped, thin-bladed tool we dare not grasp, or like a poisonous thing we shake off, or unclean member, which, white as it may look, we feel polluted by! [ C. A. Bartol ]

A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm. [ Swift ]

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. [ Washington Irving ]

The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbors, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. [ G. A. Sola ]

Gentlemen, do you know what is the finest speech that I ever in my life heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers, when he told them: Soldiers, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries; - those who love freedom and their country may follow me. That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life. [ Kossuth ]

The loss of a mother is always severely felt; even though Her health may incapacitate her from taking any active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand tender endeavors to please concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it, when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends. [ Lamartine ]

Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gesture or quick movement inspires involuntary disrespect. One looks for a moment at a cascade; but one sits for hours, lost in thought, and gazing upon the still water of a lake. A deliberate gale, gentle manners, and a gracious tone of voice - all of which may be acquired - give a mediocre man an immense advantage over those vastly superior to him. To be bodily tranquil, to speak little, and to digest without effort are absolutely necessary to grandeur of mind or of presence, or to proper development of genius. [ Balzac ]

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. [ Goldsmith ]

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 ]

True hope is based on energy of character. A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope, because it knows the mutability of human affairs and how slight a circumstance may change the whole course of events. Such a spirit, too, rests upon itself, it is not confined to partial views, or to one particular object. And if at last all should be lost, it has saved itself, its own integrity and worth. Hope awakens courage, while despondency is the last of all evils, it is the abandonment of good, the giving up of the battle of life with dead nothingness. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician. [ Von Knebel (German), Translated by Mrs. Austin ]

The love of a mother is never exhausted; it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; she still remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of Iris childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [ W. Irving ]

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]

My friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to the father) - What's his name? The father hesitated, then whispered back: His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]

With whatever respect and admiration a child may regard a father, whose example has called forth his energies, and animated him in his various pursuits, he turns with greater affection and intenser love to a kind-hearted mother; the same emotion follows him through life; and when the changing vicissitudes of after years have removed his parents from him, seldom does the remembrance of his mother occur to his mind, unaccompanied by the most affectionate recollections. Show me a man, though his brow be furrowed, and his hair grey, who has forgotten his mother, and I shall suspect that something is going on wrong within him; either his memory is impaired, or a hard heart is beating in his bosom. [ Mogridge ]

As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions. Some are disposed to view logic as a peculiar method of reasoning, and not as it is, a method of unfolding and analysing our reason. They have, in short, considered logic as an art of reasoning. The logician's object being, not to lay down principles by which one may reason, but by which all must reason, even though they are not distinctly aware of them - to lay down rules not which may be followed with advantage, but which cannot possibly be deviated from in sound reasoning. [ R. Whately ]

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

may in Scrabble®

The word may is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 8

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays In The Letters may:

YAM
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word may

MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(15)
MAY
(14)
MAY
(12)
MAY
(11)
MAY
(10)
MAY
(9)
MAY
(8)

The 73 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In may

YAM
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
MY
(21)
MY
(21)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
YAM
(16)
YAM
(16)
YAM
(16)
YAM
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MY
(15)
YA
(15)
MAY
(15)
AY
(15)
YAM
(15)
YA
(15)
AY
(15)
MAY
(14)
MY
(14)
MY
(14)
YAM
(14)
AY
(13)
YA
(13)
MY
(13)
MA
(12)
AM
(12)
YAM
(12)
MA
(12)
AM
(12)
MAY
(12)
YAM
(11)
MY
(11)
MAY
(11)
AM
(10)
YAM
(10)
MA
(10)
MY
(10)
AY
(10)
AY
(10)
YA
(10)
MAY
(10)
YA
(10)
YA
(9)
MAY
(9)
YAM
(9)
AY
(9)
AM
(8)
YAM
(8)
AM
(8)
MA
(8)
MA
(8)
MAY
(8)
YA
(7)
AY
(7)
MA
(7)
MY
(7)
AM
(7)
YA
(6)
MA
(6)
AY
(6)
AM
(6)
MA
(5)
YA
(5)
AY
(5)
AM
(5)
MA
(4)
AM
(4)

may in Words With Friends™

The word may is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 8

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays In The Letters may:

YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
YAM
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word may

MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(22)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(15)
MAY
(14)
MAY
(12)
MAY
(11)
MAY
(10)
MAY
(9)
MAY
(8)

The 75 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In may

YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
MAY
(24)
YAM
(24)
YAM
(24)
MAY
(24)
YAM
(22)
MAY
(22)
MY
(21)
MY
(21)
YAM
(16)
YAM
(16)
MAY
(16)
YAM
(16)
MAY
(16)
MAY
(16)
YAM
(16)
MAY
(16)
MA
(15)
MY
(15)
YAM
(15)
MAY
(15)
MA
(15)
AM
(15)
AM
(15)
MAY
(14)
MY
(14)
MY
(14)
YAM
(14)
MY
(13)
MA
(13)
AM
(13)
AY
(12)
MAY
(12)
YAM
(12)
YA
(12)
YA
(12)
AY
(12)
MAY
(11)
YAM
(11)
MY
(11)
YAM
(10)
AM
(10)
YA
(10)
AM
(10)
AY
(10)
MA
(10)
MA
(10)
MAY
(10)
MY
(10)
MA
(9)
MAY
(9)
YAM
(9)
AM
(9)
AY
(8)
AY
(8)
MAY
(8)
YAM
(8)
YA
(8)
YA
(8)
YA
(7)
MY
(7)
AY
(7)
MA
(7)
AM
(7)
MA
(6)
YA
(6)
AY
(6)
AM
(6)
YA
(5)
MA
(5)
AY
(5)
AM
(5)
YA
(4)
AY
(4)

Words within the letters of may

2 letter words in may (5 words)

3 letter words in may (Anagrams) (2 words)

may + 1 blank (9 words)

Word Growth involving may

Shorter words in may

ay

ma

Longer words containing may

dismay dismayed undismayed

dismay dismaying

dismay dismays

mayapple mayapples

maybe

maybird maybirds

maybug maybugs

maybush maybushes

mayday maydays

mayfish mayfishes

mayflies

mayflower mayflowers

mayfly

mayhap

mayhem

mayo mayonnaise

mayo mayor mayoral mayoralty

mayo mayor mayoral nonmayoral

mayo mayor mayoress mayoresses

mayo mayor mayors

maypole maypoles

mays dismays

maywort mayworts