You mean now? [ Yogi Berra ]
The golden mean.
Pearls mean tears. [ Lessing ]
Fear is cruel and mean. [ Emerson ]
Mean and mighty, rotting
Together, have one dust. [ William Shakespeare ]
Virtue lies in the mean. [ Proverb ]
The bitch that I mean is not a dog. [ Proverb ]
Silence does not always mean wisdom. [ Coleridge ]
She that with poetry is won.
Is but a desk to write upon;
And what men say of her they mean
No more than on the thing they lean. [ Butler ]
Is there no mean, but fast or feast? [ Proverb ]
If you mean to profit, learn to praise. [ Churchill ]
We ask advice, but we mean approbation. [ Colton ]
Mean men admire wealth, great men glory. [ Proverb ]
License they mean when they cry liberty. [ Milton ]
A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing. [ Charles Sumner ]
High minds, of native pride and force.
Most deeply feel thy pangs. Remorse!
Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have,
Thou art the torturer of the brave! [ Scott ]
Life's but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things--God. [ Bailey ]
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
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 ]
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine. [ Byron ]
If she do frown, it is not in hate of you,
But rather to beget more love in you:
If she do chide, it is not to have you gone;
For why, the fools are mad if left alone.
Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;
For - get you gone - she doth not mean - away. [ William Shakespeare ]
When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection;
Which if we find outweighs ability.
What do we then, but draw anew the model
In fewer offices; or, at least, desist
To build at all? [ William Shakespeare ]
Greatness, with private men
Esteem'd a blessing, is to me a curse;
And we, whom from our high births they conclude
The only free men, are the only slaves:
Happy the golden mean. [ Massinger ]
Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live. [ Goethe ]
Mediocrity is mean, and below an exalted spirit. [ Proverb ]
Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor.
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need. [ John Sheffield ]
Speak not of my debts, unless you mean to pay them. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
It is a mean ambition to be the squire of the company. [ Proverb ]
He hath no mean portion of virtue that loves it in another. [ Proverb ]
There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous. [ Confucius ]
There is something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing. [ James A. Garfield ]
And hark, how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher. [ Wordsworth ]
The mean of true valor lies between the extremes of cowardice and rashness. [ Cervantes ]
Dare to do something worthy of transportation and a prison, if you mean to be anybody. [ Juvenal ]
The best enjoyment is half disappointment to what we mean, or would have, in this world. [ Bailey ]
The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little. [ Swift ]
Too indolent to bear the toil of writing; I mean of writing well; I say nothing about quantity. [ Horace ]
A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories. [ George Eliot ]
Nothing so lifts a man from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. [ Carlyle ]
Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. [ Horace ]
If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken. [ Plutarch ]
If you are going to do a good thing, do it now; if you are going to do a mean thing, wait till tomorrow.
The mean man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom meanness withholds some important benefit. [ Emerson ]
Genius does not care much for a set of explicit regulations, but that does not mean that genius is lawless. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]
Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise. [ Carlyle ]
Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul. [ Montaigne ]
Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh. [ Rev. R. Cecil ]
The love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary. [ Swift ]
I would fain coin wisdom - mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. [ Joubert ]
How, without clothes, could we possess the master organ, soul's seat and true pineal gland of the body social - I mean a purse? [ Carlyle ]
But Christian faith knows that wealth means responsibility, and that responsibility may come to mean only heavy arrears of sin. [ H. P. Liddon ]
There is a mean in all things. Even virtue itself hath its stated limits; which not being strictly observed, it ceases to be virtue. [ Horace ]
When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. They say something else and you're expected to just know what they mean. [ Alan Turing ]
The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise. [ Dr. Johnson ]
To speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroic virtue. [ Bacon ]
The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect. [ Plato ]
I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be consistent.
[ Holmes ]
The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it. [ George Washington ]
There must be chance in the midst of design; by which we mean that events which are not designed necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. [ Paley ]
I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns! the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate. [ Percival ]
Religion is again here, for whoever will piously struggle upward, and sacredly, sorrowfully refuse to speak lies, which indeed will mostly mean refuse to speak at all on that topic. [ Carlyle ]
Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason. [ Dryden ]
I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men. [ Emerson ]
Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue, - I mean good-nature, - are of daily use: they are the bread of mankind and staff of life. [ Dryden ]
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: Mankind
. Basically, it's made up of two separate words - mank
and ind
. What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
What does competency in the long run mean? It means to all reasonable beings, cleanliness of person, decency of dress, courtesy of manners, opportunities for education, the delights of leisure, and the bliss of giving. [ Whipple ]
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier, and the sacred air-castles of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality, and man by his nature is yet infinite and free. [ Carlyle ]
We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill at the same moment; but a moment is room enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outflash of a murderous thought, and the sharp backward stroke of repentance. [ George Eliot ]
Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever found and in whatsoever form and accompaniment. [ Carlyle ]
The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images: we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately. [ La Bruyere ]
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 ]
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 ]
Chance is a term we apply to events to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. When we say a thing happens by chance, we mean no more than that its cause is unknown to us, and not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of anything. [ C. Buck ]
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian - I mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn't look at me like that. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
This is he that kiss'd away his hand in courtesy; This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice. That when he plays at tables, chides the dice in honorable terms; nay, he can sing a mean most meanly; and in ushering, mend him who can; the ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. [ William Shakespeare ]
Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity. [ Collier ]
First, girls, don't smoke--that is, don't smoke to excess. I am seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them. But I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time. Second, don't drink - that is, don't drink to excess. Third, don't marry - I mean, to excess. [ Mark Twain, "Advice To Girls", 1909 ]
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot. [ Montaigne ]
People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor. [ Goethe ]
If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion at Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known and, according to my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. [ Burke ]
Throughout the pages of history we are struck with the fact that our remarkable men possessed mothers of uncommon talents for good or bad, and great energy of character; it would almost seem from this circumstance, that the impress of the mother is more frequently stamped on the boy, and that of the father upon the girl - we mean the mental intellectual impress, in distinction from the physical ones. Mothers will do well to remember that their impress is often stamped upon their sons. [ Helen Mar ]
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and - not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]