A narrow mind begets obstinacy. [ Dryden ]
So vast is art; so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]
Wide will wear, but narrow will tear. [ Proverb ]
With little wit and ease to suit them,
They whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails. [ Goethe ]
In a narrow circle the mind contracts,
Man grows with his expanded needs. [ Schiller ]
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 ]
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorne and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower.
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side.
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves. [ Jul. Caes ]
Dashing in big drops on the narrow pane,
And making mournful music for the mind,
While plays his interlude the wizzard wind,
I hear the singing of the frequent rain. [ William H. Burleigh ]
Life is a narrow road full of encumbrances. [ Soulary ]
Narrow waists and narrow minds go together. [ Chamfort ]
Narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade
Before the unmeasured thirst for good. [ Robert Browning ]
It is hard to turn tack upon a narrow bridge. [ Proverb ]
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas. [ Moore ]
This narrow isthmus between two boundless seas,
The past, the future - two eternities. [ Moore ]
Honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path. [ William Shakespeare ]
So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]
Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round
Of Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make
The orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly
Upon its path--the Lord of Life alone
Knows to what goal of Good; work on, live on. [ Lewis Morris ]
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. [ Gray ]
Rage is the shortest passion of our souls:
Like narrow brooks, that rise with sudden showers,
It swells in haste, and falls again as soon. [ Rowe ]
The world is too narrow for two fools a quarrelling. [ Proverb ]
The narrow soul knows not the godlike glory of forgiving. [ Rowe ]
Time, - that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities. [ Colton ]
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt. [ Rousseau ]
Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind. [ Juvenal ]
A prison is never narrow when the imagination can range in it at will.
It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good. [ Johnson ]
Each in his narrow cell forever, laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. [ Gray ]
Take heed of mad folks in a narrow place, credit decayed, and people that have of nothing. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass. [ Steele ]
If the way of heaven be narrow, it is not long; and if the gate be straight, it opens into endless life. [ Bishop Beveridge ]
When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer. [ Cervantes ]
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies. [ Balzac ]
Nothing can embellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band that indicates a small wound drawn crosswise over the brow. [ Richter ]
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out. [ Pope ]
He that is sensible of no evil but what he feels, has a hard heart; and he that can spare no kindness from himself, has a narrow soul. [ Collier ]
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind; a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things. [ Whately ]
The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory. [ Emerson ]
The path of nature is, indeed, a narrow one, and it is only the immortals that seek it, and, when they find it, do not find themselves cramped therein. [ Lowell ]
The greatest cosmopolites are generally the neediest beggars, and they who embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part, love nothing but their narrow self. [ Herder ]
With vivid words your just conceptions grace. Much truth compressing in a narrow space; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. [ Pindar ]
There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences. [ Fenelon ]
What laborious days, what watchings by the midnight lamp, what rackings of the brain, what hopes and fears, what long lives of laborious study, are here sublimized into print, and condensed into the narrow compass of these surrounding shelves! [ Horace Smith ]
Nothing on earth is without difficulty. Only the inner impulse, the pleasure it gives and love enable us to surmount obstacles; to make smooth our way, and lift ourselves out of the narrow grooves in which other people sorrowfully distress themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
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 ]
Nature gives you the impression as if there were nothing contradictory in the world; and yet, when you return back to the dwelling-place of man, be it lofty or low, wide or narrow, there is ever somewhat to contend with, to battle with, to smooth and put to rights. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admire, - they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. [ Thackeray ]
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 ]
I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]
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 ]