To nourish a viper in one's bosom. [ Proverb ]

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]

To give birth to a desire, to nourish it, to develop it, to increase it, to irritate it, to satisfy it: this is a whole poem. [ Balzac ]

Neglect will banish love, kill a lie, and silence slander; yet it will feed a malady, nourish hatred, and fill a garden with weeds. [ E. P. Day ]

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food, - they nourish, but at the same time they consume it. [ Bruyere ]

A few books, well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth, as ordinary students use. [ F. Osborn ]

A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Sound maxims are the germs of good; strongly imprinted in the memory, they nourish the will. [ Joubert ]

A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and unquestionable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence. When firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will. [ Joseph Joubert ]

The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it: it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! [ Quarles ]

Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses? [ Bulwer-Lytton ]