Wine washes off the dawb. [ Proverb ]
A chip off the old block.
To put off is not to let off. [ German Proverb ]
He that lives well sees afar off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Water afar off quencheth not fire. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A hungry man smells meat afar off. [ Proverb ]
God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves. [ Milton ]
The best patch is off the same cloth. [ Proverb ]
'Tis well to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new. [ Maturin ]
Many kiss the hand they wish cut off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
If you would live for ever,
You must wash the milk off your liver. [ Proverb ]
Like Flanders mares, fairest afar off. [ Proverb ]
Better good afar off than evil at hand. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin. [ William Shakespeare ]
Hew the block off, and get out the man. [ Pope ]
How calm - how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms have gone,
When warring winds have died away
And clouds, beneath the dancing ray
Melt off and leave the land and sea,
Sleeping in bright tranquillity. [ Moore ]
The army that comes off best loses some. [ Proverb ]
O, he's a limb, that has but a disease;
Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy. [ William Shakespeare ]
Set off with numerous breaks and dashes. [ Swift ]
He that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death. [ Horace ]
It is safe taking a slice off a cut loaf. [ Proverb ]
I have a tangled skein of it to wind off. [ Proverb ]
Honesty needs no pains to set itself off. [ Edward Moore ]
Modesty sets off one newly come to honor. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
An hungry kite sees a dead horse afar off. [ Proverb ]
Where two fools meet the bargain goes off. [ Proverb ]
Dogs that hunt foulest hit off most faults. [ Proverb ]
They that knew one another salute afar off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
He has left, gone off, escaped, broken away. [ Cic. of Catiline's flight ]
The cloak sometimes falls off a cunning man. [ Italian Proverb ]
Insolence is pride with her mask pulled off. [ Proverb ]
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt. [ Milton ]
Many kiss the hands they wish to see cut off. [ Proverb ]
Heresy may be easier kept out than shook off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Where you see a jester a fool is not far off. [ Proverb ]
Dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
They have a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being. [ Byron ]
Better a snotty child than his nose wiped off. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
In all games it is good to leave off a winner. [ Proverb ]
What is nearest is often unattainably far off. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Far off I hear the crowing of the cocks.
And through the opening door that time unlocks
Feel the fresh breathing of Tomorrow creep. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Although my cares do hang upon my soul
Like mines of lead, the greatness of my spirit
Shall shake the sullen weight off. [ Clapthorne ]
So lightly walks, she not one mark imprints,
Nor brushes off the dews, nor soils the tints. [ Churchill ]
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 ]
Leave off play as soon as the pleasure is past. [ Proverb ]
Put off your armour and then shew your courage. [ Proverb ]
The ebb will fetch off what the tide brings in. [ Proverb ]
Drink washes off the daub and discovers the man. [ Proverb ]
And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake. [ Byron ]
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys.
Society, cut off, is left alone
Amid this world of death. Day after day.
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave.
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless. [ Thomson ]
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright;
But looked too near, have neither heat nor light. [ Webster ]
The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims
Tidings of good to Zion. [ Charles Lamb ]
The wolf eats off the sheep that have been warned. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off. [ Swift ]
It is a base thing to tear a dead lion's beard off. [ Proverb ]
I have this while with leaden thoughts been pressed;
But I shall, in a more continuate time,
Strike off this score of absence. [ William Shakespeare ]
God comes at last, when we think He is farthest off. [ Proverb ]
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope. [ Hazlitt ]
God is at the end when we think he is farthest off it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off. [ Tac ]
A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 4 ]
He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back. [ Goldsmith ]
To take from a soldier ambition, is to take off his spurs. [ Proverb ]
Give the piper a penny to play, and twopence to leave off. [ Proverb ]
Use a spare diet; and thus cut off the enemies' provisions. [ Dr. Tronchin ]
When a mans house is on fire it is time to break off chess. [ Proverb ]
He that puts on a public gown must put off a private person. [ Proverb ]
Desire of glory is the last garment that even wise men put off. [ Proverb ]
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off. [ Johnson ]
Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason. [ Hazlitt ]
Second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on. [ Dickens ]
There is no shame in having led a wild life, but in not breaking it off. [ Horace ]
Dignities and honours set off merit, as good dress does handsome persons. [ Proverb ]
He that resolves to deal with none but honest men, must leave off dealing. [ Proverb ]
The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore. [ C. N. Bovee ]
Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders, [ Bovee ]
Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do afar off. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Let me wipe off this honorable dew, that silverly doth progress on thy cheeks. [ William Shakespeare ]
Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration. [ Hazlitt ]
On this side and on that, men see their friends drop off like leaves in autumn. [ Blair ]
Men shiver when thou art named; nature appalled shakes off her wonted firmness. [ Blair ]
An engagement is hardly a serious one that has not been broken off at least once. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
While his off-heel, insidiously aside. Provokes the caper which he seems to chide. [ Sheridan ]
Conjugal Love should never put on or take off his bandage but at an opportune time. [ Balzac ]
Truth is born with us; and we must do violence to nature, to shake off our veracity. [ St. Evremond ]
A withered hermit, fivescore winters worn, might shake off fifty, looking in her eye. [ William Shakespeare ]
The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk. [ Swift ]
Habits are soon assumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive. [ Cowper ]
He rejoices more than an old man who has put off old age, (i.e. has become young again). [ Proverb ]
But at the least sad reverse the mask drops off, the man remains, and the hero vanishes. [ J. B. Rousseau ]
It is easy to assume a habit; but when you try to cast it off, it will take skin and all. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]
When men once reach their autumn, sickly joys fall off apace, as yellow leaves from trees. [ Young ]
Thou dwarf dressed up in giant's clothes, that showest far off still greater than thou art. [ Suckling ]
To check the starts and sallies of the soul, and break off all its commerce with the tongue. [ Addison ]
It is better to break off a thousand friendships, than to endure the sight of a single enemy. [ Saadi ]
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Wrongs do not leave off there where they begin, but still beget new mischiefs in their course. [ Daniel ]
Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler. [ Byron ]
Though cast off, I have not fallen so low as to be beneath thee, than which nothing can be lower. [ Ovid ]
Some men have a Sunday soul, which they screw on in due time, and take off again every Monday morning. [ Kobert Hall ]
Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it. [ Addison ]
Men very rarely put off the trappings of pride till they who are about them put on their winding-sheet. [ Clarendon ]
Bores are not to be got rid of except by rough means. They are to be scraped off like scales from a fish. [ Bovee ]
The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off, and ignorance begins. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
No man is ever good for much who has not been carried off his feet by enthusiasm between twenty and thirty. [ Froude ]
My valor is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands. [ Sheridan ]
The grave - dread thing! - men shiver when thou art named; Nature, appalled, shakes off her wonted firmness. [ Blair ]
Cares are often more difficult to thrown off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow upon it. [ Richter ]
Such a man, truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. [ Swift ]
Good qualities are the substantial riches of the mind, but it is good-breeding that sets them off to advantage. [ Locke ]
A ring is a circle of vanity, worn on the finger to show off your wealth, and excite the envy of your neighbor. [ E. P. Day ]
Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature. [ I. Watts ]
A just cause and a zealous defender make an imperious resolution cut off the tediousness of cautious discussions. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Little League baseball is a good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets and the kids out of the house. [ Yogi Berra ]
The great are only great because we carry them on our shoulders; when we throw them off they sprawl on the ground. [ Montandre ]
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. [ Swift ]
If you realize an incentive to do a good thing, an act of benevolence, do it at once; do not put it off until tomorrow. [ Henry Home ]
Profligacy consists not in spending years of time or chests of money, but in spending them off the line of your career. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Learn a man's limitations. If you make him bite off more than he can chew, don't get mad at him if he has to spit it out. [ George Horace Lorimer ]
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire, - not too near, lest he burn: nor too far off, lest he freeze. [ Diogenes ]
We can take up no scheme, however wild and impracticable, but it will strike off some flower or fruit from the tree of knowledge. [ Ward Beecher ]
The sound of fresh rain run-off splashing from the roof reminded me of the sound of urine splashing into a filthy Texaco latrine. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
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 ]
Praise follows Truth afar off; and only overtakes her at the grave; Plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then. [ Lowell ]
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 ]
If you're a horse, and someone gets on you, and falls off, and then gets right back on you, I think you should buck him off right away. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
There grows In my most ill-compos'd affection such A stanchless avarice, that, were I king, I should cut off the nobles for their lands. [ William Shakespeare ]
Passion looks not beyond the moment of its existence. Better, it says, the kisses of love today, than the felicities of heaven afar off. [ Bovee ]
Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the world. [ Sir W. Davenant ]
Gradual as the snow, at heaven's breath, melts off and shows the azure flowers beneath, her lids unclosed, and the bright eyes were seen. [ Moore ]
In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him; what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing. [ Landor ]
A summer friendship, whose flattering leaves, that shadowed us in our prosperity, with the least gust drop off in the autumn of adversity. [ Massinger ]
If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
How beautiful it is for a man to die on the walls of Zion! to be called like a watch-worn and weary sentinel, to put his armor off, and rest in heaven. [ N. P. Willis ]
If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue. [ Moliere ]
We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it. [ T. W. Higginson ]
Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
The poet's delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
For it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. [ William Shakespeare ]
Know the true value of time: snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. [ Lord Chesterfield ]
But since, however protracted, death will come. Why fondly study, with ingenious pains. To put it off? - To breathe a little longer is to defer our fate, but not to shun it. [ Hannah More ]
As a tract of country narrowed in the distance expands itself when we approach, thus the way to our near grave appears to us as long as it did formerly when we were far off. [ Richter ]
A good deal depends upon luck as well as care, and sometimes a writer must wait, or even leave off and return to work again, before he can hit upon the turn of words required. [ Richard D. Blackmore, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. [ Talfourd ]
Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come, - as though that time should be of another make from this, which has already come and is ours. [ Fuller ]
And now he shook away the snow of time from the winter-green of memory, and beheld the fair years of his childhood uncovered, fresh, green, and balmy, standing afar off before him. [ Richter ]
Our souls sit close and silently within. And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch. [ Dryden ]
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [ Bible ]
Rarity gives a charm: thus early fruits are most esteemed; thus winter roses obtain a higher price; thus coyness sets off an extravagant mistress; a door ever open attracts no young suitor. [ Martial ]
Men commonly injure one another without cause, and simply to do something: as an idle promenader in a garden, breaks the young branches, and strips off the leaves of the most beautiful flowers. [ E. Souvestre ]
The accusing spirit, which flew off to heaven's chancery with the oath blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever. [ Sterne ]
I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest high catch, and he never walked off the field. [ Yogi Berra ]
Good words do more than hard speeches; as the sunbeams, without any noise, will make the traveller cast off his cloak, which all the blustering winds could not do, but only make him bind it closer to him. [ Leighton ]
It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as they are overrated by others. [ Whately ]
Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it. [ Feltham ]
I can see why it would be prohibited to throw most things off the top of the Empire State Building, but what's wrong with little bits of cheese? They probably break down into their various gases before they even hit. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed. [ Tillotson ]
A poet of superior merit, whose vein is of no vulgar kind, who never winds off anything trite, nor coins a trivial poem at the public mint, I cannot describe, but only recognise as a man whose soul is free from all anxiety. [ Juv ]
Many men want wealth, - not a competence alone, but a five-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath. [ Beecher ]
Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular. [ Addison ]
Frugality is good if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last is bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. [ William Penn ]
There is dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens its cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself and the drop runs off. So God rains goodness and mercy as wide as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we do not open our hearts to receive them. [ Aughey ]
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]
As in labor, the more one doth exercise, the more one is enabled to do, strength growing upon work; so, with the use of suffering, men's minds get the habit of suffering, and all fears and terrors are to them but as a summons to battle, whereof they know beforehand they shall come off victorious. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades of paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colors more beautiful, though not so glowing as they would be without it. [ Addison ]
You will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others faults. In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it ; as you can, try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. [ Ruskin ]
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, - all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. [ Beecher ]
Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, Think again, bat man.
[ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]
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 ]
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got - meaning the chairman - if you've got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me,
I said. I'm off the team, aren't I?
Well,
said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times.
It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]