Linen often to water,
Soon to tatter. [ Proverb ]

Mercy often inflicts death. [ Seneca ]

Money often costs too much. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Often might overcomes right. [ Proverb ]

Silver from the living
Is gold in the giving:
Gold from the dying
Is but silver a-flying.
Gold and silver from the dead
Turn too often into lead. [ Fuller ]

One devil often drubs another. [ Proverb ]

Folly is often sick of itself. [ Proverb ]

Trusting often makes fidelity. [ Proverb ]

Pity often gives birth to love. [ Mme. de Sartory ]

Those who in quarrels interpose.
Must often wipe a bloody nose. [ Gay ]

Honesty is often goaded to ruin. [ Phaedr ]

Bad luck often brings good luck. [ Proverb ]

Vanity is often the unseen spur. [ Thackeray ]

Little and often fills the purse. [ Proverb ]

Custom does often reason overrule. [ Rochester ]

Expediency often silences justice. [ Seneca ]

Bravery is often too sharp a spur. [ Kossuth ]

Pardon others often, thyself never. [ Publius Syrus ]

Courage is often an effect of fear. [ French Proverb ]

Beauty and folly go often together. [ French Proverb ]

I've often wished that I had clear.
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood. [ Swift ]

Marriage is often but ennui for two. [ Commerson ]

A first failure is often a blessing. [ A. L. Brown ]

Sunrise is often lovelier than noon. [ Carlyle ]

He that goes out with often loss
Comes home at last by weeping cross. [ Proverb ]

Prosperity often presages adversity. [ Hosea Ballou ]

As often as we do good, we sacrifice. [ Proverb ]

Forgive others often, yourself never. [ Syrus ]

Wit and judgment often are at strife. [ Pope ]

Labor is often the father of pleasure. [ Voltaire ]

He that knows little often repeats it. [ Proverb ]

Fortune, my friend, I've often thought
Is weak, if Art assist her not:
So equally all Arts are vain,
If Fortune help them not again. [ Sheridan ]

You cackle often but never lay an egg. [ Proverb ]

Necessity is often the spur to genius. [ Balzac ]

Indolence is often taken for patience. [ French Proverb ]

Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least. [ Wordsworth ]

Suspicion is very often a useless pain. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Covetousness often starves other vices. [ Proverb ]

Riches are often abused, never refused. [ Danish Proverb ]

In time we hate that which we often fear [ William Shakespeare ]

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers. [ J. Roux ]

The law often allows what honor forbids. [ Saurin ]

Things are often spoke and seldom meant. [ William Shakespeare ]

Money often unmakes the men who make it. [ Proverb ]

A deep meaning often lies in old Customs. [ Schiller ]

Plants too often removed will not thrive. [ Proverb ]

Disappointment is often the salt of life. [ Theodore Parker ]

Prospect is often better than possession. [ Proverb ]

The worst men often give the best advice. [ Bailey ]

Often times to please fools wise men err. [ Proverb ]

A burlesque word is often a mighty sermon. [ Boileau ]

A single word often betrays a great design. [ Racine ]

Rich men have often the hearts of poor men. [ Proverb ]

Good sword has often been in poor scabbard. [ Gaelic Proverb ]

Stumbling often is a sign of falling quite. [ Proverb ]

Reason deceives us often; conscience never. [ Rousseau ]

'Tis a stern and a startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving;
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife.
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living! [ Hood ]

Vices are often habits rather than passions. [ Rivarol ]

The law often permits what honour prohibits. [ Saurin ]

A man often pays dear for a small frugality. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

So often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in today already walks tomorrow. [ Coleridge ]

A thought often makes us hotter than a fire. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Our virtues are often but vices in disguise. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

A man dies as often as he loses his friends. [ Bacon ]

Often try what weight you can support.
And what your shoulders are too weak to bear. [ Roscommon ]

Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,
More than quick words do move a woman's mind. [ Two Gent. of Ver ]

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 ]

Consider how the desperate fight;
Despair strikes wild, - but often fatal too -
And in the mad encounter wins success. [ Havard ]

Taste is often one of the aspects of fashion. [ Willmott ]

The stone that is rolling can gather no moss,
Who often removeth is suer of loss. [ Tusser ]

A man dies as often as he loses his relatives. [ Publius Syrus ]

Jests, like sweetmeats, have often sour sauce. [ Proverb ]

Bad advice is often most fatal to the adviser. [ Flaccus ]

What is nearest is often unattainably far off. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]

Desert and rewards very often go not together. [ Proverb ]

Reason deceives us often, - conscience, never.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. [ Jean J. Rousseau ]

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]

Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm. [ Joseph Roux ]

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. [ George Eliot ]

The poor too often turn away unheard,
From hearts that shut against them with a sound
That will be heard in heaven. [ Longfellow ]

We often weep before we have had time to smile. [ Victor Hugo ]

Vice often rides triumphant in virtue's chariot. [ Proverb ]

Much would have more, but often meets with less. [ Proverb ]

Censure is often useful, praise often deceitful. [ Churchill ]

Prosperity and vanity are often lodged together. [ Proverb ]

Wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. [ Pope ]

Friendship is a plant which one must water often. [ German Proverb ]

Men love little and often, women much and rarely. [ Basta ]

A royal heart is often hid under a tattered coat. [ Danish Proverb ]

An opportunity is often lost through deliberation. [ Publius Syrus ]

In the mouth of a bad dog falls often a good bone. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The strictest justice is often grossest injustice. [ Cicero ]

The purse of the patient often protracts his case. [ Zimmermann ]

Man loves little and often, woman much and rarely. [ Basta ]

As often as we do good, we offer sacrifice to God. [ Aristotle ]

Under white ashes there often lurk glowing embers. [ Danish Proverb ]

She who often looks in the glass thinks of her tail. [ Proverb ]

Truth dwells not in the clouds; the bow that's there
Doth often aim at, never hit the sphere. [ George Herbert ]

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason. [ W. R. Alger ]

Deadly poisons are often concealed under sweet honey. [ Ovid ]

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Fit words are fine, but often fine words are not fit. [ Proverb ]

Age is suspicious, but is not itself often suspected. [ Zimmermann ]

Unreasonable haste is often the direct road to error. [ Moliere ]

Truth, like roses, often blossoms upon a thorny stem. [ Hafiz ]

Patience, when outraged often, is converted into rage. [ Proverb ]

We often hear bursts of laughter that sound like sobs. [ De Finod ]

Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it. [ Fielding ]

Alas! that from happiness there so often springs pain. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

Grace comes often clad in the dusky robe of desolation. [ Beaumont ]

A great man and a great river are often ill neighbours. [ Proverb ]

Pride and poverty are ill met, yet often seen together. [ Proverb ]

As often as you do wrong, justice has you on the score. [ Proverb ]

A simpleton often suggests a significant bit of advice. [ Boileau ]

A weak man is often so good that he is good for nothing. [ E. P. Day ]

Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection. [ Colton ]

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]

How often we see the greatest genius buried in obscurity! [ Plautus ]

Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance. [ Beecher ]

It is often a comfort in misfortune to know our own fate. [ Quintus Curtius Rufus ]

Caution, though very often wasted. is a good risk to take. [ H. W. Shaw ]

It it often easier to make new, than to cobble up the old. [ Proverb ]

A joke never gains over an enemy, but often loses a friend. [ Proverb ]

Jealousy is the forerunner of love, and often its awakener. [ P. Marion Crawford ]

The disgrace of others often deters tender minds from vice. [ Horace ]

'Twas a hand
White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland
The hand of a woman is often, in youth.
Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless, in truth;
Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm,
Or as sorrow has crossed the life line in the palm? [ Lord Lytton ]

Caprice in women often infringes upon the rules of decency. [ Bruyere ]

Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest. [ Colton ]

Man is more often injured than helped by the means he uses. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Every one is as God made him, and often a great deal worse. [ Cervantes ]

Vigorous exercise will often fortify a feeble constitution. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]

Prosperity often best discovers vices, and adversity virtue. [ Proverb ]

The love of the past is often but the hatred of the present. [ Dorian ]

Pride perceiving humility honorable often borrows her cloak. [ Proverb ]

Time hath often cured the wound which reason failed to heal. [ Seneca ]

Letters which are warmly sealed are often but coldly opened. [ Richter ]

The eye of Paul Pry often finds more than he wished to find. [ Lessing ]

Great books, like large skulls, have often the least brains. [ W. B. Clulow ]

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home. [ Joseph Roux ]

A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick. [ Sir W. Temple ]

What reason and endeavour cannot bring about, often time will. [ Proverb ]

The anticipation of pleasure often equals the pleasure itself. [ Fabre d'Eglantine ]

Of our enemies, the smallest are often the most to be dreaded. [ La Fontaine ]

Reputation is often got without merit, and lost without crime. [ Proverb ]

Prudery is often the mantle chosen to conceal triumphant vice.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

The virtue of women is often the love of reputation and quiet. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never. [ Colton ]

Those who lament for fortune do not often lament for themselves. [ Voltaire ]

The pitcher goes so often to the well that it is broken at last. [ French ]

Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things. [ Whipple ]

Fame is but the breath of the people, and that often unwholesome. [ Proverb ]

We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them. [ Vauvenargues ]

Tangible language, which often tells more falsehoods than truths. [ Abraham Lincoln ]

I regret often that I have spoken, never that I have been silent. [ Publius Syrus ]

Folly and learning (such as it is) often dwell in the same person. [ Proverb ]

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues. [ Bovee ]

Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit. [ Fielding ]

Sharp wits, like sharp knives, do often cut their owner's fingers. [ Arrowsmith ]

Our pity is often misapplied, for none can tell what another feels. [ Proverb ]

Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers. [ Johnson ]

The silence often of pure innocence persuades, when speaking fails. [ William Shakespeare ]

The pitcher that goes often to the well, comes home broken at last. [ Proverb ]

The farthest from the fear are often Dearest to the stroke of fate. [ Young ]

A great fondness for animals often results from a knowledge of men.

I have often thought of death, and I find it the least of all evils. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. [ Confucius ]

Libertines are hideous spiders, that often catch pretty butterflies. [ Diderot ]

Chance often gives us that which we should not have presumed to ask. [ Lamartine ]

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods. [ C. C. Colton ]

He who thinks himself good for everything is often good for nothing. [ Picard ]

A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Necessity rouses from sloth, and despair is often the cause of hope. [ Rufus ]

Often has a small spark through neglect raised a great conflagration. [ Rufus ]

Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare. [ Queen Elizabeth ]

Ridicule is often employed with more power and success than severity. [ Horace ]

Imagination is too often accompanied with a somewhat irregular logic. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Love often reillumes his extinguished flame at the torch of jealousy. [ Lady Blessington ]

Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances. [ Livy ]

They that talk like philosophers are often observed to act like fools. [ Proverb ]

He that buys what he does not want, must often sell what he does want. [ Proverb ]

Divine indifference and brutish indifference are too often confounded. [ Feuchtersleben ]

Fortune often lends her smiles, as churls do money, to undo the debtor. [ Proverb ]

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Marriage often unites for life two people who scarcely know each other. [ Balzac ]

Man is often a wolf to man, a serpent to God, and a scorpion to himself. [ Spurgeon ]

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. [ O. W. Holmes ]

The woman we love most is often the one to whom we express it the least. [ Beauchene ]

Love, that sometimes corrupts pure bodies, often purifies corrupt hearts. [ Latena ]

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

Expect injuries; for men are weak, and thou thyself doest such too often. [ Jean Paul ]

Provocation is a play of coquetry of which virtue often pays the penalty. [ Lingrie ]

We often shed tears which deceive ourselves after having deceived others. [ Rochefoucauld ]

A man of wit would often be much embarrassed without the company of fools. [ La Roche ]

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly. [ Whipple ]

Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant others. [ La Roche ]

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for. [ Landor ]

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Sometimes death is a punishment; often a gift; it has been a favor to many. [ Seneca ]

O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness! [ Victor Hugo ]

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [ Quintilian ]

Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness, and saved by their coquetry. [ Mlle. Azais ]

Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others. [ Colton ]

It is true that friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship never. [ Colton ]

In love, the confidant of a woman's sorrow often becomes the consoler of it.

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble. [ Kossuth ]

As a man is, so is his God: therefore God was so often an object of mockery. [ Goethe ]

The most careful reasoning characters are very often the most easily abashed. [ Mme. de Stael ]

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

Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds soon choke up the unused path. [ Scandinavian proverb ]

Fortune often rewards with interest those that have patience to wait for her. [ Proverb ]

Violence in the voice is often only the death-rattle of reason in the throat. [ J. F. Boyes ]

It is a pity that we so often succeed in our endeavors to deceive each other. [ Empress Irene ]

It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it. [ Madame Necker ]

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket. [ Dr. Johnson ]

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. [ Swift ]

Often the cockloft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high. [ Thomas Fuller ]

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

Prosperity is often an equivocal word denoting merely affluence of possession. [ Blair ]

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away. [ Arthur Helps ]

Our flatterers are our most dangerous enemies, and yet often lie in our bosoms. [ Proverb ]

We are often more agreeable through our faults than through our good qualities. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Amiability is very often a weakness, but the most unobjectionable one as a rule. [ Lady Morgan ]

Nothing is so often irrevocably neglected as an opportunity of daily occurrence. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Great men often rejoice at crosses of fortune, just as brave soldiers do at wars. [ Seneca ]

It often happens that the quotations constitute the most valuable part of a book. [ Vicesimus Knox ]

Beauty is often but a splendid cloak which conceals the imperfections of the soul. [ T. Gautier ]

Proverbs are, for the most part, rules of morals, and as such are often effective. [ Rev. Dr. Sharp ]

Often most telling and often most unfair; stimulated by want of a juster argument. [ W. R. Alger ]

The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies. [ Macaulay ]

The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth. [ La Bruyere ]

Remember always, that man is a creature whose reason is often darkened with error. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

We are so desirous of vengeance that people often offend us by not giving offence. [ Madame Deluzy ]

Ridicule often cuts the Gordian knot more effectively than the severity of satire. [ Horace ]

Man's caution often into danger turns, and his guard falling crushes him to death. [ Young ]

The attainment of our greatest desires is often the source of our greatest sorrows.

Small-pot-soon-hot style of eloquence is what our county conventions often exhibit. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible. [ Colton ]

Provocation is one of the arts of coquetry for which virtue often pays the penalty. [ Lingree ]

A happy jest often gives birth to another; but the child is seldom worth the mother. [ Alfred Bougeart ]

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

The friendship of a man is often a support; that of a woman is always a consolation. [ Rochepedre ]

The friendships of the world are often confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure. [ Addison ]

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words. [ H. W. Shaw ]

There is often more true spiritual force in a proverb than in a philosophical system. [ Carlyle ]

A man of wit would often be much embarrassed if it were not for the company of fools. [ La Roche ]

The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Vanity and pride sustain so close an alliance as to be often mistaken for each other. [ Gladstone ]

A tardiness in Nature, which often leaves the history unspoke, that it intends to do. [ William Shakespeare ]

It often falls, in course of common life, that right long time is overborne of wrong. [ Spenser ]

It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven. [ N. Caussin ]

If he had spewed so often as he has lied, he would have brought up his guts long ago. [ Proverb ]

What is often called indolence is in fact the unconscious consciousness of incapacity. [ H. C. Robinson ]

In this world, full often our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast. [ Beecher ]

Wine often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. [ Addison ]

Ridicule often settles matters of importance better and more effectually than severity. [ Horace ]

The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak. [ Hare ]

Silence often expresses more powerfully than speech the verdict and judgment of society. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book. [ Samuel Smiles ]

We often diet a healthy body into consumption, by plying it with physic instead of food. [ Swift ]

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little. [ Swift ]

In friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge. [ William Shakespeare ]

To me the meanest flower that blows, can give thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable. [ Daniel Webster ]

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts. [ Fielding ]

The fate of a nation has often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister. [ Voltaire ]

Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven. [ Mme. Necker ]

In the adversity of our best friends we often find something which does not displease us. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery. [ Schiller ]

There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be so. [ Rochefoucauld ]

A critic should be a pair of snuffers. He is often an extinguisher, and not seldom a thief. [ Hare ]

A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Ridicule, while it often checks what is absurd, fully as often smothers that which is noble. [ Scott ]

The heart of a loving woman is a golden sanctuary, where often there reigns an idol of clay. [ Limayrac ]

Women often deceive to conceal what they feel; men to simulate what they do not feel - love. [ E. Legouve ]

The subtle sauce of malice is often indulged in by maidens of uncertain age, over their tea. [ Rivarol ]

Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate. [ William Shakespeare ]

Falsehood is often rocked by truth; but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse. [ Colton ]

We should often be ashamed of our best actions if the world saw the motives which inspire us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

A calumnious abuse, too often repeated, becomes so familiar to the ear as to lose its effect.

Rascal! That word on the lips of a woman, addressed to a too daring man, often means - angel!

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

Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them. [ Lamartine ]

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The quantity of books in a library is often a cloud of witnesses of the ignorance of the owner. [ Oxenstiern ]

Often the world discovers a man's moral worth only when its injustice has nearly destroyed him. [ De Finod ]

Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without tears. [ Johnson ]

We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure that we find in appearing so. [ De Barthelemy ]

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Vanity, shame, and, above all, temperament, often make the valor of men, and the virtue of women. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Books, while they teach us to respect the interest of others, often make us unmindful of our own. [ Goldsmith ]

Glory is a shroud that posterity often tears from the shoulders of those who wore it, when living. [ Beranger ]

You will as often find a great man above, as below, his reputation, when once you come to know him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Malice is a passion so impetuous and precipitate, that it often involves the agent and the patient. [ Government of the Tongue ]

We are often governed by people not only weaker than ourselves, but even by those whom we think so. [ Lord Greville ]

Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. [ Johnson ]

Often turn the stile (correct with care) if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice. [ Horace ]

The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze. [ Lavater ]

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. [ Shenstone ]

Marriage is often the denouement of comedies and novels; tragedy is often the denouement of marriage. [ De Finod ]

How often events, by chance and unexpectedly, come to pass, which you had not dared even to hope for! [ Terence ]

What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interests. [ Rochefoucauld ]

There is an English song beginning, Love knocks at the door. He knocks less often than he finds it open. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor. [ Hazlitt ]

There is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in a want of a due improvement of them. [ Locke ]

The modern craze for bargains has often inflicted great hardships upon a certain class of humble toilers. [ Douglas ]

Unattainable wishes are often called pious. This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Women should be doubly careful of their conduct, since appearances often injure them as much as real faults. [ Abbe Girard ]

Modern education too often covers the fingers with rings, and at the same time cuts the sinews at the wrist. [ Earl of Sterling ]

Love in marriage would be the realization of a beautiful dream, if marriage were not too often the end of it. [ A. Karr ]

Persecution often does in this life what the last day will do completely - separate the wheat from the tares. [ Milner ]

Cares are often more difficult to thrown off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow upon it. [ Richter ]

In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course. [ Metastasio, Achille ]

The proverb is true, that light gains make heavy purses; for light gains come often, great gains now and then. [ Bacon ]

Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms - oftenest. God bless her! - in female breasts. [ Dickens ]

Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. [ Abraham Lincoln ]

It is often shorter and better to yield to others than to endeavor to compel others to adjust themselves to us. [ La Bruyere ]

Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the wrist parries a mortal thrust. [ R. Sharp ]

We dream such beautiful dreams, that we often lose all our happiness when we perceive that they are only dreams. [ E. Souvestre ]

Men believe that their reason governs their words; but it often happens the words have power to react on reason. [ Bacon ]

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption. [ Thoreau ]

It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is often simple patience. [ Horace Bushnell ]

I have often thought that the nature of women was inferior to that of men in general, but superior in particular. [ Greville ]

Instruction does not prevent waste of time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all. [ Froude ]

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived. [ Colton ]

There are few faces that can afford to smile. A smile is sometimes bewitching; in general vapid; often a contortion. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Long customs are not easily broken: he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain. [ Johnson ]

Sleep brings dreams; and dreams are often most vivid and fantastical before we have yet been wholly lost in slumber. [ Robert Montgomery Bird ]

Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry, and is as often trundling in a wheelbarrow as lolling in a coach and six. [ Goldsmith ]

The dew of heaven is often as beneficial as rain; it is one of those dispensations of a wise and gracious Providence. [ Sturm ]

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. [ Washington Irving ]

To profess one thing and to do another occurs very often, especially with those who continually boast of their virtue. [ T. Gautier ]

He that, by often arguing against his own sense, imposes falsehoods on others, is not far from believing them himself. [ Locke ]

It is from our enemies chat we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes. [ Thomas Paine ]

You pity a man who is lame or blind; but you never pity him for being a fool, which is often a much greater misfortune. [ Sydney Smith ]

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as the blazing meteor when it descends to the earth is only a stone. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

As often as I come back to his door, his love met me on the threshold, and his noble serenity gave me comfort and peace. [ William Winter ]

The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Prudery is often immodestly modest; its habit is to multiply sentinels in proportion as the fortress is less threatened. [ G. D. Prentice ]

The abandoning of some lower end in obedience to a higher aim is often made the very condition of securing the lower one. [ J. C. Sharp ]

He who has no taste for order will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions. [ Lavater ]

Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Sympathetic people are often uncommunicative about themselves; they give back reflected images which hide their own depths. [ George Eliot ]

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together. [ Shenstone ]

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change. [ Chamfort ]

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never. [ Coleridge ]

Wealth hath never given happiness, but often hastened misery; enough hath never caused misery but often quickened happiness. [ Tupper ]

Often a man is irregular in his conduct solely because his position does not allow him the monotonous pleasures of marriage. [ La Beaumelle ]

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment. [ Landor ]

The art of being able to make a good use of moderate abilities wins esteem and often confers more reputation than real merit. [ La Bruyere ]

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive. [ Dr. Johnson ]

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well. [ Montesquieu ]

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one common pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. [ Johnson ]

Some are brave men one day and cowards another, as great captains have often told me, from their own experience and observation. [ Sir W. Temple ]

Of yore, they languished, they burned, they died for love; today, they chat about it, they make it, and, more often, they buy it. [ Jouy ]

We should often have reason to be ashamed of our most brilliant actions if the world could see the motives from which they spring. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity. [ Chesterfield ]

O place! O form, how often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming! [ William Shakespeare ]

Pride, in some particular disguise or other - often a secret to be proud himself - is the most ordinary spring of action among men. [ Steele ]

A single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold, capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf. [ Trench ]

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. When education ends, genius often begins. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Nor or Or? These conjunctions are often confused. Example: I can neither read or write. In this sentence or is incorrectly used for nor. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

A friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one. [ Addison ]

It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many. [ Burke ]

Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is often fatal to the best talents. It supplies the place of many talents. [ Simms ]

Nature gives healthy children much; how much! Wise education is a wise unfolding of this; often it unfolds itself better of its own accord. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The reason why the character of woman is so often misunderstood, is that it is the beautiful nature of woman to veil her soul as her charms. [ F. Schlegel ]

To despond is to be ungrateful beforehand. Be not looking for evil. Often thou drainest the gall of fear while evil is passing thy dwelling. [ Tupper ]

For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We ought to be careful indeed what we say. [ Confucius ]

It often requires more strength and judgment to resist than to embrace an opportunity. It is better to do nothing than to do other than well. [ Sydney Dobell ]

Life often seems but a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of our existence are strewn with them. [ Mme. de Stael ]

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms. [ Swift ]

I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case, I should often find matter for rejoicing. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned. [ Johnson ]

Party or Person? Party, a collective noun, meaning a number of persons is often incorrectly used for person; as, He was a very agreeable party. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts - both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium. [ Shenstone ]

The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire. [ E. de Girardin ]

There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

The pride of the heart is the attribute of honest men; pride of manners is that of fools; the pride of birth and rank is often the pride of dupes. [ Duclos ]

There is among men such intense affectation that they often boast of defects which they have not, more willingly than of qualities which they have. [ George Sand ]

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often succumbs and goes into a decline. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

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 ]

Much complaining I often hear raised against the proud bearing of the great. The pride of the great will disappear as soon as we cease our cringing. [ Körner ]

The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest. [ Emile Souvestre ]

A human heart is a skein of such imperceptibly and subtly interwoven threads, that even the owner of it is often himself at a loss how to unravel it. [ Ruffini ]

The human heart is often the victim of the sensations of the moment; success intoxicates it to presumption, and disappointment dejects and terrifies it. [ Volney ]

Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part; but fame relates all, and often more than all. [ Thomas Fuller ]

Intellectual fairness is often only another name for indolence and inconclusiveness of mind, just as love of truth is sometimes a fine phrase for temper. [ J. Morley ]

There are women so hard to please that it would seem as if nothing less than an angel would suit them; and hence it comes that they often encounter devils. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

A noble soul spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an irresistible grace, and often even triumphs over the natural disfavor. [ Schiller ]

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that are in them what were we? [ Leigh Hunt ]

Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men. [ B. R. Haydon ]

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail. [ W. E. Channing ]

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Grace pays its respects to true intrinsic worth, not to the mere signs and trappings of it, which often only show where it ought to be, not where it really is. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

The chance meeting, the unplanned outing, and the unexpected diversion that so often come unsought in the passing days, afford the common channels of happiness. [ Henry D. Chapin ]

Those who are conversant with books well know how often they mislead us when we have not a living monitor at hand to assist us in comparing practice with theory. [ Junius ]

Adverse fortune seldom spares men of the noblest virtues. No one can with safety expose himself often to dangers. The man who has often escaped is at last caught. [ Seneca ]

Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet. [ Chapin ]

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity. [ Shenstone ]

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult, - whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water, - which afterwards subside into cheerful peace. [ George Eliot ]

A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile, often frightens away a prude; but, when real danger forces the former to flee, the latter does not hesitate to advance. [ Latena ]

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. [ Swift ]

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

How much more mothers love their children than their husbands; the latter are often selfish and cruel; but children cannot separate their mother's from their affection. [ Mme. Paterson Bonaparte ]

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. [ Pope ]

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. [ Emerson ]

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. His name, like a shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground. [ Johnson ]

There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is plain as noon to all other eyes. [ Rev. Dr. Croly ]

The coquette compromises her reputation, and sometimes saves her virtue: the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honor in secret, and preserves it in public opinion. [ Mme. du Socage ]

But the sublime, when it is introduced at a seasonable moment, has often carried all before it with the rapidity of lightning, and shown at a glance the mighty power of genius. [ Longinus ]

It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money. [ Ruskin ]

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 ]

I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what he calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute. [ Addison ]

A good ear for music, and a good taste for music, are two very different things winch are often confounded; and so is comprehending and enjoying every object of sense and sentiment. [ Lord Greville ]

The effusions of genius, or rather the manifestations of what is called talent, are often the effects of distempered nerves and complexional spleen, as pearls are morbid secretions. [ Robert Walsh ]

Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. [ John Ruskin ]

It is too generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful what they owe to God for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often enough and regularly enough. [ Bishop Whately ]

He was given to flights of oratory that way - a very dangerous thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there, and down you come. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]

Gravity, with all its pretensions, was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

We rarely repent of having spoken too little, very often of having spoken too much: a maxim this which is old and trivial, and which every one knows, but which every one does not practise. [ La Bruyère ]

If much reason is necessary to remain in celibacy, still more is required to marry. One must then have reason for two; and often all the reason of the two does not make one reasonable being. [ Balzac ]

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Unfortunately friends too often weigh one another in their hypochondriacal humours, and in an over-exacting spirit. One must weigh men by avoirdupois weight, and not by the jeweller's scales. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Husband and wife have so many interests in common that when they have jogged through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at first galled often grows easy and familiar. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

For from the crushed flowers of gladness on the road of life a sweet perfume is wafted over to the present hour, as marching armies often send out from heaths the fragrance of trampled plants. [ Richter ]

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 ]

Common fame is the only liar that deserveth to have some respect still reserved to it: though she telleth many an untruth, she often hits right, and most especially when she speaketh ill of men. [ Saville ]

Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription. [ Whately ]

The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens. [ Metastasio ]

He who allows his happiness to depend too much on reason, who submits his pleasures to examination, and desires enjoyments only of the most refined nature, too often ends by not having any at all. [ Chamfort ]

There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself. [ Hazlitt ]

It is with jealousy as with the gout. When such distempers are in the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out, and that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected. [ Fielding ]

A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes brother to a beggar. There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else. [ Spurgeon ]

Men and communities in this world are often in the position of Arctic explorers, who are making great speed in a given direction, while the ice-floe beneath them is making greater speed in the opposite. [ John Burroughs ]

The centuries are all lineal children of one another; and often, in the portrait of early grandfathers, this and the other enigmatic feature of the newest grandson will disclose itself, to mutual elucidation. [ Carlyle ]

The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all. [ Emerson ]

The courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; and when it is only a kind of instinct in the soul, it breaks out on all occasions, without judgment or discretion. [ Addison ]

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. [ Thomas Paine ]

He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less. [ Colton ]

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly. Holmes disposed of a bigot at once, when he compared his mind to the pupil of the eye - the more light you let into it the more it contracts. [ Whipple ]

Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Want of perseverance is the great fault of women in everything - morals, attention to health, friendship, and so on. It cannot be too often repeated that women never reach the end of anything through want of perseverance. [ Mme. Necker ]

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Gifts of rings by lovers have always been common; but how pleasant when the husband can look to the past, to the present, to the future, with feelings of love, honor, and duty, and not as is often the case with repentance. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]

Persuasion, Sect, or Denomination? Persuasion, the definition of which should be plain to every one who speaks English, is often ludicrously used in the sense of sect or denomination; as, He is of the Methodist persuasion. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout. [ Landor ]

The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best. [ Plutarch ]

Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse - a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable. [ Colton ]

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 ]

Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice. [ Colton ]

Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies' wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn-door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. [ Samuel Smiles ]

I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition. [ Addison ]

An honest reputation is within the reach of all men; they obtain it by social virtues, and by doing their duty. This kind of reputation, it is true, is neither brilliant nor startling, but it is often the most useful for happiness. [ Duclos ]

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons, which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons, which are strong. [ Colton ]

The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a house of mourning, I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory. [ T. L. Cuyler ]

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]

Avarice often produces opposite effects; there is an infinite number of people who sacrifice all their property to doubtful and distant expectations; others despise great future advantages to obtain present interests of a trifling nature. [ Kochefoucauld ]

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 ]

Music once admitted to the soul becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies; it wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. [ Bulwer ]

One could not wish any man to fall into a fault; yet it is often precisely after a fault, or a crime even, that the morality which is in a man first unfolds itself, and what of strength he as a man possesses, now when all else is gone from him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

I had fifteen years' apprenticeship on the press of New York, writing editorials upon every conceivable subject, often at a few minutes notice, acquiring in this way rapid thought and rapid expression. ... The proof of genius lies in continuity. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

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 ]

I have often heard it said, and I believe it to be true, that even the most eloquent man living, and however deeply impressed with the subject, could scarcely find utterance if he were to be standing up alone, and speaking only against a dead wall. [ Erskine ]

Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor. [ Macaulay ]

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

How oft my guardian angel gently cried, Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see How he persists to knock and wait for thee! And, O! how often to that voice of sorrow, Tomorrow we will open, I replied. And when the morrow came I answered still, Tomorrow. [ Tome Burguillos ]

How often a new affection makes a new man! The sordid, cowering soul turns heroic. The frivolous girl becomes the steadfast martyr of patience and ministration, transfigured by deathless love. The career of bounding impulses turns into an anthem of sacred deeds. [ Chapin ]

What is the world, or its opinion, to him who has studied in the lives of men the mysteries of their egotism and perfidy! He knows that the best and most generous hearts are often forced to tread the thorny paths, where insults and outrages are heaped upon them! [ George Sand ]

Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash - for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present. [ Colton ]

The wild force of genius has often been fated by Nature to be finally overcome by quiet strength. The volcano sends up its red bolt with terrific force, as if it would strike the stars; but the calm, resistless hand of gravitation seizes it and brings it to the earth. [ Bayne ]

Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. [ Henry Drummond ]

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. [ Tuckerman ]

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]

Sombre thoughts and fancies often require a little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pinetrees which take root in, and frown over the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapors of fancy. [ J. F. Boyes ]

We have often thought it strange that moralists should have written and spoken of the mutability of human life as if it were a thing to be dreaded and mourned over; to our mind, mutability is the soul of poetry, and the source of nearly all the most delightful and sacred pleasures of life. [ Stubbs ]

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 ]

Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]

The education which has, however, made me a writer has been a living one. I have not only read much, I have seen much, and enjoyed much, and, above all, I have sorrowed much. God has put into my hands every cup of life, sweet and bitter, and the bitter has often become sweet, and the sweet bitter. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

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 ]

How often in the halls of legislation does eloquence unmask corruption, expose intrigue, and overthrow tyranny! In the cause of mercy it is omnipotent. It is bold in the consciousness of its superiority, fearless and unyielding in the purity of its motives. All opposition it destroys; all power it defies. [ Henry Melville ]

The failure of his mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence: indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy. [ Sir Benjamin Brodie ]

Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at pace, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence. [ Colton ]

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. [ Dr. Johnson ]

From extensive acquaintance with many lands, I unhesitatingly affirm that everywhere God has provided pure water for man, and that the wines drunk are often miserable and dirty. I have found water everywhere that I have traveled, in China and India, Palestine and Egypt, - and everywhere water has been my beverage. [ Thomas Cook, the Tourist ]

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind. [ Bruyere ]

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 ]

Often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by its old perfume, an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds of our first dim feelings! [ Richter ]

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 ]

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it - a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

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 ]

It is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood or betray its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. [ Hawthorne ]

Who is there who has not experienced that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us as village children a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us. by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora-clouds of our first dim feelings? [ Richter ]

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 ]

The habit of exaggeration in language should be guarded against; it misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive; it imposes on us the society of a balloon, when a moderately-sized skull would fill the place much better; it begets much evil in promising what it cannot perform, and we have often found the most glowing declarations of intended good services end in mere Irish vows. [ Eliza Cook ]

Living authors, therefore, are usually bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen - for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well. [ Colton ]

We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success. [ G. A. Sala ]

It is the saying of an old divine, Two things in ray apparel I will chiefly aim at - commodiousness and decency; more than these is not commendable, yet I hate an effeminate spruceness as much as a fantastic disorder. A neglected comeliness is the best ornament. It is said of the celebrated Mr. Whitfield that he always was very clean and neat, and often said pleasantly that a minister of the gospel ought to be without a spot. [ J. Beaumont ]

Paraphernalia, Trappings or Regalia? We often hear paraphernalia used in the sense of trappings or regalia; as, The Grand Marshal was conspicuous in his gorgeous paraphernalia The word is derived from the Greek, and is strictly a law term, meaning whatever the wife brings with her at marriage, in addition to her dower, such as her dresses and her jewels. Hence the evident absurdity of the use of paraphernalia in the sentence cited. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, - the wise, the good, or the great man, - very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. [ Joseph Addison ]

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 ]

Over Under. These words have various meanings besides the designation of mere locality, and are often misapplied. The terms under oath, under hand and seal, under arms, under his own signature, etc., are fully established and authorized forms of expression, which do not concern the relative positions of the persons and things indicated, but are idiomatic. Hence, over his own signature, is an unjustifiable phrase, despite the fact that the signature is really at the bottom of the instrument signed. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

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 ]

Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. [ Colton ]

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 ]

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]

I have very often lamented and hinted my sorrow, in several speculations, that the art of painting is made so little use of to the improvement of manners. When we consider that it places the action of the person represented in the most agreeable aspect imaginable, - that it does not only express the passion or concern as it sits upon him who is drawn, but has under those features the height of the painter's imagination, - what strong images of virtue and humanity might we not expect would be instilled into the mind from the labors of the pencil! [ Steele ]

Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars - reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]