The soul knows no persons. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Believe not each accusing tongue,
As most weak persons do;
But still believe that story wrong
Which ought not to be true. [ Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan ]

In persons grafted in a serious trust,
Negligence is a crime. [ William Shakespeare ]

Quiet persons are welcome every where. [ Proverb ]

The tongue of idle persons is never idle. [ Proverb ]

Few persons comprehend the power of ugliness. [ Mirabeau ]

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. [ William Shakespeare ]

Great persons seldom see their face in a true glass. [ Proverb ]

Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure
Which is useful to them to praise which deceives them. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Under the hands of unlucky persons, opportunities wax old. [ Proverb ]

Persons unmask their evilest qualities when they do quarrel. [ George Herbert ]

Ill tongues ought to be heard only by persons of discretion. [ Proverb ]

There are few persons to whom truth is not a sort of insult. [ Ségur ]

There are persons always standing ready to believe a scandal. [ Ovid ]

The hatred of persons related to each other is the most violent. [ Tacitus ]

Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons. [ A. B. Alcott ]

It is seldom that beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue. [ Bacon ]

Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits. [ Alfred de Musset ]

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

Man had perished long ago, had it not been for public spirited persons. [ Proverb ]

A group in which statues or pictures are represented by living persons. [ French ]

Dignities and honours set off merit, as good dress does handsome persons. [ Proverb ]

Big destinies of nations or of persons are not founded gratis in this world. [ Carlyle ]

How many persons fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old! [ Stanislaus ]

Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it. [ Hillard ]

Persecution to persons in a high rank stands them in the stead of eminent virtue. [ Cardinal de Retz ]

Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words. [ George Eliot ]

Many persons carry about their character in their hands, not a few under their feet. [ Murillo ]

Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. [ Voltaire ]

We like to know the weaknesses of eminent persons; it consoles us for our inferiority. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

Two persons will not be friends long if they cannot forgive each other little failings. [ La Bruyere ]

It requires two indiscreet persons to institute a quarrel; one individual cannot quarrel alone. [ Aime-Martin ]

Those that eat cherries with great persons, shall have their eyes squirted out with the stones. [ Proverb ]

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them. [ Colton ]

We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary. [ Rochefoucauld ]

The greatest of all sins is the sin of love: it is so great that it takes two persons to commit it. [ Cardinal Le Camus ]

Persons famous in the arts partake of the immortality of princes, and are upon a footing with them. [ Francis I ]

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows vain persons than virtuous ones. [ Bacon ]

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Most persons are disposed to expend more than they can afford, and to indulge more than they can endure. [ Mme. de Puisieux ]

Much of the good or evil that befalls persons arises from the well or ill managing of their conversation. [ Judge Hale ]

There are persons who do not know how to waste their time alone, and hence become the scourge of busy people. [ De Bonald ]

Topics of conversation among the multitude are generally persons, sometimes things, scarcely ever principles. [ W. B. Clulow ]

Genius, in one respect, is like gold - numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. [ Colton ]

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another. [ E. Budgell ]

What blockheads are those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads! [ Southey ]

All nations that grew great out of little or nothing did so merely by the public-mindedness of particular persons. [ South ]

We seldom find persons whom we acknowledge to be possessed of good sense, except those who agree with us in opinion. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Very great benefactors to the rich, or those whom they call people at their ease, are your persons of no consequence. [ Steele ]

To attack vices in the abstract without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. [ Junius ]

Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Sympathy is a relationship of the heart and mind: between two persons of different sex the senses enter the relationship. [ A. Dupuy ]

Scruples, temptations, and fears, and cutting perplexities of heart, are frequently the lot of the most excellent persons. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation. [ Swift ]

Persons of fine manners make behaviour the first sign of force,--behaviour, and not performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

There are few persons of greater worth than their reputation; but how many are there whose worth is far short of their reputation! [ Stanislaus ]

It is dangerous to discover the faults or weaknesses of certain persons: they never forgive us the knowledge of these secret ulcers. [ De Finod ]

We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes. [ Thackeray ]

Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged of from glimpses got in the press of affairs or a few occasions. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

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 ]

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company. [ Swift ]

If you seek warmth of affection from a similar motive to that from which cats and dogs and slothful persons hug the fire, you are on the downward road. [ Thoreau ]

They consume a considerable quantity of our paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons. [ Addison ]

I never listen to calumnies, because, if they are untrue, I run the risk of being deceived, and if they are true, of hating persons not worth thinking about. [ Montesquieu ]

Love of power, merely to make flunkeys come and go for you, is a love, I should think, which enters only into the minds of persons in a very infantine state. [ Carlyle ]

Women are only told that they resemble angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them homage. [ Phoebe Gary ]

Persons who are very plausible and excessively polite have generally some design upon you, as also religionists who call you "dear" the first time they see you. [ Spurgeon ]

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 ]

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or, at least, they must work their limbs or features. [ Holmes ]

Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; too hard a religion, few religious persons whose devotion is of long continuance. [ St. Evremond ]

Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty. [ Shenstone ]

We esteem in the world those who do not merit our esteem, and neglect persons of true worth; but the world is like the ocean - the pearl is in its depths, the seaweed swims. [ G. P. Morris ]

There is one preacher who does preach with effect, and gradually persuade all persons; his name is Destiny, Divine Providence, and his sermon the inflexible course of things. [ Carlyle ]

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether. [ Coleridge ]

Women always show more taste in adorning others than themselves; and the reason is that their persons are like their hearts - they read another's better that they can their own. [ Richter ]

Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation! [ Pascal ]

Good-nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it, and certainly to everybody who dwells with them, in so far as mere happiness is concerned. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The truth of it is, there is nothing in history which is so improving to the reader as those accounts which we meet with of the death of eminent persons and of their behavior in that dreadful season. [ Addison ]

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over. [ Colton ]

People or Persons? The meaning of people is a body of persons regarded collectively, a nation; hence the obvious inaccuracy of the expression, Many people think so. Persons is preferable in any such sense. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity or classical works with gross and trivial recollections. [ Wordsworth ]

Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to record it. [ Carlyle ]

A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy. [ Lavater ]

Let women paint their eyes with tints of chastity, insert into their ears the word of God, tie the yoke of Christ around their necks, and adorn their whole persons with the silk of sanctity and the damask of devotion. [ Tertullian ]

There are persons who flatter themselves that the size of their works will make them immortal. They pile up reluctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors, because they are gigantic, could contend with truth and heaven! [ Junius ]

When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. [ Colton ]

The want of interest renders a person negligent; servants are commonly negligent in what concerns their master's interest. Negligence is therefore the fault of persons of all descriptions, but particularly those in low condition. [ G. Crabb ]

There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford. [ Shenstone ]

Persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul, wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Ordinary or Common? A distinction may be thus drawn between these terms; what is common is done by many persons; what is ordinary is repeated many times. Ordinary has to do with the repetition of the act; common, with the persons who perform it. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Welfare requires one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with, - persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day, by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

We proudly say we are equal. In the largest sense before God we are, but in every other sense we are not. No two persons have the same gifts, the same tastes, the same habits. One must complement the other. It is a mutual life we lead in a mutual world. [ Caroline Hazard ]

When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials: when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things. [ Shenstone ]

Natural knowledge is come at by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world. [ Bishop Butler ]

In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. [ Emerson ]

Perfect friendship puts us under the necessity of being virtuous; as it can only be preserved among esteemable persons, it forces us to resemble them; you find in friendship the surety of good counsel, the emulation of good example, sympathy in our griefs, and succor in our distress. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero. [ Fielding ]

Wealth is not acquired, as many persons suppose, by fortunate speculations and splendid enterprises, but by the daily practice of industry, frugality, and economy. He who relies upon these means will rarely be found destitute, and he who relies upon any other will generally become bankrupt. [ Wayland ]

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 ]

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar; the case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor toward the latter part of life. [ Shenstone ]

We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. [ Trench ]

Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves. [ Bacon ]

Nominate or Name? To nominate is to mention for a specific purpose. To name is to mention for a general purpose. Persons only are nominated; things, as well as persons, are named. To be nominated is a public act; to be named is generally private. To be nominated is always an honor; to be named may, according to circumstances, be either honorable or dishonorable. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Individuals possessing moderate sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth. [ George Combe ]

It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. [ Addison ]

It deserves to be considered that boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences. Whence it is bad in council though good in execution. The right use of bold persons, therefore, is that they never command in chief, but serve as seconds, under the direction of others. For in council it is good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them unless they are very great. [ Bacon ]

The light of the sun, the light of the moon, and the light of the air, in nature and substance are one and the same light, and yet they are there distinct lights: the light of the sun being of itself, and from none; the light of the moon from the sun; and the light of the air from them both. So the Divine Nature is one, and the persons three; subsisting, after a diverse manner, in one and the same Nature. [ R. Newton ]

Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight. [ Emerson ]

Neighborhood or Vicinity? Neighborhood means the place which is nigh, that is, nigh to one's habitation; vicinity primarily means the place which does not exceed in distance the extent of a village. Neighborhood refers to the inhabitants, or to inhabited places, and denotes nearness of persons to each other, or to objects; as, a populous neighborhood, vicinity denotes nearness of one object to another, whether person or thing; as, Oakland is in the vicinity of San Francisco.

There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive. [ H. W. Beecher ]

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 ]

A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]