Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I picked a welcome. [ William Shakespeare ]

To be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. [ William Shakespeare ]

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Ay, sir, to be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of two thousand. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked up in strangers' galleries. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

When you hear that your neighbour has picked up a purse of gold in the street, never run out into the same street, looking about you, in order to pick up such another. [ Goldsmith ]

Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. It has been by that means, said he to a boy at our house one day, that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk. [ Mrs. Piozzi ]

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. [ Emerson ]