Beyond one's powers. [ Horace ]
Despair doubles our powers. [ French Proverb ]
Equality of two domestic powers
Breeds scrupulous faction. [ William Shakespeare ]
Thou whom avenging powers obey.
Cancel my debt (too great to pay)
Before the sad accounting day. [ Wentworth Dillon ]
Memory, and thou, Forgetfulness, not yet
Your powers in happy harmony I find;
One oft recalls what I would fain forget,
And one blots out what I would bear in mind. [ Macedonius ]
Sometimes we are devils to ourselves.
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers.
Presuming on their changeful potency. [ William Shakespeare ]
Diseases of the mind impair the bodily powers. [ Ovid ]
The heavenly powers never go out of their road. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Power above powers!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! [ Daniel ]
Within a bony, labyrinthean cave,
Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave,
This sibyl, sweet, and mystic sense is found,
Muse, that presides over all the powers of sound. [ Abraham Coles ]
Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind. [ Horace ]
No one knows how far his powers go till he has tried. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Oh! save me, ye powers, from these pinks of the nation,
These tea-table heroes! these lords of creation. [ Salmagundi ]
Age bears away with it all things, even the powers of the mind. [ Virgil ]
Culture implies all which gives a mind possession of its powers. [ Emerson ]
Nature does more than supply materials; she also supplies powers. [ J. S. Mill ]
Even the rude breast has moments in which dark powers awaken melodies. [ Körner ]
To be silent is the safest course for the man who distrusts his own powers. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Solitude either develops the mental powers, or renders men dull and vicious. [ Victor Hugo ]
He who has neither friend, nor enemy, is without talents, powers, or energy. [ Lavater ]
Man is free as the bird in the cage: he has powers of motion within certain limits. [ Lavater ]
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers. [ Amiel ]
Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood. [ Coleridge ]
Happy is he who soon discovers the chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a contempt for mere external show. [ James A. Garfield ]
My modesty does not permit me to essay a thing which my powers are not equal to accomplish. [ Virgil ]
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. [ Carlyle ]
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new. [ Thackeray ]
To be strong by nature, to be urged on by the native powers of the mind, and to be inspired by a divine spirit, as it were. [ Cicero ]
Labour is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers under the direction and control of the will. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
Human action is a seed of circumstances scattered in the dark land of the future and hopefully left to the powers that rule human destiny. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Ye who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities, and long ponder what your powers are equal to, and what they are unable to perform. [ Horace ]
Logic is the art of thinking well; the mind, like the body, requires to be trained before it can use its powers in the most advantageous way. [ Kames ]
To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you. [ Cicero ]
The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others. [ John Ruskin ]
Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
The science of women, as that of men, must be limited according to their powers: the difference of their characters ought to limit that of their studies. [ Fenelon ]
In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith to show their powers of painting. [ John Ruskin ]
The term intellect
includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge; as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and the like. [ William Fleming ]
Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence! that, with the strong reign of commanding words, dost manage, guide and master the high eminence of men's affections! [ Daniel ]
In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people. [ Beaconsfield ]
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right. [ Dr. Johnson ]
In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting. [ Ruskin ]
The amount of honey which we accumulate from the years as they pass, depends not so much upon the number of flower-gardens through which we rove, as upon our powers of extraction. [ Henry Wood ]
Man is not merely a thinking, he is at the same time a sentient, being. He is a whole, a unity of manifold, internally connected powers, and to this whole must the work of art speak. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
No barriers, no masses of matter, however enormous, can withstand the powers of the mind; the remotest corners yield to them; all things succumb, the very heaven itself is laid open. [ Manilius ]
A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers; they arouse and animate our own people. [ Henry Clay ]
Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of extensive and various reading without reflection. [ Dugald Stewart ]
If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated. [ Dr. Arnold ]
Superior powers of mind and profound study are of no use if they do not sometimes lead a person to different conclusions from those which are formed by ordinary powers of mind without study. [ J. S. Mill ]
This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again. [ Goethe ]
He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with. [ Burke ]
The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]
Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate. [ Bryant ]
Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment: it imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. [ Whipple ]
O blessed health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. [ Sterne ]
It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]
It is averse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]
None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. [ Bovee ]
What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong. [ Martin Luther ]
The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness. [ Leigh Hunt ]
As well might a lovely woman look daily in her mirror, yet not be aware of her beauty, as a great soul be unconscious of the powers with which Heaven has gifted him; not so much for himself, as to enlighten others - a messenger from God Himself, with a high and glorious mission to perform. Woe unto him who abuses that mission! [ Chambers ]
A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and commonsense now assign to it. [ Arago ]
Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly; for then they would satiate us, and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. [ Ruskin ]
The powers of music are felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and pain; to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts; to assist and heighten devotion itself. [ Sir W. Temple ]
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]
Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness. [ Johnson ]
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 ]