The precious porcelain of human clay. [ Byron ]
Precious things are not found in heaps. [ Proverb ]
Sweet are the uses of adversity:
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. [ William Shakespeare ]
O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped! [ Longfellow ]
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. [ William Shakespeare ]
The glorious sun
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,
Turning with splendor of his precious eye
The meager cloddy earth to glittering gold. [ William Shakespeare ]
Pain pays the income of each precious thing. [ William Shakespeare ]
Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. [ Milton ]
The substance of a diligent man is precious. [ Bible ]
These grains of gold are not grains of wheat!
These bars of silver thou canst not eat;
These jewels and pearls and precious stones
Cannot cure the aches in thy bones,
Nor keep the feet of death one hour
From climbing the stairways of thy tower. [ Longfellow ]
What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye? [ William Shakespeare ]
A good name is better than precious ointment. [ Bible ]
Not oft near home does genius brightly shine,
No more than precious stones while in the mine. [ Omar Khayyam ]
Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray,
Like the divining rods of Magi old,
Where precious wealth lies buried, not of gold,
But love - strong love, that never can decay! [ Park Benjamin ]
O, reputation! dearer far than life.
Thou precious balsam, lovely, sweet of smell.
Whose cordial drops once spilt by some rash hand,
Not all the owner's care, nor the repenting toil
Of the rude spiller, ever can collect
To its first purity and native sweetness. [ Sewell ]
They are the heritage that glorious minds
Bequeath unto the world! — a glittering store
Of gems, more precious far than those he finds
Who searches miser's hidden treasures over.
They are the light, the guiding star of youth.
Leading his spirit to the realms of thought,
Pointing the way to Virtue, Knowledge, Truth,
And teaching lessons, with deep wisdom fraught.
They cast strange beauty round our earthly dreams,
And mystic brightness over our daily lot;
They lead the soul afar to fairy scenes,
Where the world's under visions enter not;
They're deathless and immortal — ages pass away,
Yet still they speak, instruct, inspire, amidst decay! [ Emeline S. Smith ]
Time is precious: but truth is more precious than time. [ Beaconsfield ]
Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. [ Abd el-Kader ]
Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter,
To what shall their rarity be likened?
What price shall count their worth?
Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,
No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty. [ Tupper ]
Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
Those gifts are ever the most acceptable which the giver makes precious. [ Ovid ]
There is nothing more precious than time, and nothing more prodigally wasted. [ Proverb ]
Improve time in the present; for opportunity is precious, and time is a sword. [ Saadi ]
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart. [ J. G. Holland ]
In the power of fixing the attention, lies the most precious of the intellectual habits. [ Bishop Hall ]
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind? [ Prior ]
If time is precious. no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all. [ Carlyle ]
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things. [ Colton ]
The very beautiful rarely love at all. Those precious images are placed above the reach of the passions. [ Lander ]
Woman is the most precious jewel taken from Nature's casket, for the ornamentation and happiness of man. [ Guyard ]
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. [ Landor ]
In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. [ Channing ]
Half-uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half-veiled beauty is, more precious than the whole. [ Joanna Baillie ]
The treasures of the deep are not so precious as are the concealed comforts of a man locked up in woman's love. [ Middleton ]
There is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance. [ J. G. Holland ]
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. [ Milton ]
Do not weep, my dear lady! Your tears are too precious to shed for me; bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. [ Sterne ]
Excitement is not enjoyment; in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow. [ Victor Hugo ]
A library is a precious catacomb, wherein are embalmed and preserved imperishably the great minds of the dead who will never die. [ Chatfield ]
The love of woman is a precious treasure. Tenderness has no deeper source, devotion no purer shrine, sacrifice no more saintlike abnegation. [ Saint-Foix ]
The diamond has been always esteemed the rarest stone, and the most precious of all; among the ancients it was called the stone of reconciliation. [ Lewis Vertoman ]
Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Whoever sinks his vessel by overloading it, though it be with gold, and silver, and precious stones, will give his owner but an ill account of his voyage. [ Locke ]
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 ]
The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart. [ Horace Mann ]
A good name is like precious ointment; it filleth all round about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers. [ Bacon ]
The diamond of character is revealed by the concussion of misfortune, as the splendor of the precious jewel of the mine is developed by the blows of the lapidary. [ F. A. Durivage ]
Depend upon it, my younger brethren, the bright, self-sacrificing enthusiasms of early manhood are among the most precious things in the whole course of human life. [ H. P. Liddon ]
Many a man lives a burden upon the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life. [ Milton ]
A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself. [ Landor ]
The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
That inexhaustible good-nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. [ Washington Irving ]
The two most precious things on this side the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. [ Colton ]
A talisman that shall turn base metal into precious, Nature acknowledges not; but a talisman to turn base souls into noble, Nature has given us; and that is a philosopher's stone,
but it is a stone which the builders refuse. [ John Ruskin ]
Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another's flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure. [ Carlyle ]
Whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. [ Ruskin ]
It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time. [ Richard Baxter ]
To continue love in marriage is a science. It requires so little to kill those sweet emotions, those precious illusions, which form the charm of life; and it is so difficult to maintain a man at the height on which an exalted passion has placed him, especially when that man is one's husband! [ Mme. Reybaud ]
Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed upon man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man. [ Cervantes ]
A wise man will select his books, for he would not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends. Some can be accepted only as acquaintances. The best books of all kinds are taken to the heart, and cherished as his most precious possessions. Others to be chatted with for a time, to spend a few pleasant hours with, and laid aside, but not forgotten. [ Langford ]
Poetical taste is the only magician whose wand is not broken. No hand, except its own, can dissolve the fabric of beauty in which it dwells. Genii, unknown to Arabian fable, wait at the portal. Whatever is most precious from the loom or the mine of fancy is poured at its feet. Love, purified by contemplation, visits and cheers it; unseen musicians are heard in the dark; it is Psyche in the palace of Cupid. [ Willmott ]
Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of the spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. [ Channing ]
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got - meaning the chairman - if you've got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]