Good men are a public good. [ Proverb ]
Public reproof hardens shame. [ Proverb ]
Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care. [ Milton ]
Public opinion is a second conscience. [ W. R. Alger ]
The noblest motive is the public good. [ Virgil ]
To hide true worth from public view,
Is burying diamonds in their mine,
All is not gold that shines, 'tis true;
But all that is gold ought to shine. [ Bishop ]
The public is the majority of a society. [ Johnson ]
The public is wiser than the wisest critic. [ Bancroft ]
You pretend the public but intend yourself. [ Proverb ]
Religion crowns the statesman and the man,
Sole source of public and of private peace. [ Young ]
The public? The public is just a great baby. [ Dr. Chalmers ]
The public have neither shame nor gratitude. [ Hazlitt ]
A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal.
Is more than armies to the public weal. [ Pope ]
I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated,
Especially since it lives and lets me live. [ Goethe ]
There are things
Which make revenge a virtue by reflection,
And not an impulse of mere anger; though
The laws sleep, justice wakes, and injured souls
Oft do a public right with private wrong. [ Byron ]
What belongs to the public, is nobody's property. [ Proverb ]
An ill man in office is a mischief to the public. [ Proverb ]
The public sense is in advance of private practice. [ Chapin ]
Chide a friend in private and praise him in public. [ Solon ]
Twas a public feast and public day -
Quite full, right dull, guests hot, and dishes cold,
Great plenty, much formality, small cheer.
And everybody out of their own sphere. [ Byron ]
The family of the public-spirited men is always extinct. [ Proverb ]
Censure's the tax a man pays the public for being eminent. [ Proverb ]
You should not live one way in private, another in public. [ Syrus ]
Criticism should be written for the public, not the artist. [ Wm. Winter ]
Public instruction should be the first object of government. [ Napoleon I ]
He that puts on a public gown must put off a private person. [ Proverb ]
He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest. [ Solon ]
To amuse the public: what a sad vocation for a man who thinks!
The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. [ Jonathan Swift ]
The majority of a society is the true definition of the public. [ Johnson ]
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. [ Beecher ]
Man had perished long ago, had it not been for public spirited persons. [ Proverb ]
Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good. [ Prescott ]
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public. [ Chamfort ]
He that does any thing for the public, is accounted to do it for nobody. [ Proverb ]
I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice. [ Samuel Johnson ]
We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]
The public! the public! how many fools does it require to make the public? [ Chamfort ]
The public are to be caught by the ears, as one takes a pot by the handles. [ Proverb ]
I am very anxious to please the public, particularly as it lives and lets live. [ Goethe ]
If you wish to write well, study the life about you, - life in the public streets. [ Horace Mann ]
With us law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least. [ Horace ]
A balloon sent up to ascertain the direction of the wind; any test of public feeling. [ French ]
It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. [ Goethe ]
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. [ Dr. Johnson ]
No one is qualified to converse in public who is not highly contented without such conversation. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it. [ Goethe ]
I would give more for the private esteem and love of one than for the public praise of ten thousand. [ W. R. Alger ]
A state is never greater than when all its superfluous hands are employed in the service of the public. [ Hume ]
Every generous action loves the public view, yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it. [ Cicero ]
The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts is proportioned to that of the public prosperity. [ T. B. Macaulay ]
The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear. [ Goethe ]
The too good opinion man has of himself is the nursing-mother of all false opinions, both public and private. [ Montaigne ]
Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
One could not commit a greater crime against public interests than to show indulgence to those who violate them. [ Richelieu ]
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management. [ La Bruyere ]
All nations that grew great out of little or nothing did so merely by the public-mindedness of particular persons. [ South ]
The reason we are so pleased to find out other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. [ La Bruyère ]
Every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence. [ Joseph Story ]
The amount of women who flirt with their own husbands is scandalous. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest. [ Benjamin F. Butler ]
Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty. [ Ulysses S. Grant ]
There is only one cure for public distress, and that is public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. [ John Ruskin ]
An enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. [ Burke ]
Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. [ Quarles ]
Artists may produce excellent designs, but they will avail little, unless the taste of the public is sufficiently cultivated to appreciate them. [ George C. Mason ]
We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people. [ Chamfort ]
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. [ Burke ]
In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. [ Macaulay ]
Every great example of punishment has in it some tincture of injustice, but the wrong to individuals is compensated by the promotion of the public good. [ Tac ]
It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Public opinion is the atmosphere of Society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms. [ W. R. Alger ]
That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one. [ Whately ]
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 ]
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 ]
What the tender and poetic youth dreams today, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is tomorrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the character of nations. [ Emerson ]
A cold-blooded learned man might, for anything I know, compose in his closet an eloquent book; but in public discourse, arising out of sudden occasions, he could by no possibility be eloquent. [ Erskine ]
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public... [ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Inaugeration Speech, Jan 20, 2017 ]
A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily processiona of love and duty. [ Chapin ]
In public affairs, we may usually infer the weakness of the cause by the excessive price that ministers have freely paid to those whose eloquence, or whose sophistry, has enabled them to make that weakness triumph. [ Colton ]
A poet of superior merit, whose vein is of no vulgar kind, who never winds off anything trite, nor coins a trivial poem at the public mint, I cannot describe, but only recognise as a man whose soul is free from all anxiety. [ Juv ]
After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters. [ Nodier ]
In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude. Every man will speak as he thinks, or, more properly, without thinking, and consequently will judge of effects without attending to their causes. [ George Washington ]
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say: but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work. [ Voltaire ]
If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. [ Emerson ]
Personal attachment is no fit ground for public conduct, and those who declare they will take care of the rights of the sovereign because they have received favours at his hand, betray a little mind and warrant the conclusion that if they did not receive those favours they would be less mindful of their duties, and act with less zeal for his interest. [ C. Fox ]
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applause of the public. [ Addison ]
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 ]
The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness. [ Zimmermann ]
There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]
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 ]
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 ]
I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own. [ Thackeray ]
Men cannot labor on always. They must have intervals of relaxation. They cannot sleep through these interTafs. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have recreation. And if they have not recreation from healthful sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or, if they have pleasures, which, though innocent, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are liable to become poisoned fountains. [ Orville Dewey ]
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
The man who makes a success of an important venture never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticised. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done. [ C. V. White ]