Amid life's quests
That seems but worthy one -
to do men good. [ Bailey ]
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages. [ Thomas Campbell ]
Happiness seems made to be shared. [ Corneille ]
However it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets.
And simple faith than Norman blood. [ Tennyson ]
Trust not in him that seems a saint. [ Fuller ]
The blushing cheek speaks modest mind.
The lips befitting words most kind,
The eye does tempt to love's desire,
And seems to say 'tis Cupid's fire. [ Harrington ]
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much. [ Henry W. Longfellow ]
The beautiful seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness. [ E. B. Browning ]
Man should be ever better than he seems. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]
He seems wise with whom all things thrive. [ Proverb ]
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. [ George Eliot ]
It seems as if prudence exhaled a perfume. [ Achilles Poincelot ]
Goodness thinks no ill where no ill seems. [ Milton ]
Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief. [ William Shakespeare ]
It's not too far, it just seems like it is. [ Yogi Berra ]
The swiftest despatch seems slow to desire. [ Publius Syrus ]
The foxglove, with its stately bells,
Of purple, shall adorn thy dells;
The wallflower, on each rifted rock,
From liberal blossoms shall breathe down,
(Gold blossoms frecked with iron-brown,)
Its fragrance; while the hollyhock,
The pink, and the carnation vie
With lupin and with lavender.
To decorate the fading year;
And larkspurs, many-hued, shall drive
Gloom from the groves, where red leaves lie.
And Nature seems but half alive. [ D. M. Moir ]
The healing of the world
Is in its nameless saints. Each separate star
Seems nothing; but a myriad scattered stars
Break up the night, and make it beautiful. [ Bayard Taylor ]
Who seems most hideous when adorned the most. [ Ariosto ]
There seems a life in hair, though it be dead. [ Leigh Hunt ]
In those sunk eyes the grief of years I trace.
And sorrow seems acquainted with that face. [ Ickell ]
Awkward, embarrassed, stiff, without the skill
Of moving gracefully or standing still.
One leg, as if suspicious of his brother.
Desirous seems to run away from t' other. [ Churchill ]
There is no death! What seems so is transition. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Your pot broken seems better than my whole one. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
There is no Death! what seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call Death. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems. [ Milton ]
Cowards die many times before their deaths:
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come. [ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar ]
How long seems the night to the sorrow that wakes! [ Saurin ]
How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain. [ Saurin ]
Myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide;
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. [ Milton ]
What seems only ludicrous is sometimes very serious. [ Rabelais ]
The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;
Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;
For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak. [ Eugene Lee-Hamilton ]
Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run. [ Sir William Davenant ]
Still seems it strange that thou should'st live forever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all? [ Young ]
Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live for ever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle, and that no more. [ Young ]
Divination seems heightened to its highest power in woman. [ A. B. Alcott ]
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families. [ George Henry Lewes ]
Singularity always seems to have a spice of arrogancy in it. [ Proverb ]
Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean. [ James Fenimore Cooper ]
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend so horrid as in woman. [ William Shakespeare ]
Man seems to be deficient in nothing so much as he is in time. [ Zeno ]
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows. [ Wordsworth ]
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. [ William Shakespeare ]
The desire to please everything having eyes seems inborn in maidens. [ Salamon Gessner ]
Wherever there is a display of art, truth seems to us to be wanting.
Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman. [ Amos Bronson Alcott ]
The wind always seems to blow against catchers when they are running. [ Yogi Berra ]
Nothing seems important to me but so far as it is connected with morals. [ Cecil ]
To me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
Fortune never seems so blind as to those upon whom she confers no favors. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Providence seems to have forgot the man to whom it sends but few friends. [ Proverb ]
The very perfume of flowers seems to be an incense ascending up to heaven. [ E. Jesse ]
Truth and fiction are so aptly mixed that all seems uniform and of a piece. [ Roscommon ]
Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book. [ Amos Bronson Alcott ]
Prosperity seems to be scarcely safe, unless it be mixed with a little adversity. [ Hosea Ballou ]
While his off-heel, insidiously aside. Provokes the caper which he seems to chide. [ Sheridan ]
All seems infected that the infected spy, and all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. [ Pope ]
Mend your clothes and you may hold out this year." Press a stick and it seems a youth. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems! [ Southey ]
Laziness is a good deal like money: the more a man has of it, the more he seems to want. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]
Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance. [ Whately ]
A wise man likes that best, that is itself; Not that which only seems, though it look fairer. [ Middleton ]
Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception, is really according to order. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The day seems long, but night is odious; no sleep, but dreams; no dreams but visions strange. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me. [ Swift ]
Style seems to depend on three things:
1. a mental attitude and character,
2. a familiarity with the best authors,
3. dexterity in the use of words, acquired by constant practice.
So we must learn to speak by speaking, as we learn to walk by walking, or to dance by dancing. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done. [ Swift ]
When a man seems to be wise, it is merely that his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune. [ Rochefoucauld ]
What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interests. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among human actions. [ Bacon ]
I am amazed how men can call her blind, when, by the company she keeps, she seems so very discriminating. [ Goldsmith ]
Unattainable wishes are often called pious.
This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
Surely modesty never hurt any cause; and the confidence of man seems to me to be much like the wrath of man. [ Tillotson ]
It seems to me as if not only the form, but the soul of man was made to walk erect, and look upon the stars.
[ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be. Custom will render it easy and agreeable. [ Pythagoras ]
When a strong brain is weighed with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a wedge of gold. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad. [ Johnson ]
There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, would seem vicious and miserable. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. [ Dickens ]
What is admirable justly calls forth our admiration, yet a woman seems to be no true woman who calls forth nothing else. [ Platen ]
When real nobleness accompanies that imaginary one of birth, the imaginary seems to mix with real, and becomes real, too. [ Greville ]
Pride seems to be equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem to have it just alike. [ H. W. Shaw ]
The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes seems to change, when in fact it is only complete. [ Beaconsfield ]
The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it. [ De Tocqueville ]
That chastity of look which seems to hang a veil of purest light over all her beauties, and by forbidding most inflames desire. [ Young ]
As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds. [ Colton ]
It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of heaven infills those who are leaving the light of earth. [ Victor Hugo ]
Man should be ever better than he seems; and shape his acts, and discipline his mind, to walk adorning earth, with hope of heaven. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]
The soul is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set in night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The lust of avarice has so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth. [ Pliny ]
Such a one seems to applaud, while he is really ridiculing you; attach yourself to those who advise you rather than to those who praise. [ Boileau ]
Life often seems but a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of our existence are strewn with them. [ Mme. de Stael ]
There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker. [ R. South ]
The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect. [ Plato ]
There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for defence, and for defence only; it is the safeguard of justice, and the security of innocence. [ Adam Smith ]
Music is a source of surpassing delight to many minds. From its power to soothe the feelings and modify the passions, it seems desirable to understand it. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many. [ Lowell ]
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 ]
We see but the outside of a rich man's happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time consuming herself. [ Izaak Walton ]
Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. [ Emerson ]
Paradise, as described by the theologians, seems to me too musical: I confess that I should be incapable of listening to a cantata that would last ten thousand years. [ T. Gautier ]
Unwillingness to acknowledge whatever is good in religion foreign to our own has always been a very common trait of human nature; but it seems to me neither generous nor just. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]
Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him. [ Swift ]
The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character. [ Shenstone ]
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. [ George Eliot ]
It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians. Considering I have no ear, nor even thought of music, the preference seems odd, and yet it is embraced on frequent reflection. [ H. Walpole ]
There is nothing of which men are more liberal than their good advice, be their stock of it ever so small; because it seems to carry in it an intimation of their own influence, importance, or worth. [ Young ]
The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it: it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The air seems made up of happiness, the clouds, the trees, the grass, the pathless birds, land and water, - all seem to pulsate happiness, to emit it, to breathe it forth upon us; and it falls upon us as dew upon flowers. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular. [ Addison ]
Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked path looks straighter as we approach the end. [ Richter ]
To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do today that you may enjoy tomorrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other. [ B. R. Haydon ]
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death. [ Martial ]
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 ]
Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of intelligence, energy, and virtue. The proofs to which the people are submitted, as with individuals, are necessary then to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose their character. [ Fearon ]
It seems as if all classes and conditions in life might learn to get more happiness out of their work. To accomplish this, more sentiment and less worry must be put into our efforts, which must also be viewed in their larger relations and possibilities. [ Henry D. Chapin ]
When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move, as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest. [ Colton ]
There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest; yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover. [ Shenstone ]
That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out. [ Addison ]
The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium. [ G. S. Hillard ]
It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. [ Theodore Parker ]
A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind. [ Bruyere ]
The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best,
has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits. [ Dr. Johnson ]
There are so many things to lower a man's top-sails - he is such a dependent creature - he is to pay such court to his stomach, his food, his sleep, his exercise - that, in truth, a hero is an idle word. Man seems formed to be a hero in suffering, not a hero in action. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labor. [ Cecil ]
I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do so con amore. [ Melmoth ]
What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other; as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer. For the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint. [ Fielding ]
It is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood or betray its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. [ Hawthorne ]
Association is the delight of the heart not less than of poetry. Alison observes that an autumn sunset, with its crimson clouds, glimmering trunks of trees, and wavering tints upon the grass, seems scarcely capable of embellishment. But if in this calm and beautiful glow the chime of a distant bell steal over the fields, the bosom heaves with the sensation that Dante so tenderly describes. [ Willmott ]
A clear running brook is the best teacher of style. There is a quick forward movement - but not measured or monotonous movement - while the water is so limpid that everything is seen through the crystal medium. It seems to me that the best style is that which reveals the writer's thoughts so easily, plainly, and musically that the reader becomes engrossed in the thought or story and forgets the writer. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, - the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
I cannot look around me without being struck with the analogy observable in the works of God. I find the Bible written in the style of His other books of Creation and Providence. The pen seems in the same hand. I see it, indeed, write at times my steriously in each of these books: thus I know that mystery in the works of God is only another name for my ignorance. The moment, therefore, that I become humble, all becomes right. [ Richard Cecil ]
He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously; who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them. [ Washington Irving ]
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. [ Charles Lamb ]
Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. [ Washington Irving ]
The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbors, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. [ G. A. Sola ]