Set good against evil. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Diamonds are best plain set. [ Rolle ]
Set a thief to catch a thief. [ Proverb ]
Set the cart before the horse. [ John Heywood ]
A fine diamond may be ill set. [ Proverb ]
To set up a sail to every wind . [ Proverb ]
Set hard heart against hard hap. [ Proverb ]
Man's work lasts till set of sun;
Woman's work is never done. [ Proverb ]
I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white.
The violets, and the lily-cups
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs, where the robin built,
And where my brother set,
The laburnum on his birthday -
The tree is living yet. [ Hood ]
He the cross who longest bears
Finds his sorrow's bounds are set. [ Winkworth ]
I never saw an eye so bright,
And yet so soft as hers;
It sometimes swam in liquid light.
And sometimes swam in tears;
It seemed a beauty set apart
For softness and for signs. [ Mrs. Welby ]
Others set carts before the horses. [ Rabelais ]
Ask why God made the gem so small,
And why so huge the granite?
Because God meant mankind should set
The higher value on it. [ Burns ]
I've often wished that I had clear.
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood. [ Swift ]
Live, live today; tomorrow never yet
On any human being rose or set. [ Marsden ]
As you from crimes would pardon'd be.
Let your indulgence set me free. [ William Shakespeare ]
Heaven
Is as the Book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read His wondrous works. [ Milton ]
They cannot set their horses together. [ Proverb ]
He thought the World to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the Town;
In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set - Mankind. [ Hannah More ]
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads. [ William Shakespeare ]
Set off with numerous breaks and dashes. [ Swift ]
I will set a spoke in your cart for you. [ Proverb ]
Like a miller, he can set to every wind. [ Proverb ]
A combination, and a form, indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
Subtlety set up a trap and caught itself. [ Proverb ]
It is ill to set spurs to a flying horse. [ Proverb ]
Honesty needs no pains to set itself off. [ Edward Moore ]
Set not your loaf in till the oven is hot. [ Proverb ]
And O the buttercups! that field
O' the cloth of gold, where pennons swam -
Where France set up his lilied shield,
His oriflamb,
And Henry's lion-standard rolled:
What was it to their matchless sheen,
Their million million drops of gold
Among the green! [ Jean Ingelow ]
As the wind blows, you must set your sail. [ Proverb ]
Love waits for love, though the sun be set,
And the stars come out, the dews are wet,
And the night-winds moan. [ Dr. Walter Smith ]
Let him set up a shop upon Goodwin's sands. [ Proverb ]
Against change of fortune set a bold heart. [ French Proverb ]
Fools set stools tor wise men to stumble at. [ Proverb ]
When night hath set her silver lamp on high.
Then is the time for study. [ Bailey ]
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. [ Bacon ]
Oftentimes, excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse;
As patches, set upon a little breach.
Discredit more in hiding of the fault,
Than did the fault before it was so patched. [ William Shakespeare ]
So weary with disasters tugged with fortune.
That I would set my life on any chance,
To mend, or be rid of it. [ William Shakespeare ]
He set my house afire only to roast his eggs. [ Proverb ]
You set saffron and there came up wolfs-bane. [ Proverb ]
Wisdom in a poor man is a diamond set in lead. [ Proverb ]
What hath this day deserved? what hath it done.
That it in golden letters should be set
Among the high tides in the calendar? [ William Shakespeare ]
O love, they die, in yon rich sky.
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul.
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. [ Tennyson ]
Midnight hags.
By force of potent spells, of bloody characters,
And conjurations, horrible to hear,
Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep,
And set the ministers of hell at work. [ Rowe ]
Set the hare's head against the goose's giblets. [ Proverb ]
The sun is still beautiful, though ready to set. [ Proverb ]
Feeble souls always set to work at the wrong time. [ Cardinal de Reiz ]
Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride a gallop. [ Burton ]
No date prefixed directs me in the starry rubric set. [ Milton ]
Set a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to the devil. [ Proverb ]
Set not your house on fire to be revenged of the moon. [ Proverb ]
It is time to set in when the oven comes to the bread. [ Proverb ]
Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]
Gain at the expense of credit must be set down as loss. [ Proverb ]
If the devil catch a man idle, he will set him at work. [ Proverb ]
Idleness and chastity cannot set their horses together. [ Proverb ]
Set not thyself to attain much rest, but much patience. [ Thomas a Kempis ]
Passion and deliberation never set their horses together. [ Proverb ]
Set a stool in the sun, when one knave rises another comes. [ Proverb ]
To many men well-fitting doors are not set on their tongues. [ Theognis ]
The sun of freedom cannot set so long as smiths hammer iron. [ E. M. Arndt ]
A man may write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. [ Sam'l Johnson ]
Much is set to music that is not even worthy of being spoken. [ Beaumarchais ]
It is of no use running, to set out betimes is the main point. [ La Fontaine ]
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. [ Colossians, chap. iii ]
Flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar. [ William Shakespeare ]
Gossips and tale-bearers set afire all the houses they come into. [ Proverb ]
You may row your heart out, if the wind and tide set against you. [ Proverb ]
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Wherever the devil makes a purchase, he never fails to set his mark. [ Goldsmith ]
If you love something set it free, unless the vultures are circling.
An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with jewels nothing can become. [ Dryden ]
When a man is set upon his own ruin, it is in vain to reason with him. [ Proverb ]
Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set. [ Colton ]
I have set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die. [ Shakespeare ]
Dignities and honours set off merit, as good dress does handsome persons. [ Proverb ]
Set but this feather well to my arrow and he'll certainly shoot the mark. [ Proverb ]
I do beseech you - chiefly that I may set it in my prayers - what is your name? [ William Shakespeare ]
A person that is beautiful and vicious, is a fine picture set in a scurvy frame. [ Proverb ]
Don't seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching. [ George Eliot ]
A diamond, though set in horn, is still a diamond, and sparkles as in purest gold. [ Massinger ]
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. [ Lowell ]
The soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it. [ John Ruskin ]
Set all things in their own peculiar place, And know that order is the greatest grace. [ Dryden ]
Affection is a coal that must be cooled: Else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire. [ William Shakespeare ]
Happiness is always the inaccessible castle which sinks in ruin when we set foot on it. [ Arsene Houssaye ]
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, and delves the parallels in beauty's brow. [ William Shakespeare ]
To enlarge or illustrate this power of the effects of love is to set a candle in the sun. [ Robert Burton ]
Lifted up so high I disdained subjection, and thought one step higher would set me highest. [ Milton ]
The castle which Conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
All things are double, one against another. Good is set against evil, and life against death. [ Ecclus ]
Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free. [ Dr. Johnson ]
I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire. [ William Shakespeare ]
Wisdom and virtue are the greatest beauty, but it is an advantage to a diamond to be well set. [ Matthew Henry ]
God has set the type of marriage through creation. Each creature seeks its perfection in another. [ Luther ]
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, especially the eyes. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
If you love something set it free. If it comes back it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be. [ Source unknown ]
Suns may set and rise; we, when our short day is closed, must sleep on during one never-ending night. [ Catullus ]
Women are a fascinatingly wilful set. Every woman is a rebel and usually in wild revolt against herself. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other. [ Luther ]
Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to. [ Bishop Horne ]
Genius does not care much for a set of explicit regulations, but that does not mean that genius is lawless. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]
Nobody contents himself with rough diamonds, or wears them so. When polished and set, then they give a lustre. [ Locke ]
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold. [ Shelley ]
I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social. [ William M. Thackeray ]
In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to its real value, but to the value our fancies set upon it. [ Addison ]
You may set it down as a truth, which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the test of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves. [ Bishop Whately ]
Sorrow, like a heavy ringing bell, once set on ringing, with its own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell. [ William Shakespeare ]
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 ]
Shun to seek what is hid in the Womb of the morrow, and set down as gain in life's ledger whatever time fate shall have granted thee. [ Horace ]
It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age. [ Addison ]
He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short. [ Guicciardini ]
There is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure. [ Addison ]
Poetry is something to make us wiser and better by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls. [ Lowell ]
Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul. [ Alexander Maclaren ]
When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast; and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood. [ Tillotson ]
To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be, not a virtue, but the groundwork of a virtue. [ Johnson ]
Generosity, when once set going, knows not how to stop; as the more familiar we are with the lovely form, the more enamored we become of her charms. [ Pliny the Younger ]
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction, and set with the sharp mordant of experience. [ Lowell ]
A table without music is little better than a manger; for music at meals is like a carbuncle set in gold, or the signet of an emerald highly burnished. [ Epictetus ]
Heroes are men who set out to be demi-gods in their own eyes, and who end by being so at certain moments by dint of despising and combating all humanity. [ George Sand ]
A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work today, would have to begin it again tomorrow. [ Colton ]
God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffinman's bell. [ Carlyle ]
The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue. [ Moliere ]
The shortest and surest way to prove a work possible is strenuously to set about it; and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so. [ South ]
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 ]
Nothing can be so quick and sudden as the operations of the mind, especially when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which the other two are but journeymen, set it to work. [ Fielding ]
I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions. [ Ben Jonson ]
The useful encourages itself; for the multitude produce it, and no one can dispense with it: the beautiful must be encouraged; for few can set it forth, and many need it. [ Goethe ]
Guns, swords, batteries, armies and ships of war are set in motion by man for the subjugation of an enemy. Women bring conquerors to their feet with the magic of their eyes. [ Dr. J. V. C. Smith ]
Short is the life of those who possess great accomplishments, and seldom do they reach a good old age. Whatever thou lovest, pray that thou mayest not set too high a value on it. [ Martial ]
We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs; the Lord hath the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom, and it will be well for us to learn to wait. [ Spurgeon ]
He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die. [ Owen Feltham ]
Obey thy parents, keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy pen from lenders' books. [ William Shakespeare ]
To be as good as our fathers, Me must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it. [ Wendell Phillips ]
It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity. [ M. M. Brewster ]
Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend upon such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man's hands to set the tables, yet is he not certain to win the game. [ George Herbert ]
The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book into the student.' [ Willmott ]
The heart will commonly govern the head, and it is certain that any strong passion, set the wrong way, will soon infatuate even the wisest of men, therefore the first part of wisdom is to watch the affections. [ Dr. Waterland ]
Against specious appearances we must set clear convictions, bright and ready for use. When death appears as an evil, we ought immediately to remember that evils are things to be avoided, but death is inevitable. [ Epictetus ]
A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones. [ Swift ]
To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed. [ Tillotson ]
The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. [ Colton ]
What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watch-tower, having the softest nerves for receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision! [ Charnock ]
But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age. [ Beecher ]
My first and last secret of Art is to get a thorough intelligence of the fact to be painted, represented, or, in whatever way, set forth - the fact deep as Hades, high as heaven, and written so, as to the visual face of it on this poor earth. [ Carlyle ]
No good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. [ John Ruskin ]
He that is ambitious for his son, should give him untried names, For those have served other men, haply may injure by their evils; Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; therefore set him by himself. To win for his individual name some clear praise. [ Tupper ]
If there is excellence in my composition, set it down, first of all things and last, to the general fact that I have no method. Modes of expression in writing, like modes of expression in speech, are referable purely to feeling, not studied, but of the moment. [ Gen. Lew Wallace, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
It is a beautiful self-denial for the affluent to set an example of neatness, plainness, and simplicity. Such an influence is peculiarly salutary in our state of society, where the large class of young females, who earn a subsistance by labor, are so addicted to the love of finery. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
The silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]
Portion or Part? The distinction between these words is usually unheeded. A portion is a part assigned, allotted, or set aside for a special purpose; part has a less limited meaning. Hence, we may say correctly:
In what part of the city do you live?
What portion of the estate do you inherit?
. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Love to make others happy; yes, surely at all times, so far as you can. But at bottom that is not the aim of any life. Do not think that your life means a mere searching in gutters for fallen creatures to wipe and set up.... In our life there is no meaning at all except the work we have done. [ Carlyle ]
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at pace, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence. [ Colton ]
Phaeton was his father's heir; born to attain the highest fortune without earning it; he had built no sun-chariot (could not build the simplest wheel-barrow), but could and would insist on driving one; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent gig and horses spinning through infinite space, and set the universe on fire. [ Carlyle ]
The study of art possesses this great and peculiar charm, that it is absolutely unconnected with the struggles and contests of ordinary life. By private interests, by political questions, men are deeply divided, and set at variance; but beyond and above all such party strifes, they are attracted and united by a taste for the beautiful in art. [ Guizot ]
Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has set in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good, in its place, as conscience or veneration. Praying can no more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying. [ Beecher ]
Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]
As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanketmaking and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace. [ Ruskin ]
We see a world of pains taken and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and after all the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want commonsense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. [ Steele ]
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 ]
His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins table-talk of his neighbor at another's board, to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter; whose choleric answer he returns to his first host, enlarged with a second edition; so as it used to be done in the fight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. [ Bishop Hall ]
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. [ Addison ]
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another.... And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal. [ John Ruskin ]