I am the state. [ Attributed to Louis XIV ]
Dreams are rudiments
Of the great state to come.
We dream what is
About to happen. [ Bailey ]
A free church in a free state. [ Cavour ]
To man, in this his trial state,
The privilege is given,
When tost by tides of human fate,
To anchor fast in heaven. [ Watts ]
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great. [ Longfellow ]
How blest the humble cotter's fate!
He woos his simple dearie;
The silly bogles, wealth, and state,
Can never make them eerie. [ Burns ]
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. [ John Dryden ]
But blind to former as to future fate.
What mortal knows his preexistent state? [ Pope ]
Greatest scandal waits on greatest state. [ Shakespeare ]
The more corrupt the state, the more laws. [ Tacitus ]
All that I know is, that the facts I state
Are true as truth has ever been of late. [ Byron ]
Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night.
Ye gliding ghosts permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state. [ Dryden ]
Sin is a state of mind, not an outward act. [ Sewell ]
Keep the Church and State forever separate. [ U. S. Grant ]
Distrust and darkness of a future state
Make poor mankind so fearful of their fate,
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. [ John Dryden ]
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those. [ William Shakespeare ]
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state.
Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate. [ Pope ]
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity! [ William Shakespeare ]
Heaven knows, I had no such intent;
But that necessity so bowed the state.
That I and greatness were compelled to kiss. [ Shakespeare ]
For where's the state beneath the Firmament,
That doth excell the Bees for Government? [ Du Bartas ]
Flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone, thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. [ Milton ]
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust. [ Byron ]
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees.
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees.
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays. [ Dryden ]
Too curious man! why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown, are woe!
The all-seeing power, that made thee mortal, gave
Thee every thing a mortal state should have. [ Dryden ]
Critics on verse, as squibs on triumphs wait.
Proclaim their glory, and augment the state;
Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry
Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, ink, and die. [ Young ]
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed - their present state. [ Pope ]
In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. [ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V. Sc. 5 ]
We all live here in a state of ostentatious poverty. [ Juv ]
Sure there is none but fears a future state;
And when the most obdurate swear they do not.
Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues. [ Dryden ]
The present is never a happy state to any human being; [ Dr. Johnson ]
What constitutes a state?... Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. [ Sir William Jones ]
Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity. [ Bible ]
The slippery tops of human state, the gilded pinnacles of fate. [ Cowley ]
I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. [ Bible ]
Happiness appears to be a state that comes easiest when unsought. [ Henry D. Chapin ]
When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied. [ Tacitus ]
Gods, that never change their state, vary oft their love and hate. [ Waller ]
When men enter into the state of marriage, they stand nearest to God. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a former state of existence. [ Hindu saying ]
Equally inured by moderation either state to bear, prosperous or adverse. [ Milton ]
Peace is the happy, natural state of man; war his corruption, his disgrace. [ Thomson ]
Old trees in their living state are the only things that money cannot command. [ Landor ]
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. [ Plutarch ]
As adversity lends us to think properly of our state, it is most beneficial to us. [ Johnson ]
Perseverance is the continuance in any design, state, opinion, or course of action. [ C. Buck ]
O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state has fraught with cares my troubled wit! [ Queen Elizabeth ]
It is for the interest of the state that every one make a good use of his property.
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little enjoyed. [ Johnson ]
Though Fortune's malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel. [ William Shakespeare ]
If the prince of a State love benevolence, he will have no opponent in all the empire. [ Mencius ]
In this state she gallops, night by night, over ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. [ William Shakespeare ]
The castle which Conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. [ Locke ]
Neither exalt your pleasures, nor aggravate your vexations, beyond their real and natural state. [ Johnson ]
A democracy is a state in which the government rests directly with the majority of the citizens. [ John Ruskin ]
This iron world brings down the stoutest hearts to lowest state; for misery doth bravest minds abate. [ Spenser ]
That state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessaries are not wanting. [ Plutarch ]
If our souls be immortal, this makes amends for the frailties of life and the sufferings of this state. [ Tillotson ]
A state is never greater than when all its superfluous hands are employed in the service of the public. [ Hume ]
The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable. [ Seneca ]
The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State. [ Lowell ]
Since the invention of printing no state can now any longer be formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself. [ Jean Paul ]
In a State, pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but its prosperity will be found in righteousness. [ Confucius ]
In the present day, and especially among women, one would almost suppose that health was a state of unnatural existence. [ Beaconsfield ]
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity, is to continue in a state of childhood all our days. [ Plutarch ]
Life is rather a state of embryo, - a preparation for life. A man is not completely born until he has passed through death. [ Franklin ]
It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many. [ Swift ]
Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. [ Plato ]
In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, but much grievance. [ Carnot ]
To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The wise man is the State. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern, - the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another. [ Dr. Johnson ]
One of the first observations to make in conversation is the state, or the character, and the education of the person to whom we speak. [ Madame Necker ]
Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former. [ Horace Mann ]
In the career of female fame, there are few prizes to be obtained which can vie with the obscure state of a beloved wife or a happy mother. [ Jane Porter ]
Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. The great felicity of life,
says Seneca, is to be without perturbations.
[ Bovee ]
The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. [ Montaigne ]
That state of life is alone suitable to a man in which and for which he was born, and he who is not led abroad by great objects is far happier at home. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is, of a state of progress and change. [ John Ruskin ]
His last day places man in the same state as he was before he was born; nor after death has the body or soul any more feeling than they had before birth. [ Pliny the Elder ]
Love of power, merely to make flunkeys come and go for you, is a love, I should think, which enters only into the minds of persons in a very infantine state. [ Carlyle ]
The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock. [ Henry George ]
Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The young mind is naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more advanced state it grows rigid, and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression. [ Joshua Reynolds ]
Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state. [ Montaigne ]
My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being. [ Fichte ]
A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite. [ Isaac Disraeli ]
Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity. [ Dr. Johnson ]
In the youth of a State, arms do flourish; in the middle age of a State, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a State, mechanical arts and merchandise. [ Bacon ]
The stoical exemption which philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human life is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection aimed at by some crazy enthusiast. [ Scott ]
This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and in every state of fortune not to depart from an upright, virtuous conduct. [ Cicero ]
The misfortune in the state is that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern, and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account. [ Goethe ]
I can see why it would be prohibited to throw most things off the top of the Empire State Building, but what's wrong with little bits of cheese? They probably break down into their various gases before they even hit. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
If there remains an eternity to us after the short revolution of time we so swiftly run over here, it is clear that all the happiness that can be imagined in this fleeting state is not valuable in respect of the future. [ Locke ]
Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears, and cannot trace the source. Is it the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world, like music? [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Some new books it is necessary to read, - part for the information they contain, and others in order to acquaint one's self with the state of literature in the age in which one lives: but I would rather read too few than too many. [ Lord Dudley ]
Friendship is not a state of feeling whose elements are specifically different from those which compose every other. The emotions we feel toward a friend are the same in kind with those we experience on other occasions; but they are more complex and more exalted. [ R. Hall ]
All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. [ Thomas Paine ]
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing. [ Isaac Disraeli ]
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 ]
In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well or ill using it we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent as death, harmless as a rose's breath to a distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of death than life. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul; it takes but an instant to kill him. [ Voltaire ]
After the fever of life - after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding - after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death - at length the white throne of God - at length the beatific vision. [ Newman ]
Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression; and there are vague ways of speaking that are truer than strict facts would be. When the Psalmist said, "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law," he did not state the fact but he stated a truth deeper than fact and truer. [ Dean Alford ]
The study of the mathematics cultivates the reason; that of the languages at the same time the reason and the taste. The former gives power to the mind; the latter, both power and flexibility. The former, by itself, would prepare us for a state of certainties, which nowhere exists; the latter, for a state of probabilities, which is that of common life. [ T. Godfrey ]
So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. [ Lamb ]
Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions. [ Feltham ]
If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should imagine it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are, at the same time, loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling. [ Sir H. Davy ]
If flowers have souls,
said Undine, the bees, whose nurses they are, must seem to them darling children at the breast. I once fancied a paradise for the spirits of departed flowers.
They go,
answered I, not into paradise, but into a middle state; the souls of lilies enter into maidens' foreheads, those of hyacinths and forget-me-nots dwell in their eyes, and those of roses in their lips.
[ Richter ]
As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]
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 ]
If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it; their influence embraces the whole of life; a wife! - a mother! - two magical words, comprising the sweetest source of man's felicity; theirs is a reign of beauty, of love, of reason, - always a reign! a man takes counsel with his wife, he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live; and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions. [ Aime Martin ]
The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems. [ Coleridge ]