Be swift to hear, slow to speak. [ Proverb ]
The swift hour flies on double wings. [ Seneca ]
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight.
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light. [ Cowper ]
Fear though blind is swift and strong. [ Dr. Mackay ]
Wouldst thou wisely, and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short measure,
From the slow one counsel take,
But a tool of him never make;
Ne'er as friend the swift one know,
Nor the constant one as foe. [ Schiller ]
Love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame:
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show,
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? [ O. W. Holmes ]
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
Swift kindnesses are best: a long delay
In kindness takes the kindness all away. [ Anon ]
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift
Than time or motion. [ Milton ]
Take all the swift advantage of the hour. [ William Shakespeare ]
Experience is by industry achieved,
And perfected by the swift course of time. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentleman of Verona ]
If you be not so swift as he, go to rights. [ Proverb ]
Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Untoiled, and swift, and of a silken sound. [ Cowper ]
They are those winged messengers that can fly
From the Antarctic to the Arctic sky;
The heralds and swift harbingers that move
From east to west on embassies of love. [ Howell ]
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. [ Lyte ]
Though a lie may be swift, truth overtakes it. [ Italian Proverb ]
But strong of limb
And swift of foot misfortune is, and, far
Outstripping all, comes first to every land,
And there wreaks evil on mankind, which prayers
Do afterwards redress. [ Homer ]
Swift, speedy Time, feathered with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow. [ Samuel Daniel ]
Borne on the swift, tho' silent wings of time,
Old age comes on apace, to ravage all the clime. [ Beattie ]
Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. [ Wm. Knox ]
On wrong
Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong. [ Pope ]
Swift defined observation to be an old man's memory. [ James A. Garfield ]
Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast.
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards. [ William Shakespeare ]
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last.
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. [ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida ]
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. [ Bible ]
To the persevering mortals, the blessed immortals are swift. [ Zoroaster ]
A wicked conscience mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thoughts. [ William Shakespeare ]
Her luxuriant hair. It was like the sweep of a swift wing in visions! [ Willis ]
What a woman says to her lover should be written on air or swift water. [ Catullus ]
What woman says to her fond lover should be written in air or the swift water. [ Catullus ]
For the qualities of sheer wit and humor. Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. [ Leigh Hunt ]
It was Dean Swift who ignored the bill of fare, and asked for a bill of the company. [ N. P. Willis ]
Time steals on and escapes us, like the swift river that glides on with rapid stream. [ Ovid ]
Reason's progressive; instinct is complete; swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs. [ Young ]
Haste me to know it; that I with wings as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. [ William Shakespeare ]
Though you had the wisdom of Newton or the wit of Swift, garrulousness would lower you in the eyes of your fellow-creatures. [ Burns ]
Nothing is so swift as calumny; nothing is more easily uttered; nothing more readily received; nothing more widely dispersed. [ Cicero ]
There is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, it flies so swift that it outruns the eye. [ Bacon ]
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly, and never seeking her own. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. [ Bible ]
It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind. [ Lowell ]
That great mystery of time, were there no other; the illimitable, silent never-resting thing called time,
rolling, rushing on, swift, silent like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are and then are not - this is for ever very literally a miracle, a thing to strike us dumb; for we have no word to speak about it. [ Carlyle ]