One to destroy is murder by the law.
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name.
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame. [ Young ]

He who errs in the tens, errs in the thousands. [ Italian Proverb ]

War its thousands slays, peace its ten thousands. [ Beilby Porteous ]

Words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. [ Byron ]

And otherwhyles with amorous delights
And pleasing toyes he would her entertaine.
Now singing sweetly to surprise her sprights,
Now making layes of love and lover's paine,
Bransles, ballads, virelayes, and verses vaine!
Oft purposes, oft riddles, he devys'd;
And thousands like which flowed in his braine,
With which he fed her fancy, and entys'd
To take to his new love, and leave her old despys'd. [ Spenser ]

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
Who steals my purse steals trash;
'Tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed. [ William Shakespeare ]

I never saw a man die of hunger, but thousands die of overfeeding. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Mistaking taste for genius is the rock on which thousands have split. [ J. T. Headley ]

Hundreds can talk to one who can think; thousands can think to one who can see. [ Ruskin ]

In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the church, counted its martyrs by thousands. [ James A. Garfield ]

Wine takes away reason, engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations. [ Pliny ]

Though thou art disappointed in a hope, never let hope fail thee; though one door is shut, there are thousands still open for thee. [ Rückert ]

Is death more cruel from a private dagger than in the field from murdering swords of thousands? Or does the number slain make slaughter glorious? [ Gibber ]

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already, thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him. [ Carlyle ]

Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receives. [ Colton ]

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field. [ Burke ]

Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]

Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness. [ Johnson ]

When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar! [ Carlyle ]