We were born to die. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 3. Sc. 4 ]

What if my words
Were meant for deeds. [ George Eliot ]

I gaze upon the thousand stars
That fill the midnight sky;
And wish, so passionately wish,
A light like theirs on high.
I have such eagerness of hope
To benefit my kind;
I feel as if immortal power
Were given to my mind. [ Miss Landon ]

We were overwhelming underdogs. [ Yogi Berra ]

If things were to be done twice.
All would be wise. [ Proverb ]

You were born when wit was scarce. [ Proverb ]

That holy dream - that holy dream.
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
A lonely spirit guiding. [ Poe ]

Capons were at first but chickens. [ Proverb ]

Dark eyes - eternal soul of pride!
Deep life in all that's true!
Away, away to other skies!
Away over seas and sands!
Such eyes as those were never made
To shine in other lands. [ Leland ]

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul:
The mind's the standard of the man. [ Watts ]

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more!
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. [ Percy ]

And rash enthusiasm in good society
Were nothing but a moral inebriety. [ Byron ]

Ornaments were invented by modesty. [ Joubert ]

The groves were God's first temples. [ Bryant ]

If it were a bear it would bite you. [ Proverb ]

Then take me on your knee, mother;
And listen, mother of mine.
A hundred fairies danced last night.
And the harpers they were nine. [ Mary Howitt ]

Those eyes that were so bright, love,
Have now a dimmer shine;
But what they've lost in light, love.
Is what they gave to mine.
And, still those orbs reflect, love,
The beams of former hours.
That ripened all my joys, love,
And tinted all my flowers. [ Hood ]

How blue were Ariadne's eyes
When, from the sea's horizon line,
At eve, she raised them on the skies!
My Psyche, bluer far are thine. [ Aubrey De Vere ]

What skilful limner ever would choose
To paint the rainbow's varying hues.
Unless to mortal it were given
To dip his brush in dyes of heaven? [ Scott ]

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon Him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that He on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those,
Whom He to follow Him hath chose. [ Izaak Walton ]

You were bred in brazen-nose college. [ Proverb ]

Happy were men if they but understood
There is no safety but in doing good. [ John Fountain ]

No greater men are now than ever were. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Habit is, as it were, a second nature. [ Cicero ]

And all the meadows, wide unrolled,
Were green and silver, green and gold.
Where buttercups and daisies spun
Their shining tissues in the sun. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]

Redeem the misspent time that's past,
And live this day as it were thy last. [ Ken ]

Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured. [ Lamb ]

O, that I were a glove upon that hand.
That I might touch that cheek! [ William Shakespeare ]

'Tis immortality to die aspiring,
As if a man were taken quick to heaven. [ Geo. Chapman ]

It is good fish, if it were but caught. [ Proverb ]

The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed.
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,
As if that soul were fled. [ Moore ]

We know that wealth well understood,
Hath frequent power of doing good;
Then fancy that the thing is done,
As if the power and will were one;
Thus oft the cheated crowd adore,
The thriving knaves that keep them poor. [ Gay ]

To say you are welcome were superfluous. [ William Shakespeare ]

If eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. [ Emerson ]

My thoughts and I were of another world. [ Ben Jonson ]

Full oft have letters caused the writers
To curse the day they were inditers. [ Butler ]

His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen. [ Dryden ]

Light is, as it were, a divine humidity. [ Joubert ]

Words that are now dead were once alive. [ A. Coles ]

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion. [ Scott ]

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

A day of such serene enjoyment spent.
Were worth an age of splendid discontent. [ James Montgomery ]

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use,
As though to breathe were life. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

The most enthusiastic mystics were women. [ Jean Paul ]

Generous as brave.
Affection, kindness, and the sweet office
Of love and duty, were to him as needful
As his daily bread. [ Rogers ]

Women were made to give our eyes delight;
A female sloven is an odious sight. [ Young ]

Cards were at first for benefits designed,
Sent to amuse, not to enslave the mind. [ Garrick ]

If all were rich, gold would be penniless. [ Bailey ]

To feed were best at home;
From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;
Meeting were bare without it. [ William Shakespeare ]

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. [ Yogi Berra ]

Many a dog is dead since you were a whelp. [ Proverb ]

If I were Jesus Christ, I would save Judas. [ Victor Hugo ]

The mourner yew and builder oak were there. [ Dryden ]

I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget! [ William Shakespeare ]

And both were young, and one was beautiful. [ Byron ]

And by his side rode loathsome gluttony.
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine;
His belly was up-blown with luxury,
And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne. [ Spenser ]

Bliss in possession will not last;
Remember'd joys are never past;
At once the fountain, stream, and sea.
They were, - they are, - they yet shall be. [ Montgomery ]

Ah, Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be. [ Tennyson ]

If folly were grief, every house would weep. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

You could spy trouble if your eyes were out. [ Proverb ]

Heaven knows, I had no such intent;
But that necessity so bowed the state.
That I and greatness were compelled to kiss. [ Shakespeare ]

All were at once silent and listened intent. [ Virgil ]

Were there no fools bad ware would not pass. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The rosy-fingered morn did there disclose
Her beauty, ruddy as a blushing bride,
Gilding the marigold, painting the rose,
With Indian chrysolites her cheeks were dyed. [ Baron ]

Judges and senates have been bought for gold;
Esteem and love were never to be sold. [ Pope ]

Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye.
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. [ Byron ]

If women were humbler, men would be honester. [ Vanbrugh ]

The world would perish, were ail men learned. [ Proverb ]

If better were within, better would come out. [ Proverb ]

Hark to that shrill, sudden shout,
The cry of an applauding multitude,
Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields,
The living mass as if he were its soul! [ William Cullen Bryant ]

They were scant of bairns that brought you up. [ Proverb ]

You are a sweet nut, if you were well cracked. [ Proverb ]

The trees were unctuous fir, and mountain ash. [ Dryden ]

No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till half mankind were like himself possessed. [ Cowper ]

A journey were better too long than dangerous. [ Proverb ]

Were drums speak out, laws hold their tongues. [ Proverb ]

Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. [ Emerson ]

Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. Sc. 3 ]

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow. [ Cicero ]

Pride and conceit were the original sin of man. [ Le Sage ]

Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken will vibrate once more. [ Mrs. van Alstyne ]

By her we first were taught the wheedling arts. [ Gay ]

Her words were like a stream of honey fleeting.
That which doth softly trickle from the hive,
Able to melt the hearer's heart unweeting,
And eke to make the dead again alive. [ Spenser ]

The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake.
They sighed for the dawn and thee. [ Tennyson ]

It is expectation makes a blessing dear;
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were. [ John Suckling ]

Happy is he whose friends were born before him. [ Proverb ]

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell.
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.
Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door.
And bolted doors that open'd of themselves;
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe. [ Tennyson ]

You were begot a nutting, you speak in clusters. [ Proverb ]

Great families of yesterday we show,
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who. [ Daniel De Foe ]

For if good were not praised more than ill,
None would choose goodness of his own free will. [ Spenser ]

Who would ever care to do brave deed,
Or strive in virtue others to excel.
If none should yield him his deserved meed
Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
For if good were not praised more than ill,
None would choose goodness of his own free will. [ Spenser ]

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break. [ Proverb ]

Dignity and love were never yet boon companions. [ Fielding ]

O days remembered well! remembered all!
The bitter sweet, the honey and the gall;
Those garden rambles in the silent night.
Those trees so shady, and that moon so bright.
That thickset alley by the arbor closed.
That woodbine seat where we at last reposed;
And then the hopes that came and then were gone.
Quick as the clouds beneath the moon past on. [ Crabbe ]

What would the rose with all her pride be worth.
Were there no sun to call her brightness forth? [ Moore ]

Oh, rare the headpiece, if but brains were there! [ Phaedrus ]

Who upon earth could live were all judged justly? [ Byron ]

Neither griefs nor joys were ordered for secrecy. [ Proverb ]

You were put out of the oven for nipping of pies. [ Proverb ]

If wishes were thrushes, beggars might eat birds. [ Proverb ]

Her years
Were ripe, they might make six-and-twenty springs;
But there are forms which Time to touch forbears,
And turns aside his scythe to vulgar things. [ Byron ]

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whispered tales.
They say that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. [ Tennyson ]

Got the ill name of augurs because they were bores. [ Lowell ]

Now began
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched.
And now wild beasts came forth, the woods to roam. [ Milton ]

Were there no hearers there would be no backbiters. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright.
That birds would sing, and think it were not night. [ William Shakespeare ]

You would be little for God if the devil were dead. [ Proverb ]

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches! [ Emerson ]

Yes - it was love - if thoughts of tenderness.
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet - oh more than all! - untired by time.
Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile,
Could render sullen were she near to smile,
Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent
On her one murmur of his discontent;
Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part.
Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart;
Which nought removed, nor menaced to remove -
If there be love in mortals— this was love! [ Byron ]

He led on; but thoughts
Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins
Grew visible upon his swarthy brow,
And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain.
He trod less firmly; and his restless eye
Glanc'd forward frequently, as if some ill
He dared not meet were there. [ Willis ]

What were once vices are now the fashion of the day. [ Seneca ]

Venus herself, if she were bold, would not be Venus. [ Apuleius ]

Oh, that I were as happy as I am clear in conscience. [ Ovid ]

There is purpose in pain; otherwise it were devilish. [ Owen Meredith ]

Well might the cat wink, when both her eyes were out. [ Proverb ]

My sole resources in the path I trod,
Were these - my bark - my sword - my love — my God.
The last I left in youth - He leaves me now -
And man but works His will to lay me low.
I have no thought to mock His throne with prayer,
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough - I breathe - and I can bear. [ Byron ]

If you were in my place, you would think differently. [ Terence ]

There were no ill language, if it were not ill taken. [ Proverb ]

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. [ E. B. Browning ]

Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use. [ William Shakespeare ]

If it were not for the belly, the back might wear gold. [ Proverb ]

If the walls were adamant, yet gold will take the town. [ Proverb ]

If the pills were pleasant they would not want gilding. [ Proverb ]

Fingers were made before forks and hands before knives. [ Swift ]

The popular ear weighs what you are, not what you were. [ Quarles ]

When you organise a strike, it is war you organise;
But to organise our labour were the labour of the wise. [ Dr. Walter Smith ]

Fools and philosophers were made out of the same metal. [ Proverb ]

Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. [ Byron ]

Who has not seen that feeling born of flame
Crimson the cheek at mention of a name?
The rapturous touch of some divine surprise
Flash deep suffusion of celestial dyes:
When hands clasped hands, and lips to lips were pressed,
And the heart's secret was at once confessed? [ Abraham Coles ]

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last. [ Publius Syrus ]

Men may blush to hear what they were not ashamed to act. [ Proverb ]

He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. Sc. 2 ]

Idle rumors were also added to well-founded apprehension. [ Lucan ]

There would be no great ones if there were no little ones. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

There's a charm in delivery, a magical art,
That thrills like a kiss from the lip to the heart;
It is the glance - the expression - the well-chosen word -
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are stirred.
The lip's soft persuasion - its musical tone:
Oh! such were the charms of that eloquent one! [ Mrs. Welby ]

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one. [ Voltaire ]

We should all be perfect if we were neither men nor women.

There were such black swans formerly as truth and honesty. [ Proverb ]

If every fool were to wear a bauble, they would grow dear. [ Proverb ]

If all the world were ugly, deformity would be no monster. [ Proverb ]

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers. [ Disraeli ]

Many things grow in the garden that were never sowed there. [ Proverb ]

They were both equally bad; so the devil put them together. [ Proverb ]

Falsehoods which we spurn today were the truths of long ago. [ Whittier ]

It were better to be of no church than to be bitter for any. [ William Penn ]

Were it not for the black of night, the dawn would not rise. [ Shedad ]

Quarrels could not last long, were but prudence on one side. [ Proverb ]

It were no virtue to bear calamities if we did not feel them. [ Madame Necker ]

Were embroidery is wanting, perhaps a patched coat may serve. [ Proverb ]

I must have something new, even were there none in the world. [ La Fontaine ]

Every day should be spent by us as if it were to be our last. [ Publius Syrus ]

If madness were pain, you would hear outcries in every house. [ Proverb ]

One of the few, the immortal names, that were not born to die. [ Halleck ]

We are never happy: we can only remember that we were so once. [ Alexander Smith ]

Flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar. [ William Shakespeare ]

Were she perfect, one would admire her more, but love her less. [ Grattan ]

She has an eye that could speak, though her tongue were silent. [ Aaron Hill ]

If God were not a necessary being of Himself,
He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men. [ John Tillotson ]

If there were no knaves and fools, all the world would be alike. [ Proverb ]

The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet. [ Goethe ]

Man has been created free, is free, even were he born in chains. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Repetition is every where unacceptable, though it were in Homer. [ Proverb ]

We should live each day as if it were the full term of our life. [ Source Unknown ]

Gold and silver were mingled with dirt till avarice parted them. [ Proverb ]

The real men of genius were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. [ G. H. Lewes ]

The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase. [ Yogi Berra ]

Without labor there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable. [ Carlyle ]

Some have been thought brave, because they were afraid to run away. [ Proverb ]

One were as well be out of the world as be beloved by nobody in it. [ Proverb ]

Love makes us thin. If a codfish were a widow, she would become fat. [ Provencal Proverb ]

Where would the power of women be, were it not for the vanity of men? [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Trust no friend with that you need; fear him as if he were your enemy. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Even if women were immortal, they could never foresee their last lover. [ Lamennais ]

Oaths were not purposed more than law to keep the good and just in awe. [ Samuel Butler ]

It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none. [ Marcus Antoninus ]

Were it not for the bone in the leg all the world would turn carpenters. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To give a reason for fancy, were to weigh the fire and measure the wind. [ Proverb ]

If our bodies were to cost no more than our souls, we might board cheap. [ Proverb ]

War is a game which, were their subjects wise, kings should not play at. [ William Cowper ]

Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent. [ William Shakespeare ]

The first men in the world, were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grasier. [ Proverb ]

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant. [ Pascal ]

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God Himself, were it possible. [ Bancroft ]

Govern the lips as they were palace doors, the king within;
Tranquil and fair and courteous be all words which from that presence win. [ Sir Edwin Arnold ]

If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of another, we were undone. [ Philip Henry ]

The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest. [ Carlyle ]

Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget! [ Ninon de Lenclos ]

I would thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. [ William Shakespeare ]

Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art. [ Addison ]

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed. [ Whately ]

His sweetest dreams were still of that dear voice that soothed his infancy. [ Southey ]

There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below. [ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves ]

Would I were in that country where they break men's arms that talk of work. [ Proverb ]

In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die. [ Vauvenargues ]

Had not God made this world, and death too, it were an insupportable place. [ Carlyle ]

Men would not live long in society if they were not the dupes of each other. [ La Bruyere ]

Society would be a charming thing if we were only interested in one another. [ Chamfort ]

Such eyes as may have looked from heaven, but never were raised to it before! [ Moore ]

He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool. [ William Shakespeare ]

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. [ William Shakespeare ]

If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again, though he were my best friend. [ Franklin ]

Reason! I have lost it; and, were it to be returned to me, I would fly from it! [ A. de Musset ]

Like Teague's cocks, that fought one another, though all were of the same side. [ Proverb ]

An oak whose boughs were mossed with age, and high top bald with dry antiquity. [ William Shakespeare ]

I should rejoice if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to myself. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

The world is a scene of changes, and to be constant in nature were inconstancy. [ Cowley ]

Eloquence flourished most in Rome when its affairs were in the worst condition. [ Montaigne ]

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow. [ Lowell ]

How many minds - almost all the great ones - were formed in secrecy and solitude! [ Matthew Arnold ]

To make the common marvellous, as if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. [ Lowell ]

Without the smile from partial beauty won, O, what were man! a world without a sun! [ Campbell ]

A lie is the abandonment, and, as it were, the annihilation, of the dignity of man. [ Immanuel Kant ]

It was hard to have a conversation with anyone; there were too many people talking. [ Yogi Berra ]

Were we perfectly acquainted with our idol, we should never passionately desire it. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Though all men were made of one metal, yet they were not cast all in the same mould. [ Proverb ]

They used to think they were doing God a favor to print His name in capital letters. [ Richter ]

If extravagance were a fault, it would not have a place in the festivals of the gods. [ Aristippus ]

Another life, if it were not better than this, would be less a promise than a threat. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

A man of wit would often be much embarrassed if it were not for the company of fools. [ La Roche ]

Let not one look of Fortune cast you down; she were not Fortune if she did not frown. [ Earl of Orrery ]

Curiosity in children Nature has provided to remove the ignorance they were born with. [ Locke ]

If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use. [ Addison ]

On such a theme it were impious to be calm; passion is reason, transport, temper, here! [ Young ]

Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some more by listening than by talking. [ Colton ]

It is not enough merely to possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practised. [ Cicero ]

If mercy were not mingled with His power, this wretched world could not subsist one hour. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Prudence is one of the virtues which were called cardinal by the ancient ethical writers. [ William Fleming ]

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing ]

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven. [ Balzac ]

To love IS a rare happiness; if it were common, it would be better to be a man than a god. [ Mme. du Chatelet ]

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal. [ Froude ]

Goethe said there would be little left of him if he were to discard what he owed to others. [ Charlotte Cushman ]

The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops were close against the sky. [ Hood ]

If the best man's faults were written on his forehead, he would draw his hat over his eyes. [ Gray ]

Reason is as it were a light to lighten our steps and guide us through the journey of life. [ Cicero ]

If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic. [ Addison ]

O the world is but a word; were it all yours to give it in a breath, how quickly were it gone! [ Shakespeare ]

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pin-heads. [ Holmes ]

One should choose for a wife only such a woman as he would choose for a friend, were she a man. [ Joubert ]

How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make! [ Joubert ]

Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate. [ Beecher ]

If our inward griefs were seen written on our brow, how many would be pitied who are now envied! [ Metastasio ]

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. [ John Selden ]

Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading were but read. [ George Dawson ]

How many women would laugh at the funerals of their husbands, if it were not the custom to weep!

There were in him candor and generosity, which, unless tempered by due moderation, lead to ruin. [ Tacitus ]

The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world. [ South ]

If all hearts were frank, just, and honest, the major part of the virtues would be useless to us. [ Moliere ]

Happy it were for us all if we bore prosperity as well and as wisely as we endure adverse fortune. [ Southey ]

Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool. [ James A. Garfield ]

Resolved: Never to do any thing which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life. [ JONATHAN EDWARDS ]

Nothing so lifts a man from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. [ Carlyle ]

It is a powerful sex; they were too strong for the first, the strongest, and the wisest man that was. [ Howell ]

How many people would be mute if they were forbidden to speak well of themselves, and evil of others! [ Mme. de Fontaines ]

I would keep better hours, if I were a boy again; that is I would go to bed earlier than most boys do. [ James Fields ]

I will govern my life and my thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and to read the other. [ Seneca ]

If the whole world were put into one scale, and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam. [ Lord Langdale ]

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. [ Lessing ]

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet. [ Chamfort ]

We could not endure solitude, were it not for the powerful companionship of hope, or of some unseen one. [ Jean Paul ]

Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude. [ William Shakespeare ]

Were wisdom to be sold, she would give no price; every man is satisfied with the share he has from nature. [ Henry Home ]

Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. [ St. John ]

Troops would never be deficient in courage if they could only know how deficient in it their enemies were. [ Duke Of Wellington ]

Almost all my tragedies were sketched in my mind, either in the act of hearing music or a few hours after. [ Alfieri ]

I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]

My valor is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands. [ Sheridan ]

Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]

Love in marriage would be the realization of a beautiful dream, if marriage were not too often the end of it. [ A. Karr ]

Luxury possibly may contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor. [ H. Home ]

It is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul. [ Cicero ]

I would give nothing for the Christianity of a man whose very dog and cat were not the better for his religion. [ Rowland Hill ]

The affectation of virtue which characterizes this century would be very ludicrous, if it were not very tiresome. [ T. Gautier ]

Love without end hath no end, says the Spaniard; meaning, if it were not begun on particular ends, it would last. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not. [ Fenelon ]

He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, would seem vicious and miserable. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The Egyptians, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul was immortal. [ Bishop Warburton ]

Those whom we call the ancients were in truth novices in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind. [ Prescott ]

The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning. [ Luther ]

Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks - love, and the contemplation of the Deity. [ Watts ]

Were there but one man in the world, he would be a terror to himself; and the highest man not less so than the lowest. [ Carlyle ]

Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places. [ Shenstone ]

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them. [ Pascal ]

If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us. [ Clarendon ]

Some men are so covetous, as if they were to live forever; and others so profuse, as if they were to die the next moment. [ Aristotle ]

Of some calamity we can have no relief but from God alone; and what would men do, in such a case, if it were not for God? [ Tillotson ]

Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand. [ Owen Feltham ]

A great soul is proof against injustice, pain, and mockery; and it would be invulnerable if it were not open to compassion.

To be strong by nature, to be urged on by the native powers of the mind, and to be inspired by a divine spirit, as it were. [ Cicero ]

Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion. [ William Shakespeare ]

The freedom of some is the freedom of the herd of swine that ran violently down a steep place into the sea and were drowned. [ Rev. W. Jay ]

Were wisdom given me with this reservation, that I should keep it shut up within myself and not impart it, I would spurn it. [ Seneca ]

If there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically: so perfect a government is not suitable to men. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

The possession of wealth is, as it were, prepayment, and involves an obligation of honor to the doing of correspondent work. [ George MacDonald ]

Music cleanses the understanding, inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

Were we as eloquent as angels, we would please some men, some women, and some children much more by listening than by talking. [ Colton ]

If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Alas! alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy. [ William Shakespeare ]

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them. [ Swift ]

Let us live like those who expect to die, and then we shall find that we feared death only because we were unacquainted with it. [ William Wake ]

Dramatical or representative play is, as it were, a visible history; for it sets out the image of things as if they were present. [ Bacon ]

A fly is a very light burden; but if it were perpetually to return and settle on one's nose, it might weary us of our very lives. [ Fredrika Bremer ]

O this itch of the ear, that breaks out at the tongue! Were not curiosity so over-busy, detraction would soon be starved to death. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Oh, that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer! [ William Shakespeare ]

Art, as far as it has ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild. [ Dante ]

Proverbs were anterior to books, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality. [ Disraeli ]

I wish it were never one's duty to quarrel with anybody; I do so hate it: but not to do it sometimes is to smile in the devils face. [ George MacDonald ]

If wisdom were conferred with this proviso, that I must keep it to myself and not communicate it to others, I would have none of it. [ Seneca ]

The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone. [ Niebuhr ]

A thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept their pale, unbodied shade, to warn us from fleshless hps. [ Bulwer ]

Short, isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient wisdom delighted to convey its precepts for the regulation of human conduct. [ Bishop Warburton ]

The prayer of Lahire: God! do unto Lahire what thou wouldst Lahire should do unto Thee, if Thou were Lahire, and if Lahire were Thee!

Only if the spirit of man were not free, would the thought be a great one that there is a monarch of thought who rules over our souls. [ Platen ]

To have the tongue cut out, and to be seated deaf and dumb in a corner, were preferable to his condition who cannot govern his tongue. [ Sadi ]

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature an impossibility. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man. [ Pope ]

There grows In my most ill-compos'd affection such A stanchless avarice, that, were I king, I should cut off the nobles for their lands. [ William Shakespeare ]

We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning. [ Addison ]

Exile is terrible to those who have, as it were, a circumscribed habitation; but not to those who look upon the whole globe as one city. [ Cicero ]

You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration. [ Ouida ]

If my heart were as poor as my understanding, I should be happy; for I am thoroughly persuaded that such poverty is a means of salvation. [ Pascal ]

Mr. Bettenham said that virtuous men were like some herbs and spices, that give not out their sweet smell till they be broken or crushed. [ Bacon ]

Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts. [ Horace ]

Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthenware. [ Seneca ]

Gradual as the snow, at heaven's breath, melts off and shows the azure flowers beneath, her lids unclosed, and the bright eyes were seen. [ Moore ]

That the women of the Old Testament were dressed with oriental richness there is no doubt, nor are they censured for so arraying themselves. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]

That were but a sorry art which could be comprehended all at once; the last point of which could be seen by one just entering its precincts. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

He by whom the geese were formed white, parrots stained green, and peacocks painted of various hues - even He will provide for their support. [ Hitopadesa ]

In ancient Boeotia brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token that they would never again be needed. [ T. W. Higginson ]

I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case, I should often find matter for rejoicing. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Her cheeks blushing, and withal, when she was spoken to. a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a little breath stirred. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. [ Fenelon ]

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war. [ Bovee ]

When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none; and then they endeavor to persuade themselves so. [ Tillotson ]

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. [ Swift ]

Life would be easy enough if we were not continually exerting ourselves to forge new chains, and invent absurd formalities which make it a burden.

In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other, - fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other. [ Thoreau ]

If the Vikings were around today, they would probably be amazed at how much glow-in-the-dark stuff we have, and how we take so much of it for granted. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned him, and we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, I helped skin Bob. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

I am tired of looking on what is, One might as well see beauty never more. As look upon it with an empty eye. I would this world were over. I am tired. [ Bailey ]

The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them. [ Colton ]

Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day. [ Fenelon ]

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. [ Macaulay ]

Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them. [ Seneca ]

Leave a friend! So base I am not. I followed him in his prosperity, when the skies were clear and shining, and will not leave him when storms begin to rise. [ Metastasio ]

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that are in them what were we? [ Leigh Hunt ]

If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and you friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us? [ Goethe ]

The past but lives in words; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

How sweet it would be to live in society if the countenance always reflected the disposition, if decency were virtue, and if our maxims were our rules of action. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

Great, ever fruitful; profitable for reproof, for encouragement, for building up in manful purposes and works, are the words of those that in their day were men. [ Carlyle ]

In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people. [ Beaconsfield ]

That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one. [ Whately ]

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or a Shakespeare. [ F. H. Hedge ]

In times of danger it is proper to be alarmed until danger be near at hand; but when we perceive that danger is near, we should oppose it as if we were not afraid. [ Hitopadesa ]

No atheist denies a divinity, but only some name of a divinity; the God is still present there, working in that benighted heart, were it only as a god of darkness. [ Carlyle ]

Humour is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]

We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole. [ Seneca ]

Had religion been a mere chimaera, it would long ago have been extinct; were it susceptible of a definite formula, that formula would long ago have been discovered. [ Renan ]

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 ]

Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods carrying the show of a total do secure men, as if they were at furthest. [ Bacon ]

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be. [ Colton ]

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. [ Pope ]

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as tbey ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were. [ Cervantes ]

If ideas and words were distinctly weighed and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with. [ J. Locke ]

Many men build as cathedrals were built, - the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete. [ Beecher ]

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable. [ Montesquieu ]

To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor. [ Pope ]

Not to know what happened before we were born is always to remain a child; to know, and blindly to adopt that knowledge as an implicit rule of life, is never to be a man. [ Chatfield ]

A nobleness and elevation of mind, together with firmness of constitution, gives lustre and dignity to the aspect, and makes the soul, as it were, shine through the body. [ Jeremy Collier ]

If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, - others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs. [ Hawthorne ]

If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor. [ Jane Porter ]

There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an indefinable, and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. [ Tuckerman ]

As a tract of country narrowed in the distance expands itself when we approach, thus the way to our near grave appears to us as long as it did formerly when we were far off. [ Richter ]

The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again. [ Thackeray ]

Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit. [ Addison ]

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns! the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate. [ Percival ]

The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow; and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched. [ Seneca ]

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples. [ Pope ]

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. [ Macaulay ]

There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. Were he ever so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. [ Carlyle ]

If the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between them and that of the fool; there are infinite reveries and numberless extravagancies pass through both. [ Addison ]

Procrastination has been called a thief, - the thief of time. I wish it were no worse than a thief. It is a murderer; and that which it kills is not time merely, but the immortal soul. [ Nevins ]

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement seasons. [ Swift ]

I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle and broken it and put all the pieces in his bosom where they were cutting him perpetually. [ H. W. Beecher ]

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with the ages past; and this way of running up beyond one's nativity is better than Plato's preexistence. [ Jeremy Collier ]

No one has found out how to soothe with music and sweet symphony those bitter pangs by which death and sad misfortunes destroy families; and yet to assuage such griefs by music were wisdom. [ Euripides ]

If you were a poor Indian with no weapons, and a bunch of conquistadors came up to you and asked where the gold was, I don't think it would be a good idea to say, I swallowed it. So sue me. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. [ Alexander Smith ]

Without enjoyment, the wealth of the miser is the same to him as if it were another's. But when it is said of a man "he hath so much," it is with difficulty he can be induced to part with it. [ Hitopadesa ]

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked on the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. [ Gibbon ]

There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life are composed that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the Sabbath for the mind. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Monotony, even under circumstances least favourable to the usual elements of happiness, becomes a happiness in itself, growing, as it were, unseen, out of the undisturbed certainty of peculiar customs. [ Lord Lytton ]

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again. [ Goethe ]

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over. [ Colton ]

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 ]

Were a whole nation to start upon a new career of education, with mature faculties and minds free from prepossession or prejudice, how much would be quickly abandoned that is now most stubbornly cherished! [ Chatfield ]

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 ]

He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. [ William Shakespeare ]

There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. [ Cicero ]

I should have been a French atheist were it not for the recollection of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hand in hers, and make me say, on my bended knees, Our Father who art in heaven! [ John Randolph ]

If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with the comment of the various deaths of men; and it could not but be useful, for who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. [ Montaigne ]

I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. [ R. W. Emerson ]

Someone once observed, and the observation did him credit, whoever he was, that the dearest things in the world were neighbors' eyes, for they cost everybody more than anything else contributing to housekeeping. [ Albert Smith ]

More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

The passions are the only orators that always persuade; they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

I armed her against the censures of the world; showed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it. [ Goldsmith ]

If as much care were taken to perpetuate a race of fine men as is done to prevent the mixture of ignoble blood in horses and dogs, the genealogy of every one would be written on his face and displayed in his manners. [ Voltaire ]

Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning humility, and virtue; - that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy. [ Sterne ]

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilization goes they are in their second. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

The Carlyles were men who lavished their heart and conscience upon their work; they builded themselves, their days, their thoughts and sorrows, into their houses; they leavened the soil with the sweat of their rugged brows. [ John Burroughs ]

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it. [ Seneca ]

I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions; but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away. [ Gotthold ]

The idea you have once spoken, if even it were an idea, is no longer yours; it is gone from you, so much life and virtue is gone, and the vital circulations of yourself and your destiny and activity are henceforth deprived of it. [ Carlyle ]

If I were not a king, I would be a university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library (the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford). [ James I ]

How would that excellent mystery, wedded life, irradiate the world with its blessed influences, were the generous impulses and sentiments of courtship but perpetuated in all their exuberant fullness during the sequel of marriage! [ Frederic Saunders ]

The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a house of mourning, I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory. [ T. L. Cuyler ]

Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama. [ Hume ]

How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light! [ Dewey ]

I have often heard it said, and I believe it to be true, that even the most eloquent man living, and however deeply impressed with the subject, could scarcely find utterance if he were to be standing up alone, and speaking only against a dead wall. [ Erskine ]

'Tis the merry nightingale that crowds and hurries and precipitates, with fast thick warble, his delicious notes, as he were fearful that an April night would be too short for him to utter forth his love-chant, and disburden his full soul of all its music. [ Coleridge ]

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. [ Bacon ]

In Athens the ladies were not gaudily but simply arrayed, and we doubt whether any ladies ever excited more admiration. So also the noble old Roman matrons, whose superb forms were gazed on delightedly by men worthy of them, were always very plainly dressed. [ George D. Prentice ]

The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature, whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable. Let us begin where she begins, go her pace, and close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good naturalists. [ William Penn ]

Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death. [ Mackenzie ]

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 ]

Nature gives you the impression as if there were nothing contradictory in the world; and yet, when you return back to the dwelling-place of man, be it lofty or low, wide or narrow, there is ever somewhat to contend with, to battle with, to smooth and put to rights. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The tending of flowers has ever appeared to me a fitting care for the young and beautiful; they then dwell, as it were, among their own emblems, and many a voice of wisdom breathes on their ear from those brief blossoms, to which they apportion the dew and the sunbeam. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]

Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much, by gaudy attire. Lysander knew this was in part true, and refused the rich garments that the tyrant Dionysius proffered to his daughters, saying that they were fit only to make unhappy faces more remarkable. [ Zimmermann ]

We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke. [ Pope ]

Socrates was pronounced by the oracle of Delphos to be the wisest man in Greece, which he would turn from himself ironically, saying there could be nothing in him to verify the oracle, except this, that he was not wise and knew it, and others were not wise and knew it not. [ Bacon ]

Intellect alone, however exalted, without strong feelings - without even, irritable sensibility - would be only like an immense magazine of powder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. It is the heart which is the spring and fountain of all eloquence. [ Lord Erskine ]

Some will read only old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book because they know the author: others would also read the man. [ Disraeli ]

If all fools had baubles* we should want fuel. (*The fool or jester carried in his hand a wooden sceptre called a bauble. It was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or with that of a puppet or doll. Jesters were still retained in Herbert's day.) [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. [ Landor ]

Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. [ Pilpay ]

Even the grasses in exposed fields were bung with innumerable diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of the traveler. * * * It was as if some superincumbent stratum of the earth had been removed in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoiled child of a semi-barbarous age. The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason; and the art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and readers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise - the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. [ Sir John Herschel ]

We have often thought it strange that moralists should have written and spoken of the mutability of human life as if it were a thing to be dreaded and mourned over; to our mind, mutability is the soul of poetry, and the source of nearly all the most delightful and sacred pleasures of life. [ Stubbs ]

When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, I knew he was mortal. So we in all casualties of life should say I knew my riches were uncertain, that my friend was but a man. Such considerations would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected. [ Plutarch ]

Dangers are no more light if they once seem light, and more dangers have deceived men than forced them; nay, it were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long it is odds be will fall fast asleep. [ Bacon ]

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. [ E. Law ]

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]

Music has certainly a powerful influence on the passions, and produces happy effects upon the human heart and mind when cultivated moderately; but when it becomes the general prevailing passion of a nation, or, as it were, gets dominion over them, it unquestionably produces not effeminacy merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. [ S. F. Bradford ]

The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. [ Whipple ]

Chance never writ a legible book; chance never built a fair house; chance never drew a neat picture; it never did any of these things, nor ever will; nor can it be without absurdity supposed able to do them; which yet are works very gross and rude, very easy and feasible, as it were, in comparison to the production of a flower or a tree. [ Barrow ]

Yorick sometime?, in his wild way of talking, would say that gravity was an arrant scoundrel, and, he would add, of the most dangerous kind, too, because a sly one; and that he verily believed more honest well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. [ Sterne ]

This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition. [ Cicero ]

We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. [ Trench ]

Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves. [ Bacon ]

The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony declined with paganism, but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. [ Disraeli ]

Maggie and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, - when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial words, the lightest gestures, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. [ George Eliot ]

Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second; for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. [ Bacon ]

There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]

If there were no readers there certainly would be no writers. Clearly, therefore, the existence of writers depends upon the existence of readers; and, of course, as the cause must be antecedent to the effect, readers existed before writers. Yet, on the other hand, if there were no writers there could be no readers, so it should appear that writers must be antecedent to readers. [ Paul Chatfield, M.D ]

A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every other part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more than that the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself. [ Joseph Addison ]

If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion at Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known and, according to my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. [ Burke ]

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 ]

It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. [ Addison ]

In former days various superstitious rites were used to exorcise evil spirits, but in our times the same object is attained, and beyond comparison more effectually, by the press; before this talisman, ghosts, vampires, witches, and all their kindred tribes are driven from the land, never to return again; the touch of holy water is not so intolerable to them as the smell of printing ink. [ J. Bentham ]

Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he boasted, The less you speak of your greatness, the more I shall think of it. Mirrors are the accompaniments of dandies, not heroes. The men of history were not perpetually looking in the glass to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it, and did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labeled them accordingly. [ Rev. S. Coley ]

If the eye were so acute as to rival the finest microscope, and to discern the smallest hair upon the leg of a gnat, it would be a curse, and not a blessing to us; it would make all things appear rugged and deformed; the most finely polished crystal would be uneven and rough; the sight of our own selves would affright us; the smoothest skin would be beset all over with rugged scales and bristly hair. [ Bentley ]

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]

No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted he knew nothing; and that those ideas which in theory appeared the most advantageous were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. [ Terence ]

Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. [ Hillard ]

If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ 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 ]

As the index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside. [ Massinger ]

There is a story of some mountains of salt in Cumana, which never diminished, though carried away in much abundance by merchants; but when once they were monopolized to the benefit of a private purse, then the salt decreased, till afterward all were allowed to take of it, when it had a new access and increase. The truth of this story may be uncertain, but the application is true; he that envies others the use of his gifts decays then, but he thrives most that is most diffusive. [ Spencer ]

It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores: for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your pocket handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it), but were frightened away by the bore. [ Byron ]

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 ]

Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. . . . We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. [ Dialogues, Theaetetus ]

If a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their good opinion or good word, it were then no great matter (speaking as to the concernments of this world), if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw; but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end. [ Tillotson ]

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]

Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars - reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me, I said. I'm off the team, aren't I? Well, said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times. It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

He must have an artist's eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, and picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side hill with gorgeous colors and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead of allowing the flowers to remain as they were gathered, they are laid upon the table, divided, rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never again have that charming naturalness and grace which they first had. [ Beecher ]

Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge: it is immortal as the heart of men. If the labors of the men of science should ever create any revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will then sleep no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on. as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. [ Wordsworth ]