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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Men love to Miscellaneous reading

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Men love to Miscellaneous reading

Men love at first, and most warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough, for nature makes women to be won, and men to win.G. W. Curtis.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.Byron.

Men love things best; women love persons best.Jean Paul.

Men love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret, as an old friar would be without his hair-girdle.Ward Beecher.

Men love us, or they need our love.Keble.

Men make the best friends.La Bruyère.

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.Young.

Men may rise on stepping-stones / Of their dead selves to higher things.Tennyson.

Men might live quiet and easy enough, if they would be careful not to give themselves trouble, and forbear meddling with what other people do and say, in which they are in no way concerned.Thomas à Kempis.

Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes.La Rochefoucauld.

Men must be taught as though you taught them not.Pope.

Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither: / Ripeness is all.King Lear, v. 2.

Men must have righteous principles in the first place, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.Luther.

Men must leave the ingle-nook, / And for a larger wisdom brook / Experience of a harder law, / And learn humility and awe.Dr. Walter Smith.

Men must work, and women must weep, / Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, / And the harbour bar be moaning.Charles Kingsley.

Men no longer wholly believe; in this age of blindness and scientific pride, no one is any longer seen bowing before his god on both his knees.Victor Hugo.

Men no sooner find their appetites unanswered than they complain the times are injurious.Raleigh.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.Bacon.

Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are frequent; but a true gentleman is what one seldom sees.Steele.

Men of few words are the best men.Henry V., iii. 2.

Men of genius are dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to the earth, is only a stone.Longfellow.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.Coleridge.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel.Hazlitt.

Men of genius have acuter feelings than common men; they are like the wind-harp, which answers to the breath that touches it, now low and sweet, now rising into wild swell or angry scream, as the strings are swept by some passing gust.Froude.

Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.Emerson.

Men of great gifts you will easily find, but symmetrical men never.Emerson.

Men of great intellect live in the world without really belonging to it.Schiller.

Men of great learning or genius are too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.Spectator.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.Swift.

Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare.Coleridge.

Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.Milton.

Men of science should leave controversy to the little world below them.Goldsmith.

Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.Emerson.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies.Aristophanes.

Men of the first quality learn nothing, and become wise; men of the second rank become sensible (klug) and learn long; men of the third sort remain stupid, and learn words.Rückert.

Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition, and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.Addison.

Men of true wisdom and goodness are contented to take persons and things as they are, without complaining of their imperfections or attempting to amend them.Fielding.

Men of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their powers.Goethe.

Men only associate in parties by sacrificing their opinions, or by having none worth sacrificing; and the effect of party government is always to develop hostilities and hypocrisies, and to extinguish ideas.Ruskin.

Men only rightly know themselves as far as they have experimented on things.Emerson.

Men ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness.Bacon.

Men possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.Froude.

Men possessing small souls are generally the authors of great evils.Goethe.

Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.Troil. and Cress., i. 2.

Men rate the virtues of the heart at almost nothing, while they idolise endowments of body and intellect.La Bruyère.

Men rattle their chains to show that they are free.Proverb.

Men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.Emerson.

Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen and rough seashore. But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory,—that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness.Ruskin.

Men seek within the short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which alone is insatiable.Goldsmith.

Men seem to be led by their noses, but in reality it is by their ears.Carlyle.

Men should be prized, not for their exemption from fault, but the size of those virtues they are possessed of.Goldsmith.

Men should be what they seem; / Or those that be not, would they might seem none.Othello, iii. 3.

Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.Mme. Scudéri.

Men should not be told of the faults which they have mended.Johnson.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.Goethe.

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; / But every woman is at heart a rake: / Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; / But every lady would be queen for life.Pope.

Men speak but little when vanity does not induce them to speak.La Rochefoucauld.

Men spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.Steele.

Men still are what they always have been, a medley (Gemisch) of strength and weakness, often obedient to reason, and oftener to passion; so have they come down the stream of time for six thousand years, and mostly in such shape as the moment has fashioned them.Seume.

Men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.Burke.

Men that hazard all / Do it in hope of fair advantages.Mer. of Ven., ii. 7.

Men that make / Envy and crooked malice nourishment / Dare bite the best.Henry VIII., v. 3.

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.Hare.

Men think they are quarrelling with one another, and both sides feel that they are in the wrong.Goethe.

Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape their shadows.Froude, Carlyle.

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.Sterne.

Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.Seneca.

Men understand not what is among their hands; as calmness is the characteristic of strength, so the weightiest causes may be the most silent.Carlyle.

Men use, if they have an evil turn to write it in marble, and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.Sir T. More.

Men, who are knaves individually, are in the mass very honourable people.Montesquieu.

Men who begin by losing their independence will end by losing their energy.Buckle.

Men who, being always bred in affluence, see the world only on one side are surely improper judges of human nature.Goldsmith.

Men who earn nothing but compliments are not likely to be very diligent in so unprofitable a service.Spurgeon.

Men who form their judgment upon sense often err.Thomas à Kempis.

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.Emerson.

Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.Bulwer Lytton.

Men who their duties know, / But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.Sir W. Jones.

Men will always act according to their passions. Therefore the best government is that which inspires the nobler passions and destroys the meaner.Jacobi.

Men will blame themselves for the purpose of being praised.Proverb.

Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.Hazlitt.

Men will face powder and steel, because they cannot face public opinion.Chapin.

Men will forget what we suffer, and not what we do.Tennyson.

Men will marry a fool that sings, sooner than one that has learned to scoff.Dr. Walter Smith.

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it—anything but live for it.Colton.

Men work themselves into atheistical judgments by atheistical practice.Whichcote.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.Pope.

Men would not live long in society, were they not the mutual dupes of each other.La Rochefoucauld.

Men’s actions are not to be judged of at first sight.Proverb.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.Emerson.

Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.Ward Beecher.

Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues / We write in water.Henry VIII., iv. 2.

Men’s hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another, and all against the evil thing only.Carlyle.

Men’s ignorance makes the priest’s pot boil.French Proverb.

Men’s muscles move better when their souls are making merry music.George Eliot.

Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things, / Though great ones are their object.Othello, iii. 4.

Men’s prosperity is in their own hands, and no forms of government are, in themselves, of the least use.Ruskin.

Men’s souls ’twixt sorrow and love are cast.O. M. Brown.

Men’s thoughts and opinions are, in a great degree, vassals of him who invents a new phrase or reapplies an old epithet.Lowell.

Men’s thoughts are much according to their inclinations; their discourses and speeches, according to their learning and infused opinions.Bacon.

Men’s vows are women’s traitors.Cymbeline, iii. 4.

Menace-moi de vivre et non pas de mourir—Threaten me with life and not with death.French.

Ménage—Housekeeping.French.

Mendacem memorem esse oportet—A liar ought to have a good memory.Quintilian.

Mendaces, ebriosi, verbosi—Liars, drunkards, and wordy people.

Mendaci homini, ne verum quidem dicenti credere solemus—We give no credit to a liar, even when he speaks the truth.Cicero.

Mendici, mimi, balatrones, et hoc genus omne—Beggars, actors in farces, buffoons, and all that sort of people.Horace.

Mendico ne parentes quidem amici sunt—To a beggar not even his own parents show affection.Proverb.

Mendings are honourable, rags are abominable.Proverb.

Mens æqua rebus in arduis—Equanimity in arduous enterprises.Motto.

Mens agitat molem—A mind moves or informs the mass.Virgil.

Mens bona regnum possidet—A good mind possesses a kingdom.Proverb.

Mens conscia recti—A mind conscious of rectitude.

Mens cujusque est quisque—The mind of the man is the man.Motto.

Mens immota manet; lachrymæ volvuntur inanes—His resolve remains unshaken; tears are shed in vain.Virgil.

Mens interrita lethi—A mind undaunted by death.Ovid.

Mens invicta manet—The mind remains unsubdued.

Mens peccat, non corpus, et unde consilium abfuit culpa abest—It is the mind that sins, not the body, and where there was no intention there is no criminality.Livy.

Mens sana in corpore sano—A sound mind in a sound body.Juvenal.

Mens sine pondere ludit—The mind is playful when unburdened.

Mensa et toro—From bed and board.Law.

Menschenkenntniss ist Unglaube an Tugend und Redlichkeit—A knowledge of mankind tends to induce a want of faith in virtue and probity.C. J. Weber.

Menschlich ist es bloss zu strafen, / Aber göttlich zu verzeihn—To punish is merely human, but to forgive is divine.P. von Winter.

Mensque pati durum sustinet ægra nihil—A mind diseased cannot bear anything harsh.Ovid.

Mensuraque juris / Vis erat—And might was the measure of right.Lucan.

Mental courage, infinitely rarer than valour, presupposes the most eminent qualities.Diderot.

Mental pleasures never cloy: unlike those of the body, they are increased by repetition, approved of by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.Colton.

Mental prayer (mentale Gebet) which includes and excludes all religions, and only in a few God-favoured men permeates the whole course of life, develops itself in most men as only a blazing, beatific feeling of the moment, immediately after the vanishing of which the man, thrown in upon himself unsatisfied and unoccupied, lapses back into the most utter and absolute weariness.Goethe.

Mentally and bodily endowed men are the most modest, while, on the other hand, all who have some peculiar mental defect think a great deal more of themselves.Goethe.

Mentis gratissimus error—A most delightful reverie of the mind.Horace.

Mentis penetralia—The inmost recesses of the mind; the secrets of the heart.

Menu—Bill of fare.French.

Menus plaisirs—Pocket-money.French.

Meo sum pauper in ære—I am poor, but I am not in debt.Horace.

Merces virtutis laus est—Applause is the reward of virtue.Proverb.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.Bible.

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1.

Mercy is above this sceptred sway, / It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself; / And earthly power doth then show likest God’s / When mercy seasons justice.Mer. of Ven., iv. 1.

Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; / Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.Meas. for Meas., ii. 1.

Mercy, misericordia, does not in the least mean forgiveness of sins, but pity of sorrows.Ruskin.

Mercy to him that shows it is the rule.Cowper.

Mercy turns her back to the unmerciful.Quarles.

Mercy’s gate opens to those who knock.Saying.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward, and merit without modesty insolent; but modest merit has a double claim to acceptance.T. Hughes.

Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fame.Skobeleff.

Mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.Burton.

Mere pleasure ought not to be the prime motive of action.Johnson.

Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is.Hazlitt.

Mere wishes are bony fishes.Proverb.

Merit and good works is the end of man’s motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man’s rest.Bacon.

Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded.Napoleon.

Merit in appearance is oftener rewarded than merit itself.La Rochefoucauld.

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.Bovee.

Merit lives from man to man.Tennyson.

Merry be the first, / And merry be the last, / And merry be the first of August.Proverb.

Merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks.Love’s L’s. Lost, v. 2.

Merx ultronea putret—Proffered service stinks (i.e., is despised).Proverb.

Mésalliance—A marriage with one of inferior rank.Proverb.

Messe tenus propria vive—Live within your means (lit. harvest).

[Greek]—There is always a pleasure in variety.Euripides.

Metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the greatest troubles the world has got to deal with…. Busy metaphysicians are always entangling good and active people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of the world’s business, and are, as much as possible, by all prudent persons, to be brushed out of their way.Ruskin.

Metaphysics, with which physics cannot dispense, is that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, lives with it, and will endure after it.Goethe.

[Greek]—Don’t pronounce sentence till you have heard the story of both parties.Proverb.

Method is the very hinge of business.Hannah More.

Method will teach you to win time.Goethe.

Methods are the masters of masters.Talleyrand.

Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!Macbeth, ii. 2.

Métier d’auteur, métier d’oseur—The profession of author is a daring profession.French.

Metiri se quemque suo modulo ac pede verum est—It is meet that every man should measure himself by his own rule and standard.Horace.

Mettre les pieds dans le plat—To put one’s foot in it.French Proverb.

Metuenda corolla draconis—The dragon’s crest is to be feared.

Meum et tuum—Mine and thine.

Meus mihi, suus cuique est carus—Mine is dear to me, and dear is his own to every man.Plautus.

Mezzo termine—A middle course.Italian.

Micat inter omnes—It shines amongst all, i.e., it outshines all.Horace.

Mich dräng’st den Grundtext aufzuschlagen, / Mit redlichem Gefühl einmal / Das heilige Original / In mein geliebtes Deutsch zu übertragen—I must turn up the primitive text just to translate the sacred original with honest feeling into my dear German tongue.Faust, in Goethe.

Mich hat mein Glaube nicht betrogen!—My faith has not betrayed me.Schiller.

Mich plagen keine Scrupel noch Zweifel, / Fürchte mich weder vor Hölle noch Teufel—I am troubled by no scruples or doubts; I fear neither hell nor devil.Faust in Goethe.

Mich schuf aus gröberm Stoffe die Natur, / Und zu der Erde zieht mich die Begierde—Out of coarser clay has Nature created me, and I am drawn by lust to the dust.Schiller.

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, / Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home; / A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, / Which, sought through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.J. H. Payne.

Midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, / To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, / And roam along, the world’s tired denizen, / With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; / … This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!Byron.

Mieux nourri qu’ instruit—Better fed than taught.French Proverb.

Mieux serra—Better times are coming.Motto.

Mieux vaut glisser du pied que de la langue—Better slip with the foot than the tongue.French Proverb.

Mieux vaut perdre la laine que la brebis—Better lose the wool than the sheep.French Proverb.

Mieux vaut un bon renom, que du bien plein la maison—Better a good name than a house full of riches.French Proverb.

Mieux vaut un “Tiens” que deux “Tu l’auras”—One “Take this” is better than two “You shall have it.”French Proverb.

Mieux vaut une once de fortune qu’une livre de sagesse—An ounce of fortune is better than a pound of wisdom.French Proverb.

Mieux vaut voir un chien enragé, qu’un soleil chaud en Janvier—Better see a mad dog than a hot sun in January.

Might and right do differ frightfully from hour to hour; but give them centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.Carlyle.

Mightier far / Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway / Of magic, potent over sun and star, / Is Love, though oft to agony distrest, / And though his favourite seat be feeble woman’s breast.Wordsworth.

Mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed, / And sleep, how oft, on things that gentlest be.B. M. Procter.

Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world.Carlyle.

Migravit ab aure voluptas / Omnis—All pleasure has fled from the ear, (dumb show having taken the place of dialogue on the stage).Horace.

Mini est propositum in taberna mori—I purpose to end my days in an inn.

Mihi forsan, tibi quod negarit, / Porriget hora—The hour will perhaps extend to me what it has denied to you.Horace.

Mihi istic nec seritur nec metitur—There is neither sowing nor reaping in that affair for my benefit.Plautus.

Mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor—My aim is to subject circumstances to me, and not myself to them.Horace.

Mihi tarda fluunt ingrataque tempora—For me the time passes slowly and joyously away.Horace.

Mildness governs more than anger.Proverb.

Militat omnis amans—Every lover is engaged in a war.Ovid.

Militiæ species amor est—Love is a kind of warfare.Ovid.

Mille hominum species et rerum discolor usus; / Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno—There are a thousand kinds of men, and different hues they give to things; each one follows his own inclination, nor do they all agree in their wishes.Persius.

Mille verisimili non fanno un vero—A thousand probabilities do not make one truth.Italian Proverb.

Millia frumenti tua triverit area centum, / Non tuus hinc capiet venter plus ac meus—Though your threshing-floor should yield a hundred thousand bushels of corn, will your stomach therefore hold more than mine?Horace.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth / Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.Milton.

Minatur innocentibus qui parcit nocentibus—He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty.Coke.

Mind and body are intimately related; if the former is joyful, the latter feels free and well; and many an evil flies before cheerfulness.Goethe.

Mind and body—that beauteous couple—exercise much and variously, but at home, at home, indoors, and about things indoors; for God is there too.Landor.

Mind is stronger than matter; mind is the creator and shaper of matter; not brute force, but only persuasion and faith is the king of this world.Carlyle.

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.Webster.

Mind is the partial side of men; the heart is everything.Rivarol.

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.St. Paul.

Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.Bovee.

Mind your P’s and Q’s.Proverb.

Mind your work, and God will find your wages.Proverb.

Minds are of celestial birth; / Make we then a heaven of earth.Montgomery.

Minds that have nothing to confer / Find little to perceive.Wordsworth.

Minds that never rest are subject to many digressions.Joubert.

Mind the corner where life’s road turns.Proverb.

Mine honour my life is; both grow in one; / Take honour from me, and my life is done.Richard II., i. 1.

Minimæ vires frangere quassa valent—Very little avails to break a bruised thing.Ovid.

Minima de malis—Of two evils choose the least.Proverb.

Minister flicken am Staate, / Die Richter flicken am Rate, / Die Pfarrer an dem Gewissen, / Die Aerzte an Händen und Füszen! O Jobsen! was flickest denn du? / Weit besser! Gerissene Schuh!—Ministers cobble away at the state, judges at the law, parsons at the conscience, doctors at our hands and feet; what cobblest thou at, friend Jobson? Far better—shoes that have been torn.Weisse.

Minor est quam servus, dominus qui servos timet—A master who fears his servants is lower than a servant.

Minorities lead and save the world, and the world knows them not till long afterwards.John Burroughs.

Minuentur atræ / Carmine curæ—Black care will be soothed by song.Horace.

Minuit præsentia famam—Acquaintanceship lessens fame.Claudian.

Minus afficit sensus fatigatio quam cogitatio—Bodily fatigue affects the mind less than intense thought.Quintilian.

Minuti / Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas / Ultio—Revenge is ever the delight of a stinted and weak and petty mind.Juvenal.

Minutiæ—Trifles; minute details.

Mir gäb’ es keine gröss’re Pein, / Wär’ ich im Paradies allein—There were for me no greater torment than to be in Paradise alone.Goethe.

Mir wird bei meinem kritischen Bestreben / Doch oft um Kopf und Busen bang—Often during my critical studies I fear as if I would lose both head and heart.Wagner in Goethe’s “Faust.”

Mira quædam in cognoscendo suavitas et delectatio—There is a certain wonderful sweetness and delight in gaining knowledge.

Mirabile dictu!—Wonderful to be told!

Mirabile visu!—Wonderful to behold!

Miracles are ceased, and therefore we must needs admit the means, how things are perfected.Henry V., i. 1.

Miracles do not serve to convert, but condemn.Pascal.

Miramur ex intervallo fallentia—We admire at a distance things which deceive us.Proverb.

Miremur te non tua—Let me have something to admire in yourself, not in what belongs to you.Juvenal.

Mirth is God’s medicine.Ward Beecher.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.Addison.

Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.Addison.

Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem—Mix a little folly with your serious thoughts.Horace.

Miscellaneous reading avoid.Prof. Blackie to young men.