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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Power and permanence to Proverbs were

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Power and permanence to Proverbs were

Power and permanence reside only in limitations.Grabbe.

Power belongeth unto God.Bible.

Power cannot have too gentle an expression.Jean Paul.

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.Seneca.

Power, in its quality and degree, is the measure of manhood.J. G. Holland.

Power is according to quality, not quantity. How much more are men than nations?Emerson.

Power is ever stealing from the many to the few.Wendell Phillips.

Power is no blessing in itself, but when it is employed to protect the innocent.Swift.

Power is nothing but as it is felt, and the delight of superiority is proportionate to the resistance overcome.Johnson.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.Bulwer Lytton.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, / Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, / Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, / Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame a mechanized automaton.Shelley.

Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.Colton.

Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring.Bacon.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, no man good enough, to be trusted with unlimited power.Colton.

Power’s footstool is opinion, and his throne the human heart.Sir Aubrey de Vere.

Powerful attachment will give a man spirit and confidence which he could by no means call up or command of himself; and in this mood he can do wonders which would not be possible to him without it.Matthew Arnold.

Practically men have come to imagine that the laws of this universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting; that it is all a study of division-lists, and for the universe too depends a little on the activity of the whippers-in.Carlyle.

Practice aims at what is immediate; speculation at what is remote. In practical life, the wisest and soundest men avoid speculation, and ensure success, because, by limiting their range, they increase the tenacity with which they grasp events, while in speculative life the course is exactly the reverse, since in that department the greater the range the greater the command.Buckle.

Practice in time becomes second nature.Anonymous.

Practice is everything.Periander.

Practice makes perfect.Proverb.

Practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule.Locke.

Practise thrift, or else you’ll drift.Proverb.

Præcedentibus insta—Follow close on those who precede.Motto.

Præcepta ducunt, at exempla trahunt—Precept guides, but example draws.Proverb.

Præmia virtutis honores—Honours are the rewards of virtue.Motto.

Præsis ut prosis—Be first, that you may be of service.Motto.

Præsto et persto—I press on and persevere.Motto.

Praise a fool and you may make him useful.Danish Proverb.

Praise a fool, and you water his folly.Proverb.

Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave. Plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then.Lowell.

Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.Steele.

Praise God more, and blame neighbours less.Proverb.

Praise is indeed the consequence and encouragement of virtue; but it is sometimes so unseasonably applied as to become its bane and corruption too.Thomas à Kempis.

Praise is so pleasing to the mind of man that it is the original motive of almost all our actions.Johnson.

Praise is the tribute of men, but felicity the gift of God.Bacon.

Praise is virtue’s shadow; who courts her doth more the handmaid than the dame admire.Heath.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.Johnson.

Praise makes good men better, and bad men worse.Proverb.

Praise Peter, but don’t find fault with Paul.Proverb.

Praise the bridge which carries you over.Proverb.

Praise the hill, but keep below.Proverb.

Praise the sea, but keep on land.George Herbert.

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.Pope.

[Greek]—Mild in speech, keen in action.Himerius.

Pray devoutly, / And hammer stoutly.Proverb.

Pray to God, but keep the hammer going.Proverb.

Pray to God, sailor, but pull for the shore.Proverb.

Prayer and practice is good rhyme.Scotch Proverb.

Prayer and provender never hinder a journey.Proverb.

Prayer is a groan.St. Jerome.

Prayer is a powerful thing; for God has bound and tied himself thereto.Luther.

Prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan.Bunyan.

Prayer is a study of truth,—a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite.Emerson.

Prayer is a turning of one’s soul, in heroic reverence, in infinite desire and endeavour, towards the Highest, the All-excellent, Supreme.Carlyle, in a letter to a young friend.

Prayer is intended to increase the devotion of the individual, but if the individual himself prays he requires no formulæ…. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.W. von Humboldt.

Prayer is the aspiration of our poor, struggling, heavy-laden soul towards its Eternal Father, and, with or without words, ought not to become impossible, nor need it ever. Loyal sons and subjects can approach the King’s throne who have no “request” to make there except that they may continue loyal.Carlyle, in a letter to a young friend.

Prayer is the cable, at whose end appears / The anchor hope, ne’er slipp’d but in our fears.Quarles.

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, / The Christian’s native air.James Montgomery.

Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscles of Omnipotence.Martin Tupper.

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, / Uttered or unexpressed, / The motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.J. Montgomery.

Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to heaven; and meditation the eye with which we see God.St. Ambrose.

Prayer knocks till the door opens.Proverb.

Prayer, like Jonathan’s bow, returns not empty.Gurnall.

Prayer moves the hand that moves the universe.Anonymous.

Prayer must not come from the roof of the mouth, but from the root of the heart.Proverb.

Prayer purifies; it is a self-preached sermon.Jean Paul.

Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.Proverb.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. As a means to effect a private end, it is meanness and theft.Emerson.

Prayers are but the body of the bird; desires are its angel’s wings.Jeremy Taylor.

Praying’s the end of preaching.George Herbert.

Preaching is of much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument that you can offer to the sceptic.H. Ballou.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.Emerson.

Précepte commence, exemple achève—Precept begins, example perfects.French.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.Seneca.

Preces armatæ—Armed prayers, i.e., with arms to back them up.

Precious beyond price are good resolutions. Valuable beyond price are good feelings.H. R. Haweis.

Precious ointments are put in small boxes.Proverb.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.Disraeli.

Prefer loss before unjust gain; for that brings grief but once, this for ever.Chilo.

Prejudice is a prophet which prophesies only evil.Proverb.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.Hazlitt.

Prejudice squints when it looks, and lies when it talks.Duchess d’Abrantes.

Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is man’s absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose: thus let but a rising of the sun, let but a creation of the world happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy or noticeable.Carlyle.

Prendre la clef des champs—To run away (lit. take the key of the fields).French Proverb.

Prendre les choses au pis—To regard matters in the most unfavourable light.French.

Prends le premier conseil d’une femme et non le second—Take a woman’s first advice and not her second.French Proverb.

Prends moi tel que je suis—Take me as I am.Motto.

Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings.Macbeth, i. 3.

Preserve the rights of inferior places, and think it more honour to direct in chief than to be busy in all.Bacon.

Pressure alone causes water to rise and directs it.Renan.

Presumption is our natural and original disease.Montaigne.

Presumptuousness, which audaciously strides over all the steps of gradual culture, affords little encouragement to hope for any masterpiece.Goethe.

Prêt d’accomplir—Ready to accomplish.Motto.

Prêt pour mon pays—Ready for my country.Motto.

“Pretty Pussy” will not feed a cat.Proverb.

Prevention is better than cure.Proverb.

Pria Veneziani, poi Christiane—Venetian first, Christian afterwards.Venetian Proverb.

Pride adds to a man’s stature; vanity only puffs him out.Chamfort.

Pride and grace ne’er dwell in ae place.Scotch Proverb.

Pride and poverty are ill met, yet often live together.Proverb.

Pride feels no cold.Proverb.

Pride flows from want of reflection and ignorance of ourselves. Knowledge and humility come upon us together.Addison.

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.Bible.

Pride hath no other glass to show itself but pride.Troil. and Cress., iii. 3.

Pride, ill-nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill-manners; without some one of these defects no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.Swift.

Pride is a flower that grows in the devil’s garden.Howell.

Pride is lofty, calm, immovable; vanity is uncertain, capricious, and unjust.Chamfort.

Pride is still aiming at the blest abodes; / Men would be angels, angels would be gods; / Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, / Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.Pope.

Pride is the source of a thousand virtues; vanity is that of nearly all vices and all perversities.Chamfort.

Pride must suffer pain.Proverb.

Pride never leaves its master till he gets a fa’.Scotch Proverb.

Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.Lowell.

Pride, the never-failing vice of fools.Pope.

Pride will have a fall; for pride goeth before, and shame cometh after.Proverb.

Pride with pride will not abide.Proverb.

Pride would never owe, nor self-love ever pay.La Rochefoucauld.

Pride’s chickens have bonny feathers, but bony bodies.Proverb.

Priestcraft is no better than witchcraft.Proverb.

Priesthoods that do not teach, aristocracies that do not govern; the misery of that, and the misery of altering that, are written in Belshazzar fire-letters on the history of France.Carlyle.

Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.2 Henry VI., v. 2.

Prima et maxima peccantium est pœna peccasse—The first and greatest punishment of sinners is the conscience of sin.Seneca.

Prima facie—At first sight or view of a case.

Primo avulso non deficit alter / aureus—The first being wrenched away, another of gold succeeds.Virgil.

Primum mobile—The primary motive power.

Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor—It was fear that first suggested the existence of the gods.Statius.

Primus inter pares—The first among equals.

Primus sapientiæ gradus est falsa intelligere—The first step towards wisdom is to distinguish what is false.

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, / “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”Burns.

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; / A breath can make them, as a breath has made.Goldsmith.

Principes mortales, rempublicam æternam—Princes are mortal, the republic is eternal.Tacitus.

Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est—To have earned the goodwill of the great is not the least of merits.Horace.

Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur, / Cum mala per longas convaluere moras—Resist the first beginnings; a cure is attempted too late when through long delay the malady has waxed strong.Ovid.

Principis est virtus maxima nosse suos—It is the greatest merit of a prince to know those his subjects.Martial.

Principle is a passion for truth. (?)

Principle is ever my motto, not expediency.Disraeli.

Prisoners of hope.Bible.

Pristinæ virtutis memores—Mindful of ancient valour.Motto.

Priusquam incipias consulto, et ubi consulueris mature facto opus est—Before you begin, consider; but having considered, use despatch.Sallust.

Private affection bereaves us easily of a right judgment.Thomas à Kempis.

Private credit is wealth; public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.Junius.

Private judgment with the accent on “private” is self-will; but with the accent on “judgment,” it is freedom, free-will.J. Hutchison Stirling.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.Ward Beecher.

Private reproof is the best grave for private faults.Proverb.

Private self-regard must have been wholly subordinated to, if not entirely cast out by, a higher principle of action and a purer affection before a man can become either truly moral or religious.J. C. Sharp.

Privatorum conventio juri publico non derogat—No bargain between individuals derogates from a law.Law.

Privatus illis census erat brevis, / Commune magnum—Their private property was small, the public revenue great.Horace.

Privilegium est quasi privata lex—Privilege is as it were private law.Law.

Pro aris et focis—For our altars and our hearths.

Pro bono publico—For the public good.

Pro Christo et patria—For Christ and country.Motto.

Pro confesso—As confessed or admitted.

Pro Deo et rege—For God and king.Motto.

Pro et con.—For and against.

Pro forma—For form’s sake.

Pro hac vice—For this turn; on this occasion.

Pro libertate patriæ—For the liberty of my country.Motto.

Pro patria et rege—For king and country.Motto.

Pro rata (parte)—In proportion, proportionally.

Pro re nata—For circumstances that have arisen.

Pro rege et patria—For king and country.Motto.

Pro rege, lege, et grege—For king, law, and people.Motto.

Pro tanto—For so much.

Pro tempore—For the time.

Pro virtute bellica—For valour in war.Motto.

Pro virtute felix temeritas—Instead of valour successful rashness.Seneca, of Alexander the Great.

Probably imposture is of a sanative, anodyne nature, and man’s gullibility not his worst blessing.Carlyle.

Probably men were never born demigods in any century, but precisely god-devils as we see; certain of whom do become a kind of demigods.Carlyle.

Probatum est—It has been settled.

Probitas laudatur, et alget—Integrity is praised and is left out in the cold.Juvenal.

Probitas verus honos—Integrity is true honour.Motto.

Probitate et labore—By honesty and labour.Motto.

Probity is as rarely in accord with interest as reason is with passion.Saneal-Dubay.

Probum non pœnitet—The upright man has no regrets.Motto.

Procellæ quanto plus habent virium tanto minus temporis—The more violent storms are, the sooner they are over.Seneca.

Procrastination is the thief of time.Young.

Procul a Jove, procul a fulmine—Far from Jove, far from his thunderbolts.Proverb.

Procul O! procul este, profani—Away, I pray you; keep off, ye profane.Virgil.

Prodesse quam conspici—To be of service rather than to be conspicuous.Motto.

Prodigus et stultus donat quæ spernit et odit. / Hæc seges ingratos tulit, et feret omnibus annis—The spendthrift and fool gives away what he despises and hates. This seed has ever borne, and will bear, an ungrateful brood.Horace.

Productions (of a certain artistic quality) are at present possible which are nought (Null) without being bad—nought, because there is nothing in them, and not bad, because a general form after some good model has hovered vaguely (vorschwebt) before the mind of the author.Goethe.

Profaneness is a brutal vice; he who indulges in it is no gentleman.Chapin.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough state or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical laboratory has scales and weights, but neither crucible nor touchstone.Joubert.

Proffered service stinks—i.e., is not appreciated.Proverb.

Profligacy consists not in spending years of time or chests of money, but in spending them off the line of your career.Emerson.

Profound joy has more of severity than gaiety in it.Montaigne.

Progress begins with the minority.G. W. Curtis.

Progress is the law of life—man is not man as yet.Browning.

Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, / Not God’s and not the beasts: God is, they are; / Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.Browning.

Progress—the stride of God.Victor Hugo.

Prohibetur ne quis faciat in suo, quod nocere potest in alieno—No one is allowed to do on his own premises what may injure those of a neighbour.Law.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.Byron.

Promettre c’est donner, espérer c’est jouir.Delille.

Promise is most given when the least is said.Chapman.

Promises make debts, and debts make promises.Dutch Proverb.

Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.Owen Feltham.

Proof of a God? A probable God! The smallest of finites struggling to prove to itself … and include within itself, the Highest Infinite, in which, by hypothesis, it lives and moves and has its being! Man, reduced to wander about, in stooping posture, with painfully-constructed sulphur-match, and farthing rushlight, or smoky tar-link, searching for the sun.Carlyle.

Prope ad summum, prope ad exitum—Near the summit, near the end.Proverb.

Propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty.Hume.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.Swift.

Properly speaking, the land belongs to these two: to the Almighty God and to all His children of men that have ever worked well on it, or shall ever work well on it.Carlyle.

Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working.Carlyle.

Property has its duties as well as its rights.Drummond.

Property, O brother? Of my body I have but a life-rent…. But my soul, breathed into me by God, my Me, and what capability is there, I call that mine and not thine. I will keep that, and do what work I can with it; God has given it me; the devil shall not take it away.Carlyle.

Property there is among us valuable to the auctioneer; but the accumulated manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lies impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, what auctioneer can estimate?Carlyle.

Prophecy, not poetry, is the thing wanted in these days. How can we sing and paint when we do not yet believe and see?Carlyle.

Prophete rechts, Prophete links / Das Weltkind in der Mitten—Prophets to right, prophets to left, the world-child between.Goethe.

Propositi tenax—Tenacious of my purpose.Motto.

Propriæ telluris herum natura, neque illum, / Nec me, nec quemquam statuit. Nos expulit ille: / Illum aut nequities, aut vafri inscitia juris, / Postremo expellet certe vivacior hæres—Nature has appointed neither him nor me, nor any one, lord of this land in perpetuity. That one has ejected us; either some villany or quirk at law, at any rate, an heir surviving him, will at last eject him.Horace.

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style.Macaulay.

Proprio motu—Of his own motion; spontaneously.

Proprio vigore—Of one’s own strength.

Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem læseris—It is a weakness of your human nature to hate those whom you have wronged.Tacitus.

Proque sua causa quisque disertus erat—Every one was eloquent in his own cause.Ovid.

Prose, words in their best order; poetry, the best words in the best order.Coleridge.

Prosperity destroys fools and endangers the wise.Proverb.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, and adversity doth best discover virtue.Bacon.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.Bacon.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God’s favour.Bacon.

Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.Tacitus.

Prosperity seems to be scarcely safe, unless it be mixed with a little adversity.H. Ballou.

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.Pliny the Younger.

Prosperum et felix scelus / Virtus vocatur—Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.Seneca.

Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem—Protection involves allegiance, and allegiance protection.Law.

Protestantism is a revolt against false sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparation for true sovereigns getting place among us.Carlyle.

Proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.Emerson.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.St. Paul.

Proverbs are easily made in cold blood.Joe Willet.

Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond-fields of the mind.W. R. Alger.

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.Cervantes.

Proverbs are the abridgments of wisdom.Joubert.

Proverbs are the daughters of daily experience.Dutch Proverb.

Proverbs are the wisdom of ages.German Proverb.

Proverbs are the wisdom of the streets.Proverb.

Proverbs cover the whole field of man as he is, and life as it is, not of either as they ought to be.John Morley.

Proverbs have been always dear to the true intellectual aristocracy of a nation.Trench.

Proverbs have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of that great stream of time which has swallowed so much beneath its waves.Trench.

Proverbs have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves a home in the most different lands.Trench.

Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.Emerson.

Proverbs please the people, and have pleased them for ages.Trench.

Proverbs possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation’s existence.Trench.

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