dots-menu
×

C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Variety

Variety is the very spice of life.

Cowper.

Even pleasure cloys without variety.

Ovid.

Where order in variety we see; and where, though all things differ, all agree.

Pope.

Variety is the condition of harmony.

James Freeman Clarke.

Variety is the mother of enjoyment.

Disraeli.

Whatever is natural admits of variety.

Mme. de Staël.

Diversity, that is my motto.

La Fontaine.

Amidst the soft variety I’m lost.

Addison.

Tired of the last, and eager of the new.

Prior.

Ladies like variegated tulips show.

Pope.

The most universal quality is diversity.

Montaigne.

All, with one consent, praise new-born gawds.

Shakespeare.

That divine gift which makes a woman charming.

Beaconsfield.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

Bacon.

There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.

William Mason.

Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.

Ruskin.

Variety alone gives joy; the sweetest meats the soonest cloy.

Prior.

All sorts are here that all the earth yields, variety without end.

Milton.

There is a variety in the tempers of good men.

Atterbury.

Variety is nothing else but a continued novelty.

South.

Gods, that never change their state, vary oft their love and hate.

Waller.

That each from other differs, first confess; next that he varies from himself no less.

Pope.

The most delightful pleasures cloy without variety.

Publius Syrus.

I take it to be a principal rule of life, not to be too much addicted to any one thing.

Terence.

  • Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
  • Her infinite variety.
  • Shakespeare.

    For variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.

    Jean Paul Richter.

    God hath here varied His bounty so with new delights!

    Milton.

  • When our old Pleasures die,
  • Some new One still is nigh;
  • Oh! fair Variety!
  • Nicholas Rowe.

    As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.

    Pliny.

    In books and love the mind one end pursues, and only change the expiring flame renews.

    Gay.

    God hath varied the inclinations of men according to the variety of actions to be performed.

    Sir T. Browne.

    Countless the various species of mankind; countless the shades which separate mind from mind.

    Gifford.

    The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks.

    Dr. Johnson.

    Therefore doth heaven divide the state of man in divers functions, setting endeavor in continual motion.

    Shakespeare.

    The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.

    Pope.

  • Nature, through all her works, in great degree,
  • Borrows a blessing from variety.
  • Music itself her needful aid requires
  • To rouse the soul, and wake our dying fires.
  • Churchill.

    How nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects; the ill-nature of the wasp, the sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug!

    Sydney Smith.

  • The earth was made so various, that the mind
  • Of desultory man, studious of change
  • And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
  • Cowper.

  • Not chaos-like together crush’d and bruis’d,
  • But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d,
  • Where order in variety we see,
  • And where, though all things differ, all agree.
  • Pope.

  • How widely its agencies vary,—
  • To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—
  • As even its minted coins express,
  • Now stamp’d with the image of good Queen Bess,
  • And now of Bloody Mary.
  • Hood.

  • Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
  • With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
  • Covering the earth with odors, fruits, and flocks,
  • Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
  • But all to please and sate the curious taste?
  • Milton.

  • Now, by two-headed Janus,
  • Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time:
  • Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
  • And laugh, like parrots, at a bagpiper;
  • And other of such vinegar aspect,
  • That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
  • Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
  • Shakespeare.