Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyts New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Growth
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he neer forgets; May learn a thousand things, not twice the same. Robert BrowningA Death in the Desert. L. 447.
It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it falls and die that night It was the plant and flower of Light. Ben JonsonPindaric Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. LongfellowLadder of St. Augustine.
Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into shape. MontaigneApology for Raimond Sebond. Bk. II. Ch. XII.
Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man unless he can erect himself above humanity. Here is a bon mot and a useful desire, but equally absurd. For to make the handful bigger than the hand, the armful bigger than the arm, and to hope to stride further than the stretch of our legs, is impossible and monstrous . He may lift himself if God lend him His hand of special grace; he may lift himself by means wholly celestial. It is for our Christian religion, and not for his Stoic virtue, to pretend to this divine and miraculous metamorphosis. MontaigneEssays. Bk. II. Ch. XII.
Heu quotidie pejus! haec colonia retroversus crescit tanquam coda vituli. Alas! worse every day! this colony grows backward like the tail of a calf. PetroniusCena. 44.
Post id, frumenti quum alibi messis maximast Tribus tantis illi minus reddit, quam obseveris. Heu! istic oportet obseri mores malos, Si in obserendo possint interfieri. Besides that, when elsewhere the harvest of wheat is most abundant, there it comes up less by one-fourth than what you have sowed. There, methinks, it were a proper place for men to sow their wild oats, where they would not spring up. PlautusTrinummus. IV. 4. 128.
Im engen Kreis verengert sich der Sinn. Es wächst der Mensch mit seinen grössern Zwecken. In a narrow circle the mind contracts Man grows with his expanded needs. SchillerProlog. I. 59.
Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when yere sleeping. ScottThe Heart of Midlothian. Ch. VIII.
Ay, quoth my uncle Gloucester, Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace: And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste. Richard III. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 12.
I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. TennysonIn Memoriam. Pt. I.
Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch Till the white-wingd reapers come. Henry VaughanThe Seed Growing Secretly.
Lambendo effingere. Lick into shape. Vergil. See SuetoniusLife of Vergil. Lambendo paulatim figurant. Licking a cub into shape. PlinyNat. Hist. VIII. 36.
And that unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man. WordsworthExcursion. V. 158. (Knights ed.) From Daniels Essay XIV, in ColeridgeFriend. Introductory. Quam contempta res est homo, nisi super humana se erexerit. As said by Seneca. Amator Jesu et veritatis potest se elevare supra seipsum in spiritu. A lover of Jesus and of the truth can lift himself above himself in spirit. Thomas á KempisImitatio. II. 1.