Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Shadows
The worthy gentleman [Mr. Coombe], who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, while his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
Burke—Speech at Bristol on Declining the Poll.
Thus shadow owes its birth to light.
Gay—The Persian, Sun, and Cloud. L. 10.
(Orion) A hunter of shadows, himself a shade.
Homer—Odyssey. II. 572.
Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue.
Ben Jonson—Song. That Women are but Men’s Shadows.
The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.
Locke—Essay concerning Human Understanding. Bk. II. Ch. VIII. Par. 5.
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto II. St. 5.
Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.
Ruskin—Painting.
Come like shadows, so depart!
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 111.
Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow’s bliss.
Merchant of Venice. Act II. Sc. 9. L. 66.
Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond.
Richard III. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 216.
Chequer’d shadow.
Titus Andronicus. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 15.
Like Hezekiah’s, backward runs
The shadow of my days.
Tennyson—Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue. (Ed. 1842). Changed in 1853 ed. to “Against its fountain upward runs / The current of my days.”
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ.
And the greater shadows fall from the lofty mountains.
Vergil—Eclogue. I. 84.