Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Variety
Amidst the soft variety I’m lost.
Addison—Letter from Italy. L. 100.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. I. L. 506.
Variety’s the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. II. L. 606.
The variety of all things forms a pleasure.
Euripides—Orestes. 234.
Variety’s the source of joy below,
From whence still fresh-revolving pleasures flow,
In books and love the mind one end pursues,
And only change the expiring flame renews.
Gay—Epistles. To Bernard Lintot, on a Miscellany of Poems.
Countless the various species of mankind,
Countless the shades which sep’rate mind from mind;
No general object of desire is known,
Each has his will, and each pursues his own.
Wm. Gifford—Perseus.
All concord’s born of contraries.
Ben Jonson—Cynthia’s Revels. Act V. Sc. 2.
Diversité, c’est ma devise.
Diversity, that is my motto.
La Fontaine—Paté d’Anguille.
Mille animos excipe mille modis.
Treat a thousand dispositions in a thousand ways.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. Bk. I. 756.
Variety alone gives joy;
The sweetest meats the soonest cloy.
Prior—The Turtle and the Sparrow. L. 234.
Weil Verschiedenheit des Nichts mehr ergötzt, als Einerleiheit des Etwas.
For variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.
Jean Paul Richter—Levana. Fragment V. I. 100.
When our old Pleasures die,
Some new One still is nigh;
Oh! fair Variety!
Nicholas Rowe—Ode for the New Year. (1717).
Omnis mutatio loci jucunda fiet.
Every change of place becomes a delight.
Seneca—Epistles. 28.