Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

I am a man to I would rather

I am a man / More sinned against than sinning.King Lear, iii. 2.

I am afraid to think what I have done; / Look on’t again I dare not.Macbeth, ii. 2.

I am always afraid of a fool; one cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.Hazlitt.

I am always as happy as I can be in meeting a man in whose society feelings are developed and thoughts defined.Goethe.

I am always ill at ease when tumults arise among the mob—people who have nothing to lose.Goethe.

I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way / Among the thorns and dangers of the world.King John, iv. 3.

I am as free as Nature first made man, / Ere the base laws of servitude began, / When wild in woods the noble savage ran.Dryden.

I am black, but I am not the devil.Proverb.

I am bound to find you in reasons, but not in brains.Johnson.

I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff.Sir Henry Wotton.

I am constant as the northern star, / Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality / There is no fellow in the firmament.Julius Cæsar, iii. 1.

I am convinced that the Bible always becomes more beautiful the better it is understood, that is, the better we see that every word which we apprehend in general and apply in particular had a proper, peculiar, and immediately individual reference to certain circumstances, certain time and space relations, i.e., had a specially direct bearing on the spiritual life of the time in which it was written.Goethe.

I am equally an enemy to a female dunce and a female pedant.Goldsmith.

I am fortune’s fool.Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1.

I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set in night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.Goethe.

I am monarch of all I survey, / My right there is none to dispute; / From the centre all round to the sea, / I am lord of the fowl and the brute.Cowper.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, self.Luther.

I am neither so weak as to fear men, so proud as to despise them, or so unhappy as to hate them.Marmontel.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.Mer. of Ven., v. 1.

I am no herald to inquire of men’s pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues.Sir P. Sidney.

I am no orator, as Brutus is; / But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, / That loves my friend.Julius Cæsar, iii. 2.

I am not mad; I would to heaven I were! / For then ’tis like I should forget myself.King John, iii. 4.

I am not what I am.Twelfth Night, iii. 1; Othello, i. 1.

I am nothing if not critical.Othello, ii. 1.

“I am searching for a man.”Diogenes, going about Athens by day with a lit lantern.

I am Sir Oracle, / And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.Mer. of Ven., i. 1.

I am sorry to see how small a piece of religion will make a cloak.Sir W. Waller.

I am very content with knowing, if only I could know.Emerson.

I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty; I like their delicacy; I like their vivacity; and I like their silence.Johnson.

I and time against any two.Philip of Spain.

I augur better of a youth who is wandering on a path of his own than of many who are walking aright upon paths which are not theirs.Goethe.

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.Byron.

I believe in great men, but not in demigods.Bovee.

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world than in following our own inclinations.Lady Mary Montagu.

I believe there are few persons who, if they please to reflect on their past lives, will not find that had they saved all those little sums which they have spent unnecessarily they might at present have been masters of a competent fortune.Eustace Budgell.

I beseech you, dear brethren, think it possible that you may be wrong.Cromwell.

I bide my time.Motto.

I can but trust that good shall fall / At last—far off—at last, to all.Tennyson.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” “Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?”1 Henry IV., iii. 1.

I can count a stocking-top while a man ’s getting ’s tongue ready; an’ when he out wi’ his speech at last, there ’s little broth to be made on’t.George Eliot.

I can teach you to command the devil, / And I can teach you to shame the devil, / By telling truth.1 Henry IV., ii. 1.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better than book and orator.Goethe.

I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue…. It cannot be spared or left behind, but it hindereth the march.Bacon.

I cannot hide what I am; I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man’s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour.Much Ado, i. 3.

I cannot love thee as I ought, / For love reflects the thing beloved; / My words are only words, and move / Upon the topmost froth of thought.Tennyson.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.Milton.

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he that envies him.Steele.

I can’t work for nothing, and find thread.Proverb.

I care not though the cloth of state should be / Not of rich Arras, but mean tapestry.George Herbert.

I charge thee, fling away ambition; / By that sin fell the angels.Henry VIII., iii. 2.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow / To join the brimming river, / For men may come and men may go, / But I go on for ever.Tennyson.

I contented myself with endeavouring to make your home so easy that you might not be in haste to leave it.Lady Montagu (to her daughter).

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, / Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, / Thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand on end, / Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.Hamlet, i. 4.

I could have better spared a better man.1 Henry IV., v. 4.

I could not but smile at a woman who makes her own misfortunes and then deplores the miseries of her situation.Goldsmith.

I count life just a stuff / To try the soul’s strength on.Browning.

I cuori fanciulli non vestone a bruno—A child’s heart wears no weeds.B. Zendrini.

I danari del comune sono come l’ acqua benedetta, ognun ne piglia—Public money is like holy water; everybody helps himself to it.Italian Proverb.

I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more, is none.Macbeth, i. 7.

I dare to be honest, and I fear no labour.Burns.

I, demens! et sævas curre per Alpes, / Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias—Go, madman, and run over the savage Alps to please schoolboys, and become the subject of declamation.Juvenal, of Hannibal.

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.George Eliot.

I die by the help of too many physicians.Alexander the Great.

I do but sing because I must, / And pipe but as the linnets sing.Tennyson.

I do know of these / That therefore only are reputed wise / For saying nothing.Mer. of Ven., i. 1.

I do know, / When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul / Lends the tongue vows.Hamlet, i. 3.

I do not like “but yet,” it does allay / The good precedence; fie upon “but yet:” / “But yet” is as a jailer to bring forth / Some monstrous malefactor.Ant. and Cleop., ii. 5.

I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.Goldsmith.

I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, / The reason why I cannot tell; / But this alone I know full well, / I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.

I do not need philosophy at all.Goethe.

I do pity unlearned gentlemen on a rainy day.Falkland.

“I don’t care,” is a deadly snare.Proverb.

I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.As You Like It, iii. 2.

I esteem that wealth which is given to the worthy, and which is day by day enjoyed; the rest is a reserve for one knoweth not whom.Hitopadesa.

I fatti sono maschii, le parole femine—Deeds are masculine, words feminine.Italian Proverb.

I favoriti dei grandi oltre all’ oro di regali, e l’incenso delle lodi, tocca loro anche la mirra della maldicenza—The favourites of the great, besides the gold of gifts and the incense of flattery, must also partake of the myrrh of calumny.Italian Proverb.

I fear God, and, next to God, I chiefly fear him who fears Him not.Saadi.

I fear thy nature; / It is too full of the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.Macbeth, i. 5.

I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.Henry VIII., iii. 2.

I find nonsense singularly refreshing.Talleyrand.

I for ever pass from hand to hand, / And each possessor thinks me his own land. / All of them think so, but they all are wrong; / To none but Fortune only I belong.Anonymous, of a field.

I found Rome brick, I left it marble.Augustus Cæsar.

I gaed a waefu’ gate yestreen, / A gate, I fear, I’ll dearly rue; / I got my death frae twa sweet een, / Twa lovely een o’ bonnie blue.Burns.

“I go at last out of this world, where the heart must either petrify or break.”Chamfort, at his last moments.

I go through my appointed daily stage, and I care not for the curs who bark at me along the road.Frederick the Great.

I gran dolori sono muti—Great griefs are dumb.Italian Proverb.

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.Emerson.

I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong; (but) there is a class of persons to whom, by all spiritual affinity, I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be.Emerson.

I guadagni mediocri empiono la borsa—Moderate profits fill the purse.Italian Proverb.

I had as lief not be, as live to be / In awe of such a thing as I myself.Julius Cæsar, i. 2.

I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit and made a satellite instead of a system.Emerson.

I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, / Than such a Roman.Julius Cæsar, iv. 3.

“I had rather be first here than second in Rome.”Cæsar in an insignificant townlet.

I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven (planets), revolving round the sun, than the first among five (moons) revolving round Saturn.Goethe.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends, the Talmud, and the Koran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.Bacon.

I had rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air ratified to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief.Jean Paul.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.As You Like It, iv. 1.

I had rather people laugh at me while they instruct me than praise me without benefiting me.Goethe.

I hae a penny to spend, / There—thanks to naebody; / I hae naething to lend— / I’ll borrow frae naebody.Burns.

I hate a style that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.Shenstone.

I hate bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.Goethe.

I hate ingratitude more in a man / Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, / Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption / Inhabits our frail blood.Twelfth Night, iii. 1.

I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.Merry Wives, iii. 5.

I have a very poor opinion of a man who talks to men what women should not hear.Richardson.

I have all I have ever enjoyed.Bettine.

I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time, and it has made a man of me.Nelson.

I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, feeble resolve.Burns.

I have always found that the road to a woman’s heart lies through her child.Judge Haliburton.

I have been reasoning all my life, and find that all argument will vanish before one touch of Nature.Colman.

I have been tempted by opportunity, and seconded by accident.Marmontel.

I have been too much occupied with things themselves to think either of their beginning or their end.Goethe.

I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people.Macbeth, i. 7.

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself.Montesquieu.

I have, God wot, a largë field to ear; / And weakë be the oxen in my plough.Chaucer.

I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one.Ward Beecher.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within. (?)

I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.St. Paul.

I have little knowledge which I find not some way useful to my highest ends.Baxter.

I have lost the ring, but I have my finger still.Italian and Spanish Proverb.

I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast (impatience).Calvin.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.Montaigne.

I have no idea of the courage that braves Heaven.Burns.

I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.Carlyle.

I have no other but a woman’s reason; / I think him so because I think him so.Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2.

I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent.Macbeth, i. 7.

I have no words, / My voice is in my sword.Macbeth, v. 7.

I have saved the bird in my bosom, i.e., kept my secret.Proverb.

I have seen some nations, like overloaded asses, / Kick off their burdens, meaning the higher classes.Byron.

I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance.Paley.

I have set my life upon a cast, / And I will stand the hazard of the die.Richard III., v. 4.

I have that within which passeth show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.Hamlet, i. 2.

I have this great commission, / From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts / In any breast of strong authority, / To look into the blots and stains of right.King John, ii. 1.

I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably.Hamlet, iii. 2.

I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.3 Henry VI., iv. 1.

I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.Hamlet, ii. 2.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.Bacon.

I hold it cowardice / To rest mistrustful where a noble heart / Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love.3 Henry VI., iv. 2.

I hold 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.Tennyson.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; / A stage, where every man must play a part, / And mine a sad one.Mer. of Ven., i. 1.

I hope I don’t intrude.Paul Pry.

I humbly trust I should not change my opinions and practice, though it rained garters and coronets as the reward of apostasy.Havelock.

I jouk (duck aside) beneath misfortune’s blows / As well’s I may; / Sworn foe to sorrow, care, or prose, / I rhyme away.Burns.

I know but of one solid objection to absolute monarchy; the difficulty of finding any man adequate to the office.Fielding.

I know enough to hold my tongue, but not to speak.Proverb.

I know no evil death can show, which life / Has not already shown to those who live / Embodied longest.Byron.

I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common.Steele.

I know no judgment of the future but by the past.Patrick Henry.

I know nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.Burke.

I know only one thing sweeter than making a book, and that is to project one.Jean Paul.

I know that dancin’ ’s nonsense; but if you stick at everything because it’s nonsense, you wonna go far in this life.George Eliot.

“I know that it is in me, and out it shall come.”Sheridan to his friends over their disappointment at the failure of his maiden speech.

I know that my Redeemer liveth.Job, in the Bible.

I know that nothing is mine but the thought that flows tranquilly out of my soul, and every gracious (günstige) moment which a loving Providence (Geschick) permits me thoroughly (von Grund aus) to enjoy.Goethe.

I labour, and you get the pearl.Talmud.

I let every one follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.Goethe.

I like a good hater.Johnson.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.Johnson.

I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me; and to me / High mountains are a feeling.Byron.

I look upon an able statesman out of business like a huge whale, that will endeavour to overturn the ship unless he has an empty cask to play with.Steele.

I love a hand that meets mine own with a grasp that causes some sensation.Mrs. Osgood.

I love everything that’s old—old friends, old tunes, old manners, old books, old wine.Goldsmith.

I love God and little children.Jean Paul.

I love him not, nor fear him; there’s my creed.Henry VIII., ii. 2.

I love my friends well, but myself better.Proverb.

I love sometimes to doubt, as well as to know.Dante.

I love / The name of honour more than I fear death.Julius Cæsar, i. 2.

I love to browse in a library.Johnson.

I’ll make assurance doubly sure, / And take a bond of fate.Macbeth, iv. 1.

I made all my generals out of mud.Napoleon.

I make the most of my enjoyments; and as for my troubles, I pack them in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.Southey.

I might have my hand full of truth, and open only my little finger.Fontenelle.

I mourn not those who lose their vital breath; / But those who, living, live in fear of death.Lucillus.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.Hamlet, iii. 4.

“I must sleep now.”Byron’s last words.

I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.Jesus.

I’m never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when alone.Scipio Africanus.

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish; God Almighty made ’em to match the men.George Eliot.

I’m not one of those who can see the cat i’ the dairy an’ wonder what she’s come after.George Eliot.

I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie, / E’en to a deil, / To skelp an’ scaud (scald) puir dogs like me, / An’ hear us squeel.Burns.

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.Richard Rumbold.

I never could tread a single pleasure under foot.Browning.

I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.Carlyle.

I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession.Thackeray.

I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table.Lord Burleigh.

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly as a Christian.Pope.

I never saw, heard, or read that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country.Swift.

I never whisper’d a private affair / Within the hearing of cat or mouse, / No, not to myself in the closet alone, / But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house; / Everything came to be known.Tennyson.

I only look straight before me at each day as it comes, and do what is nearest me, without looking further afield.Goethe.

I picciol cani trovano, ma i grandi hanno la lepre—The little dogs hunt out the hare, but the big ones catch it.Italian Proverb.

I pick up favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. Of these there is a very favourite one from Thomson: “Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds / And offices of life; to life itself, / With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose.”Burns.

I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to appreciate both.Goethe.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry: ’Tis all barren.Swift.

I pounce on what is mine wherever I find it.Marmontel.

I prize the soul that slumbers in a quiet eye.Eliza Cook.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.Montaigne.

I renounce the friend who eats what is mine with me, and what is his own by himself.Portuguese Proverb.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.Thoreau.

I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, / Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee / All questions on the earth and out of it.Browning.

I scorn the affectation of seeming modesty to cover self-conceit.Burns.

I secundo omine—Go, and may all good go with you.Horace.

I see my way as birds their trackless way.Browning.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world are of the one religion of well-doing and daring.Emerson.

I see thy vanity through the holes of thy coat.Plato, to the Cynic.

I seek divine simplicity in him who handles things divine.Cowper.

I seek not to wax great by others’ waning.2 Henry VI., iv. 10.

“I shall go to-morrow,” said the king. “You shall wait for me,” quoth the wind.Gaelic Proverb.

I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart which shall not be put out.Esdras.

I shall perhaps tremble in my death-hour, but before shall I never.Lessing.

I should be glad were all the meadows on the earth left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men’s beginning to redeem themselves.Thoreau.

I stay here on my bond.Mer. of Ven., iv. 1.

I stout and you stout, who will carry the dirt out?Proverb.

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

I talk of chalk and you of cheese.Proverb.

I think a lock and key a security at least equal to the bosom of any friend whatever.Burns.

I think it is as scandalous for a woman not to know how to use a needle as for a man not to know how to use a sword.Lady Montagu.

I think nothing is to be hoped from you if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you than any other in this world.Thoreau.

I think sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us manners and abolish hurry.Emerson.

I think women have an instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do.Thackeray.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.T. Jefferson.

I very much fear that our little terraqueous globe is the lunatic asylum of the universe.Voltaire.

I’ve had my say out, and I shall be th’ easier for’t all my life.George Eliot.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.George Eliot.

I’ve wandered east, I’ve wandered west, / Through many a weary way; / But never, never can forget / The love of life’s young day.Motherwell.

I waive the quantum o’ the sin, / The hazard of concealing; / But oh! it hardens a’ within, / And petrifies the feeling.Burns.

I want that glib and oily art, / To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend, / I’ll do ’t before I speak.King Lear, i. 1.

I was not born for courts or great affairs; / I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.Pope.

I was well, would be better, took physic and died.Epitaph.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.Richard II., v. 5.

I watch the wheels of Nature’s mazy plan, / And learn the future by the past of man.Campbell.

I were but little happy if I could say how much.Much Ado, ii. 1.

I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver / Of my whole course of love.Othello, i. 3.

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.W. Lloyd Garrison.

I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.As You Like It, iii. 2.

I will divide my goods; / Call in the wretch and slave: / None shall rule but the humble, / And none but toil shall have.Emerson.

I will get it from his purse or get it from his skin.Proverb.

I will give thrice as much to any well-deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark me, I will cavil on the ninth part of a hair.1 Henry IV., iii. 1.

I will lay a stone at your door, i.e., never forgive you.Proverb.

I will listen to any one’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself; I have plenty of my own.Goethe.

I will move the world.Archimedes.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.Hamlet, iii. 2.

I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at.Othello, i. 1.

I wish there were some cure, like the lover’s leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.Johnson.

I would applaud thee to the very echo, that should applaud again.Macbeth, v. 3.

I would choose to have others for my acquaintance, but Englishmen for my friends.Goldsmith.

I would condone many things in one-and-twenty now, that I dealt hardly with at middle age. God Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty a second chance.J. M. Barrie.

I would desire for a friend the son who never resisted the tears of his mother.Lacretelle.

I would fain avoid men; we can give them no help, and they hinder us from helping ourselves.Goethe.

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.Henry V., iii. 2.

I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertaken such a government as this.Cromwell.

“I” (self-love) would have the world say “I,” / And all things perish so if she endure.Sir Edwin Arnold.

I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well.1 Henry IV., v. 1.

I would not enter on my list of friends … the man / Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.Cowper.

I would not for much that I had been born richer.Jean Paul.

I would rather be found suffering than doing what is unjust.Phocion.

I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles.W. B. Clulow.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.Thackeray.