James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
It is not to Ivory does not
It is not the greatness of a man’s means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.Cobbett.
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of intelligence.Lowell.
It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it that is productive of real benefit.Scott.
It is not the loss of heritage / That makes life poor; it is that, stage by stage, / Some leave us with a lessening faith in man, / And less of love than when our life began.Dr. Walter Smith.
It is not the manner of noble minds to leave anything half done.Wieland.
It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.Bovee.
It is not the punishment, but the crime that is the disgrace.Alfieri.
It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind’s dignity.W. E. Channing.
It is not the reading of many books that is necessary to make a man wise and good, but the well-reading of a few.R. Baxter.
It is not the stamp on the coin that gives it its value, though on the bank-note it is.J. Burroughs.
It is not the victory that constitutes the joy of noble souls, but the combat.Montalembert.
It is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little,… but only the spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance.Carlyle.
It is not titles that reflect honour on men, but men on their titles.Machiavelli.
It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God’s heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs.Carlyle.
It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided, but the men; divided into mere segments of men, broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.Ruskin.
It is not want, but rather abundance that creates avarice.Montaigne.
It is not want of good fortune, want of happiness, but want of wisdom that man has to dread.Carlyle.
It is not well to make great changes in old age.Spurgeon.
It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.Amiel.
It is not wisdom, but ignorance which teaches men presumption.Bulwer Lytton.
It is not with saying, “Honey, honey,” that sweetness comes into the mouth.Turkish Proverb.
It is not work that kills men, it is worry. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.Ward Beecher.
It is of more importance to teach manners and customs than to establish laws and tribunals.Mirabeau.
It is of no use running; to set out betimes is the main point.La Fontaine.
It is of some consequence for a man to forego his own inclinations, even in matters of no great importance.Thomas à Kempis.
It is often because an author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought, that a clear writer is obscure.Speroni.
It is often easier, as well as more advantageous, to conform to the opinions of others than to persuade them into ours.La Bruyère.
It is often even wise to reveal what cannot long remain concealed.Schiller.
It is one of the wretchednesses of the great that they have no approved friends.Channing.
It is one soul which animates all men.Emerson.
It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.Shakespeare.
It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and another thing to be able to draw a straight one.Rd. Sharp.
It is one thing to speak much, and another to speak pertinently.Proverb.
It is only a part of art that can be taught; the artist needs the whole.Goethe.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression upon us.Schopenhauer.
It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new.Goethe.
It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy.Ruskin.
It is only by universals, and never by singulars, that we can think.Dr. Hutchison Stirling.
It is only God’s business to make laws, and the lawyer’s to read and enforce them.Ruskin.
It is only in society that a man’s powers can have full play.Schopenhauer.
It is only in their misery that we recognise the hand and finger of God leading good men to good.Goethe.
It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.Heine.
It is only men collectively that live the life of man.Goethe.
It is only necessary to grow old to become indulgent. I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself.Goethe.
It is only on reality that any power of action can be based.Emerson.
It is only people who possess firmness that can possess true gentleness.La Rochefoucauld.
It is only reason that teaches silence. The heart teaches us to speak.Jean Paul.
It is only rogues who feel the restraints of law.J. S. Holland.
It is only strict precision of thought that confers facility of expression.Schiller.
It is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.Emerson.
It is only time that possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively.Schopenhauer.
It is only when a man is alone that he is really free.Schopenhauer.
It is only when it is bent that the bow shows its strength.Grillparzer.
It is only with renunciation that life, strictly speaking, can be said to begin.Goethe.
It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence over us. The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore.Bovee.
It is petty expenses that empty the purse.Italian Proverb.
It is pleasant to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none.Marcus Antoninus.
It is possible to sin against charity, when we do not sin against truth.Proverb.
It is precisely in accepting death as the end of all, and in laying down, on that sorrowful condition, his life for his friends, that the hero and patriot of all time has become the glory and safety of his country.Ruskin.
It is profound ignorance that inspires a degenerate tone.La Bruyère.
It is proof of a high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.Emerson.
It is proper and beneficial sometimes to be left to thyself.Thomas à Kempis.
It is prudent to be on the reserve even with your best friend, when he betrays a too eager curiosity to worm out your secret.La Bruyère.
It is rare indeed that there is not ample occasion for grumbling.John Wagstaffe.
It is religion that has formed the Bible, not the Bible that has formed religion.R. D. C. Levin.
It is sad to have to live in a place where all our activity must simmer within ourselves.Goethe.
It is sad to see how an extraordinary man so often strangles himself, struggling in vain with himself, his circumstances, and his time, without once coming upon a green branch.Goethe.
It is said no man is a hero to his valet. The reason is that it requires a hero to recognise a hero. The valet however, will probably know well enough how to estimate his equals.Goethe.
It is so much easier to do what one has done before than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode.Emerson.
It is St. Christopher that carries Christ, not Christ St. Christopher—i.e., in this myth, it is not Christ that bears the Church, but the Church that bears Christ.James Wood.
It is sure to be dark if you shut your eyes.Proverb.
It is the ambiguous distracted training which they are subject to that makes men uncertain; it awakens wishes when it should quicken tendencies.Goethe.
It is the best sign of a great nature, that it opens a foreground, and, like the breath of morning landscapes, invites us onward.Emerson.
It is the best use of fate to teach a fatal courage.Emerson.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, / And that craves wary walking.Julius Cæsar, ii. 1.
It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.Napoleon.
It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so) without considering that nothing is beautiful which is displaced.Lady Montagu.
It is the common wonder of all men how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.Sir Thomas Browne.
It is the company, and not the charge that makes the feast.Proverb.
It is the condition of humanity to design what never will be done, and to hope what never will be attained.Johnson.
It is the curse of kings to be attended / By slaves, that take their humours for a warrant.King John, iv. 2.
It is the curse of talent, that, though it works more surely and persistently than genius, it reaches no goal; while genius, hovering for long on the summit (Spitze) of the ideal, looks round, smiling, far above.Schumann.
It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.Rivarol.
It is the fate of a woman / Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, / Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.Longfellow.
It is the fate of the great ones of the earth to begin to be appreciated by us only after they are gone.Old German saying.
It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.Carlyle.
It is the first principle of economy to make use of available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial power.Ruskin.
It is the flash that murders; the poor thunder never harm’d head.Tennyson.
It is the frog’s own croak that betrays him.Proverb.
It is the glistening and softly-spoken lie,… the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who had dug a well in the desert.Ruskin.
It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.Bulwer Lytton.
It is the great error of reformers and philanthropists in our time to nibble at the consequences of unjust power, instead of redressing the injustice itself.J. S. Mill.
It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters.Carlyle.
It is the heart that makes the critic, not the nose.Max Müller.
It is the height of folly to throw up attempting because you have failed. Failures are wonderful elements in developing the character.Anonymous.
It is the inspiration of the Almighty that giveth man understanding.Job.
It is the law of fate that we shall live in part by our own efforts, but in the greater part by the help of others; and that we shall also die in part for our own faults, but in the greater part for the faults of others.Ruskin.
It is the life in literature that acts upon life.J. G. Holland.
It is the little rift within the lute / That by and by will make the music mute, / And, ever widening, slowly silence all.Tennyson.
It is the lot of man to suffer.Disraeli.
It is the mark of a great man to treat trifles as trifles, and important matters as important.Lessing.
It is the master-wheel which makes the mill go round.Proverb.
It is the monotony of his own nature that makes solitude intolerable to a man.Schiller.
It is the music in the ear that finds and interprets the music of the orchestra.C. H. Parkhurst.
It is the nature of despair to blind us to all means of safety.Fielding.
It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.Bacon.
It is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles.Macaulay.
It is the office of the Church to teach, not to train.Ward Beecher.
It is the ordinary way of the world to keep folly at the helm, and wisdom under the hatches.Proverb.
It is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.Plutarch.
It is the part of a wise man to resist pleasures, but of a foolish one to be a slave to them.Epictetus.
It is the poet’s function to keep before the minds of the people not only the underlying truths and beauties of all Nature, but the high and pure ideal of humanity which all should strive to attain.C. Fitzhugh.
It is the possession of a great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is of worth and conducive to happiness.Schopenhauer.
It is the power of thought which gives man the mastery over Nature, the thoughts go forth into the world.Hans Andersen.
It is the privilege of every human work which is well done, to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness.Emerson.
It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows common-place, as to the rest of us.Lowell.
It is the property of every hero to come back to reality; to stand upon things, not shows of things.Carlyle.
It is the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again.Emerson.
It is the setting up of a claim to happiness that ruins everything in the world.Merck to Goethe.
It is the strange fate of man that even in the greatest evils the fear of worse continues to haunt him.Goethe.
It is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm-tree, to strive most upwards when it is most burdened.Sir P. Sidney.
It is the thought writ down we want, / Not its effect, not likenesses of likenesses; / And such descriptions are not, more than gloves / Instead of hands to shake, enough for us.J. Bailey.
It is the treating of the common-place with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power.J. F. Millet.
It is the unseen and spiritual in man that determines the outward and actual.Carlyle.
It is the vain endeavour to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.Lowell.
It is the wise alone who are capable of discerning that impartial justice is the truest mercy.Goldsmith.
It is the witness still of excellency / To put a strange face on his own perfection.Much Ado, ii. 3.
It is the work of a philosopher to be every day subduing his passions and laying aside his prejudices.Addison.
It is through the feeling of wonder that men philosophise.Aristotle.
It is time enough to answer questions when they are asked.Emerson.
It is time enough to doff your hat when you see the man.Danish Proverb.
It is time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.Pericles, i. 2.
It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.Feltham.
It is too late to husband when all is spent.Proverb.
It is too late to spare when the bottom is bare.Proverb.
It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.Seneca.
It is truth that makes a man angry.Proverb.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.Swift.
It is useless to deny with the tongue that which man gives credence to with the heart.Johnson.
It is very easy to obey a noble ruler who convinces (überzeugt) while he commands us.Goethe.
It is very good to be left alone with the truth sometimes, to hear with all its sternness what it will say to one.Carlyle.
It is very little that we can ever know of the ways of Providence or the laws of existence; but that little is enough, and exactly enough.Ruskin.
It is war’s prize to take all advantages, / And ten to one is no impeach of valour.3 Henry VI., i. 4.
It is we that are blind, not Fortune.Sir Thomas Browne.
It is well that there is no one without a fault, for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species.Hazlitt.
It is well to go for a light to another man’s fire, but by no means to tarry by it.Plutarch.
It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: “Lo! God is here, and we knew it not.”Bancroft.
It is wholesomer for the moral nature to be restrained, even by arbitrary power, than to be allowed to exercise arbitrary power.J. S. Mill.
It is wisdom alone that can recognise wisdom.Carlyle.
It is wise not to know a secret, and honest not to reveal it.Proverb.
It is with a fine genius as with a fine fashion; all those are displeased at it who are not able to follow it.Warton.
It is with diseases of the mind as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorders, and half cured when we do.Colton.
It is with history as it is with nature, as it is with everything profound, past, present, or future; the deeper we earnestly search into them, the more difficult are the problems that arise. He who does not fear these, but boldly confronts them, will, with every step or advance, feel himself both more at his ease and more highly educated.Goethe.
It is with ideas as with pieces of money; those of least value generally circulate the best.Punch.
It is with narrow-soul’d people as with narrow-neck’d bottles; the less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out.Swift.
It is with our thoughts as with flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double, by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.Joubert.
It is with words as with sunbeams; the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.Southey.
It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence whether there be a man behind it or no. In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some moneyed corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody.Emerson.
It matters less to a man where he is born than where he can live.Turkish Proverb.
It matters little whether a man be mathematically, or philologically, or artistically cultivated, so he be cultivated.Goethe.
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.Johnson.
It matters not that a woman is well dressed if her manners be bad; ill-breeding mars a fine dress more than dirt.Plautus.
It matters not whether our good-humour be construed by others into insensibility, or even idiotism; it is happiness to ourselves.Goldsmith.
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, / And see the great Achilles whom we knew.Tennyson.
It may indeed be that man is frightfully threshed at times by public and domestic ill-fortune, but the ruthless destiny, if it smites the rich sheaves, only crumples the straw; the grains feel nothing of it, and bound merrily hither and thither on the threshing-floor, unconcerned whether they wander into the mill or the cornfield.Goethe.
It must be bad indeed if a book has a more demoralising effect than life itself.Goethe.
It needs a man to perceive a man.A. B. Alcott.
It ne’er was wealth, it ne’er was wealth, / That coft contentment, peace, or pleasure; / The bands and bliss o’ mutual love, / O that’s the chiefest warld’s treasure!Burns.
It never occurs to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.Goethe.
It never rains but it pours.Proverb.
It never smokes but there’s fire.Proverb.
It offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise.Hamlet, ii. 2.
It oft falls out to have what we would have; we speak not what we mean.Meas. for Meas., ii. 4.
It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.Emerson.
It requires a great deal of poetry to gild the pill of poverty.Mme. Deluzy.
It requires a long time to know any one.Cervantes.
It requires more than mere genius to be an author.La Bruyère.
It requires much courage not to be down-hearted in the world.Goethe.
It requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman … to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day for good and disinterested reading.John Morley.
It seems a law of society to despise a man who looks discontented because its requirements have compelled him to part with all he values in his life.Goethe.
It seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only ones as aren’t wanted i’ the other world.George Eliot.
It should not be suspected of a man, whose life hath been spent in noble deeds, that his reason is lost, when he is only involved in trouble. A fire may be overturned, but its flames will never descend.Hitopadesa.
It so falls out, / That what we have we prize not to the worth / Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost, / Why then we rack the value.Much Ado, iv. 1.
It takes a good many spadefuls of earth to bury the truth.German Proverb.
It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.Ruskin.
It takes a great man to make a good listener.Helps.
It takes much more penetration to discover a fool than a clever man.Cato.
It takes ten pounds of common-sense to carry one pound of learning.Persian Proverb.
It was a stroke / Brought the stream from the flinty rock.Dr. Walter Smith.
It was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.2 Henry IV., i. 2.
It was always the aim of the artists as well as the wise men of antiquity, to mean much though they might say little.Winkelmann.
It was for beauty that the world was made.Quoted by Emerson.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5.
It was the wisdom of the ancients to regard the most useful as the most illustrious.Seneca.
It were better to be of no church than bitter for any.William Penn.
It were easier to stop Euphrates at its source than one tear of a true and tender heart.Byron.
It were good for a man to have some anchorage deeper than the quicksands of this world; for these drift to and fro so as to baffle all conjecture.Carlyle.
It were no virtue to bear calamities if we did not feel them.Mme. Necker.
It will be all the same a hundred years hence.Proverb.
It will be an ill web to bleach.Proverb.
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood; / Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak.Macbeth, iii. 4.
It will never out of the flesh that’s bred in the bone.Ben Jonson.
It would be better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence.Ruskin.
It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilisation, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life, and what methods have been taken to obtain them.Thoreau.
It’s a gude heart that says nae ill, but a better that thinks nane.Scotch Proverb.
It’s a poor man that always counts his sheep.Proverb.
It’s a poor sport that’s not worth the candle.George Herbert.
It’s a sair field where a’s slain.Scotch Proverb.
It’s a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another wi’ a pipe i’ their mouths.George Eliot.
It’s a weary warld, and naebody bides in’t.J. M. Barrie.
It’s all very well having a ready-made rich man, but it may happen he’ll be a ready-made fool.George Eliot.
It’s an ill wind that blaws naebody gude.Scotch Proverb.
It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee / To taste the barrel.Burns.
It’s bad flesh that won’t take salt; worse is the body that won’t take warning.Gaelic Proverb.
It’s difficult to give sense to a fool.Gaelic Proverb.
It’s dogged as does it.Proverb.
It’s good sheltering under an old hedge.Proverb.
It’s hard sailing when there is no wind.Proverb.
It’s hard to take the twist out of an oak that grew in the sapling.Gaelic.
It’s hard to tell which is Old Harry when everybody’s got boots on.George Eliot.
It’s harder work getting to hell than to heaven.German Proverb.
It’s hardly in a body’s power / To keep, at times, frae being sour, / To see how things are shared.Burns.
It’s height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.Proverb.
It’s ill livin’ in a hen-roost for them as doesn’t like fleas.George Eliot.
It’s ill living where everybody knows everybody.Proverb.
It’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting.Scotch Proverb.
It’s ill wool that will take no dye.Proverb.
It’s lang ere the devil dee by the dyke-side.Scotch Proverb.
It’s never too late to learn.Proverb.
It’s no in titles nor in rank; / It’s no in wealth like London bank, / To purchase peace and rest: / It’s no in makin’ muckle mair, / It’s no in books, it’s no in lear, / To mak’ us truly blest.Burns.
It’s no tint (lost) that a friend gets.Scotch Proverb.
It’s no use filling your pocket full of money if you have got a hole in the corner.George Eliot.
It’s no use killing nettles to grow docks.Proverb.
It’s no use pumping a dry well.Proverb.
It’s not “What has she?” but “What is she?”Proverb.
It’s poor eating where the flavour of the meat lies in the cruets.George Eliot.
It’s poor friendship that needs to be constantly bought.Gaelic Proverb.
It’s pride that puts this country down; / Man, take thine old cloak about thee.Old ballad.
It’s sin, and no poverty, that maks a man miserable.Scotch Proverb.
It’s them as take advantage that get advantage i’ this world, I think; folks have to wait long enough before it’s brought to ’em.George Eliot.
It’s too late to cast anchor when the ship is on the rocks.Proverb.
It’s wiser being good than bad; / It’s safer being meek than fierce; It’s fitter being sane than mad / My own hope is, a sun will pierce / The thickest cloud earth ever stretch’d; / That after last returns the first, / Though a wide compass round be fetch’d; / That what began best can’t end worst, / Nor what God blessèd once prove accurst.Browning.
It’s your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’.George Eliot.
Ita lex scripta—Thus the law is written.
Ivory does not come from a rat’s mouth.Chinese Proverb.