James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Man proposes to Married in haste
Man proposes, God disposes.Proverb.
Man, proud man, / Dress’d in a little brief authority; / Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d, / His glassy essence, like an angry ape, / Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, / As make the angels weep.Meas. for Meas., ii. 2.
Man reconciles himself to almost every event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary that he rebels against.W. von Humboldt.
Man rettet gern aus trüber Gegenwart / Sich in das heitere Gebiet der Kunst, / Und für die Kränkungen der Wirklichkeit / Sucht man sich Heilung in des Dichters Träumen—We are fain to escape out of the distracted present into the untroubled sphere of art, and for the miseries of real life we seek healing in the dreams of the poet.Uhland.
Man schont die Alten, wie man die Kinder schont—We bear with old people as we do with children.Goethe.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.Bible.
Man should let alone other’s prejudices and examine his own.Locke.
Man should not be over-anxious for a subsistence, for it is provided by the Creator. The infant no sooner droppeth from the womb than the breasts of the mother begin to stream.Hitopadesa.
Man sieht sich, lernt sich kennen, / Liebt sich, muss sich trennen—We greet each other, learn to know each other, love each other, and then—we part.
Man soll die Stimmen wägen und nicht zählen—Votes ought to be weighed, not counted.Schiller.
Man soll kein Buch nach dem Titelblatt beurtheilen—We should not judge of a book from the title-page.German Proverb.
Man soll nicht mehr Teufel rufen, als man bannen kann—One should raise no more devils than one can lay.German Proverb.
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, complaining of the present, and trembling for the future.Rivarol.
Man spricht selten von der Tugend, die man hat; aber desto öfter von der, die uns fehlt—We seldom boast (lit. speak) of the virtue which we have, but oftener of that which we have not.Lessing.
Man spricht vergebens viel, nur zu versagen, / Der and’re hört von allem nur das Nein!—In vain we speak much only to refuse; the other, of all we say, hears only the “No!”Goethe.
Man spricht vom vielen Trinken stets, / Doch nie vom vielen Durste—They make much of our drinking, but never think of our thirst.Scheffel.
Man steigt den grünen Berg des Lebens hinauf, um oben auf dem Eisberge zu sterben—We ascend the green mountain of life in order to die up there upon the glaciers. (?)
Man steigt nicht ungestraft vom Göttermahle / Herunter in den Kreis der Sterblichen—One does not descend from a banquet with the gods into a company of common mortals without suffering for it.Grillparzer.
Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny.Goethe.
Man, that is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble.Bible.
Man, the aristocrat amongst the animals.Heine.
Man, the little god of this world, is still ever of the same stamp, and is as whimsical as on the first day.Mephistopheles in Goethe.
Man the peasant is a being of more marked national character than man the educated and refined.Ruskin.
Man thee for the high endeavour, / Shun the crowd’s ignoble ease! / Fails the noble spirit never, / Wise to think and prompt to seize.Goethe.
Man thereby (by his fantasy as the organ of the godlike), though based to all seeming on the small visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his life is properly the bodying forth.Carlyle.
Man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him; it is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money is good.Steele.
Man! / Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear.Byron.
Man, though, as Swift has it, “a forked straddling animal with bandy legs,” yet is also a spirit, and unutterable mystery of mysteries.Carlyle.
Man unconnected is at home everywhere, unless he may be said to be at home nowhere.Johnson.
Man verändert sich oft und bessert sich selten—People change often enough, but seldom for the better.German Proverb.
Man wants but little here below, / Nor wants that little long.Goldsmith.
Man was created to work—not to speculate, or feel, or dream.Carlyle.
Man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.Bacon.
Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved.Lamb.
Man, who lives to die, dies to live well, / So if he guide his ways by blamelessness / And earnest will to hinder not, but help, / All things both great and small which suffer life.Sir Edwin Arnold.
Man wird nie betrogen; man betrügt sich selbst—We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.Goethe.
Man without patience is the lamp without oil, and pride in a rage is a bad counsellor.A. de Musset.
Man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.Ward Beecher.
Man yields to custom as he bows to fate, / In all things ruled—mind, body, and estate: / In pain, in sickness, we for cure apply / To them we know not, and we know not why.Crabbe.
Man’s activity is all too fain to relax; he soon gets fond of unconditional repose.Goethe.
Man’s best candle is his understanding.Proverb.
Man’s body and his mind are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin’s lining—rumple the one, you rumple the other.Sterne.
Man’s conviction should be strong, and so well timed that worldly advantages may seem to have no share in it.Addison.
Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.Proverb.
Man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.Addison.
Man’s grand fault is, and remains, that he has so many small ones.Jean Paul.
Man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise, and discontent is immortality.Young.
Man’s gullability is not his worst blessing.Carlyle.
Man’s heart eats all things, and is hungry still.Young.
Man’s highest merit always is as much as possible to rule external circumstances, and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.Goethe.
Man’s history is little else than a narrative of designs that have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.Johnson.
Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.Burns.
Man’s liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of his neighbours.Farrar.
Man’s life and nature is as it was, and as it will ever be.Carlyle.
Man’s life is a progress, and not a station.Emerson.
Man’s life is an appendix to his heart.South.
Man’s life is filed by his foe.Proverb.
Man’s life is never anything but an ever-vanishing present.Schopenhauer.
Man’s life is not an affair of mere instinct, but of steady self-control.Goethe.
Man’s life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality—altogether a serious matter to be alive.Carlyle.
Man’s life now, as of old, is the genuine work of God; wherever there is a man, a God also is revealed, and all that is godlike; a whole epitome of the Infinite, with its meanings, lies enfolded in the life of every man.Carlyle.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; / ’Tis woman’s whole existence.Byron.
Man’s obligations do not tend toward the past. We know of nothing that binds us to what is behind: our duty lies ahead.C. Richet.
Man’s only true happiness is to live in Hope of something to be won by him, in Reverence of something to be worshipped by him, and in Love of something to be cherished by him, and cherished—for ever.Ruskin.
Man’s own heart must be ever given to gain that of another.Goldsmith.
Man’s own judgment is the proper rule and measure of his actions.Thomas à Kempis.
Man’s philosophies are usually the “supplement of his practice;” some ornamental logic-varnish, some outer skin of articulate intelligence, with which he strives to render his dumb instinctive doings presentable when they are done.Carlyle.
Man’s second childhood begins when a woman gets hold of him.J. M. Barrie.
Man’s spiritual nature is essentially one and indivisible.Carlyle.
Man’s true, genuine estimate, / The grand criterion of his fate, / Is not—Art thou high or low? / Did thy fortune ebb or flow?Burns.
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite.Carlyle.
Man’s walk, like all walking, is a series of falls.Carlyle.
Man’s word is God in man.Tennyson.
Man’s work lasts till set of sun; / Woman’s work is never done.Proverb.
Manche gingen nach Licht und stürzten in tiefere Nacht nur; sicher im Dämmerschein wandelt die Kindheit dahin—Many have gone in quest of light and fallen into deeper darkness; whereas childhood walks on secure in the twilight.Schiller.
Mancher wähnt sich frei, und siehet / Nicht die Bande, die ibn schnüren—Many a one thinks himself free and sees not the bands that bind him.Rückert.
Mandamus—We enjoin. A writ issuing from the Queen’s Bench, commanding certain things to be done.Law.
Manebant vestigia morientis libertatis—There still remained traces of expiring liberty.Tacitus.
Manège—Riding-house; horsemanship.French.
Manet alta mente repostum, / Judicium Paridis spretæque injuria formæ—Deep seated in her mind remains the judgment of Paris, and the wrong done to her slighted beauty.Virgil, of Juno’s vengeance.
Mange-tout—A spendthrift (lit. eat-all).French.
Manhood begins joyfully and hopefully, not when we have made a truce with necessity, or even surrendered to it, but only when we have reconciled ourselves to it, and learned to feel that in necessity we are free.Carlyle.
Manhood, when verging into age, grows thoughtful, / Full of wise saws and modern instances.As You Like It, ii. 7.
Manibus pedibusque—With hands and feet; with tooth and nail.
Manibus victoria dextris—Victory by my right hand.Motto.
Manifold is human strife, / Human passion, human pain; / Yet many blessings still are rife, / And many pleasures still remain.Goethe.
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.Hawthorne.
Mankind are unco’ weak, / And little to be trusted; / If self the wavering balance shake, / It’s rarely right adjusted.Burns.
Mankind at large alway resemble frivolous children; they are impatient of thought, and wish to be amused.Emerson.
“Mankind follow their several bell-wethers; and if you hold a stick before the wether, so that he is forced to vault in his passage, the whole flock will do the like when the stick is withdrawn; and the thousandth sheep will be seen vaulting impetuously over air, as the first did over an otherwise impassable barrier.”Carlyle, quoting Jean Paul.
Mankind in general agree in testifying their devotion, their gratitude, their friendship, or their love, by presenting whatever they hold dearest.Burns.
Mankind is a science that defies definitions.Burns.
Mankind suffer to this hour, and will for long, as is like, because they do not know what to make of the fire of Prometheus. He dared to purloin from the gods and commit into the hands of ordinary men an element (fire), which, as the result has shown, only gods and their wise-hearted offspring can with safety handle.James Wood.
Mankind will never lack obstacles to give it trouble, and the pressure of necessity to develop its powers.Goethe.
Manliana—A Manlian, i.e., a harsh and severe sentence, such as that of Titus Manlius, who ordered his son to be scourged and beheaded for fighting contrary to orders.
Männer richten nach Gründen; des Weibes Urteil ist seine Liebe; wo es nicht liebt, hat schon gerichtet das Weib—Men judge on rational grounds; the woman’s judgment is her love; where the woman does not love, she has judged.Schiller.
Manners are not idle, but the fruit / Of loyal nature and of noble mind.Tennyson.
Manners are of more importance than laws; upon them in a great measure laws depend.Burke.
Manners are stronger than laws.Proverb.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into a usage.Emerson.
Manners are the root, laws only the branches.Horace Mann.
Manners are the shadows of virtues, the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect.Sydney Smith.
Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.A. B. Alcott.
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.Horace Mann.
Manners make laws, manners likewise repeal them.Johnson.
Manners make the man.Motto.
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value.Chesterfield.
Männliche, tüchtige Geister werden durch Erkennen eines Irrthums erhöht und gestärkt—Sturdy manly souls are exalted and strengthened in the presence of (lit. by the knowledge of) an error.Goethe.
[Greek]—He is the best diviner who conjectures well.Euripides.
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc / Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces—Mantua bore me, Calabria carried me off, Naples holds me now. I sang of pastures, fields and heroes.Virgil’s epitaph.
Mantua, væ! miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ—Mantua, alas! too near the unhappy Cremona.Quoted by Dean Swift on seeing a lady sweep a violin off a table with her dress.
Manu forti—With a strong hand.Motto.
Manu scriptum—Written by the hand.
Manufacture is intelligible but trivial; creation is great and cannot be understood.Carlyle.
Manum de tabula!—Hand of the picture! i.e., leave off touching up.
Manum non verterim, digitum non porrexerim—I would not turn my hand or stretch out my finger.Cicero.
Manus e nubibus—Hand from the clouds.
Manus hæc inimica tyrannis—This hand is hostile to tyrants.Motto.
Manus manum lavat—One hand washes the other.
Many a cow stands in the meadow and looks wistfully at the common.Proverb.
Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep.Henry.
Many a discord betwixt man and man the returning seasons soften by degrees into sweetest harmony; but that which bridges over the greatest gap is Love, whose charm unites the earth with heaven above.Goethe.
Many a father might say,… “I put in gold into the furnace, and there came out this calf.”Spurgeon.
Many a fine dish has nothing on it.Proverb.
Many a genius has been of slow growth. Oaks, that flourish for a thousand years, do not spring up into beauty like a reed.G. H. Lewis.
Many a good cow hath a bad calf.Proverb.
Many a good drop of broth may come out of an old pot.Proverb.
Many a good father hath but a bad son.Proverb.
Many a hand moulded by Nature to give elegance of form to a kid glove is “stinted of its fair proportion” by grubbing toil.S. Lover.
Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having perceived it.Johnson.
Many a man settleth more by an inch of his will than by an ell of his thrift.Proverb.
Many a man’s vices have at first been nothing worse than good qualities run wild.Hare.
Many a meandering discourse one hears, in which the preacher aims at nothing, and—hits it.Whately.
Many a one is good because he can do no mischief.Proverb.
Many a one labours for the day he will never live to see.Danish Proverb.
Many a one threatens while he quakes for fear.Italian and German Proverb.
Many a seeming farce played on the great stage of the world is in reality a tragedy, if we could but see into the heart of it.Anonymous.
Many a true word is spoken in jest.Proverb.
Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses, which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr. Waller.Lady Montagu.
Many acquaintances, but few friends.Johnson.
Many acres will not make a wiseacre.Proverb.
Many an honest man stands in need of help that has not the face to beg it.Proverb.
Many an irksome noise, when a long way off, is heard as music.Thoreau.
Many and many a heart of woman, who has not uttered a word during her whole life, has felt more truly and intensely than the poet that has sung most sweetly.Renan.
Many are called but few chosen.Jesus.
Many are idly busy. Domitian was busy, but then it was catching flies.Jeremy Taylor.
Many are wise in jest but fools in earnest.Proverb.
Many arrive at second masters / Upon their first lord’s neck.Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
Many beat the sack, and mean the miller.Proverb.
Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers.Colton.
Many by-walks, many balks; many balks, much stumbling.Latimer.
Many can argue, not many converse.A. B. Alcott.
Many can bear adversity, but few contempt.Proverb.
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.Love’s L’s. Lost, iv. 2.
Many can make bricks, but cannot build.Proverb.
Many causes that can plead well for themselves in the courts of Westminster, have yet in the general court of the universe and free soul of man no word to utter.Carlyle.
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.Bovee.
Many commit sin and blame Satan.Proverb.
Many cooks spoil the broth.Proverb.
Many cut broad thongs out of other people’s leather.Proverb.
Many deceive themselves, imagining to find happiness in change.Thomas à Kempis.
Many delight more in giving of presents than in paying their debts.Sir P. Sidney.
Many estates are spent in the getting, / Since women, for tea, forsook spinning and knitting, / And men, for their punch, forsook hewing and splitting.Proverb.
Many find fault without any end, / And yet do nothing at all to mend.Proverb.
Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly. Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God’s blessing, but constant in looking to Him.Jean Paul.
Many get into a dispute well that cannot get out well.Proverb.
Many go in quest of wool, and come back shorn.German Proverb.
Many go out for clothes, and come home stript.Proverb.
Many good purposes lie in the churchyard.Philip Henry.
Many hands make light work.Proverb.
Many have been harmed by speech; through thinking, few or none.Lord Vaux.
Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths.Proverb.
Many have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great.Zimmermann.
Many have come to port after a great storm.Proverb.
Many have genius, / But, wanting art, are for ever dumb.Longfellow.
Many have the talents which would make them poets if they had the genius; a few have the genius yet want the talents.J. Sterling.
Many have too much, but none enough.Danish Proverb.
Many hope that the tree may be felled who expect to gather chips by the fall.Fuller.
Many indifferent things which men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do from habit.J. S. Mill.
Many kinds of books are permissible, but there is one kind that is not permissible, the kind that has nothing in it—le genre ennuyeux (the kind that bore you).Carlyle.
Many kiss the hand they wish cut off.Proverb.
Many lick before they bite.Proverb.
Many littles make a mickle.Proverb.
Many are fain to praise what is right and do what is wrong.Danish Proverb.
Many men and women spend their lives in unsuccessful attempts to spin the flax God sends them upon a wheel they can never use.J. G. Holland.
Many men attain a knowledge of what is perfect, and of their own insufficiency, and go on doing things by halves to the end of their days.Goethe.
Many men fancy that what they experience they also understand.Goethe.
Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.Alex. Pope.
Many men, in all ages, have triumphed over death, and led it captive; converting its physical victory into a moral victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal consecration for all that their past life had achieved.Carlyle.
Many men involve themselves deeper in temptations by being too solicitous to decline them.Thomas à Kempis.
Many men know how to flatter; few men know how to praise.Wendell Phillips.
Many men love in themselves what they hate in others.Benzel Sternan.
Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.Hare.
Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and they would end if we would stand upon our feet, and go whither He would have us.Ward Beecher.
Many of sounding name from Jamblicus down to Aubrey have wasted their time in devising imaginary remedies for non-existing diseases.Scott.
Many of the supposed increasers of knowledge have only given a new name, and often a worse, to what was well known before.Hare.
Many old camels carry the skins of the young ones to the market.Proverb.
Many people are sincere without being simple. They do not wish to be taken for other than they are; and they always fear lest they should be taken for what they are not.Fénelon.
Many people place virtue more in regretting than in amendment.Lichtenberg.
Many people take no care of their money till they have come nearly to an end of it, and others do just the same with their time.Goethe.
Many people think of knowledge as of money. They would like knowledge, but cannot face the perseverance and self-denial that go to the acquisition of it.John Morley.
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.Longfellow.
Many rendings need many mendings.Proverb.
Many sacrifices have been made just to enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without any intention of causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one has suffered.Schopenhauer.
Many see more with one eye than others with two.German Proverb.
Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.Bible.
Many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side, till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore and ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried.Carlyle.
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches and preferment; but they mean the riches and preferment possessed by other men.Colton.
Many strokes, though with a little axe, / Hew down and fell the hardest timber’d oak.3 Henry VI., ii. 1.
Many talk like philosophers and live like fools.Proverb.
Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.Jesus.
Many there be that buy nothing with their money but repentance.Proverb.
Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more to be spoken.Novalis.
Many things difficult to design prove easy of performance.Johnson.
Many things there are / That we may hope to win with violence; / While others only can become our own / Through moderation and wise self-restraint. / Such is virtue; such is love.Goethe.
Many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense.Bacon.
Many ventures make a full freight.Proverb.
Many walk into the battle and are carried out of it.Fielding.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.Bible.
Many words hurt more than swords.Proverb.
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.Proverb.
Many would have been worse if their estates had been better.Proverb.
Many young persons believe themselves natural when they are really ill-mannered and coarse.La Rochefoucauld.
Mar not what, marred, cannot be mended.Proverb.
March dust is a thing / Worth ransom of a king.Old saw.
March winds and April showers.Proverb.
Marchand qui perd ne peut rire—The dealer who loses is not the one to laugh.Dandin.
Marchandise de rencontre—Second-hand goods.French.
Marchandise qui plait est à demie vendue—Goods which please are half sold.French Proverb.
Mare apertum—A sea open to commerce.
Mare clausum—A sea closed to commerce.
Mare cœlo miscere—To confound sea and sky.
Mare ditat, rosa decorat—The sea enriches, the rose adorns.Motto.
Mare quidem commune certo est omnibus—The sea surely is common to all.Plautus.
Margarita e stercore—A pearl from a dunghill.Proverb.
Maria montesque polliceri cœpit—He began to promise seas and mountains.Sallust.
Mariage de convenance—A marriage from considerations of advantage.French.
Marie ton fils quand tu voudras, mais ta fille quand tu pourras—Marry your son when you like, your daughter when you can.French Proverb.
Mark if his birth makes any difference, if to his words it adds one grain of sense.Dryden.
Mark what another says; for many are / Full of themselves, and answer their own notion. / Take all into thee; then with equal care / Balance each chain of reason, like a potion.George Herbert.
Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato parvo, / Pompeius nullo. Quis putet esse deos? / Saxa premunt Licinum, levat altum Fama Catonem, / Pompeium tituli. Credimus esse deos—Licinus lies in a marble tomb, Cato in a humble one, Pompey in none. Who can believe that the gods exist? Ans.—Heavy lies the stone on Licinus; Fame raises Cato on high; his glories, Pompey. We believe that the gods do exist.
Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising.Bovee.
Marriage comes unawares, like a soot-drop.Irish Proverb.
Marriage, indeed, may qualify the fury of his passion, but it very rarely mends a man’s manners.Congreve.
Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Æsop were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again.Selden.
Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.Johnson.
Marriage is the bloom or blight of all men’s happiness.Byron.
Marriage is the feast where the grace is better than the dinner.Colton.
Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.Jeremy Taylor.
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.George Eliot.
Marriage with peace is the world’s paradise; with strife, this life’s purgatory.Proverb.
Marriages are best of dissimilar material.Theo. Parker.
Marriages are made in heaven.Proverb.
Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.Sydney Smith.
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.Congreve.