James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
That which God to The chariest maid
That which God writes on thy forehead thou wilt come to.The Koran.
That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been.Bible.
That which I crave may everywhere be had, / With me I bring the one thing needful—love.Goethe.
That which in mean men we entitle patience, / Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.Richard II., i. 2.
That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature we call Spirit.Emerson.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.Bible.
That which is good to take is good to keep.Proverb.
That which is in the midst of fools is made known.Bible.
That which is not allotted the hand cannot reach, and what is allotted will find you wherever you may be.Saadi.
That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves that labour in past matters.Bacon.
That which is possible is ever possible.Hitopadesa.
That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.Ruskin.
That which makes men happy is activity (die Thätigkeit), which, first producing what is good, soon changes evil itself into good by power working in a god-like manner.Goethe.
That which one least anticipates soonest comes to pass.Proverb.
That which produces and maintains cheerfulness is nothing but activity.Jean Paul.
That which proves too much proves nothing.Proverb.
That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin; a wrecker’s handful of coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy.Ruskin.
That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.Emerson.
That which the sun doth not now see will be visible when the sun is out, and the stars are fallen from heaven.Sir Thomas Browne.
That which two will takes effect.Proverb.
That which upholdeth him, that thee upholds—His honour.King John, iii. 1.
That which was bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.Proverb.
That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often.Emerson.
That which we have we prize not to the worth; / But being lacked and lost, why then we rake its value.Much Ado, iv. 1.
That which we may live without we need not much covet.Proverb.
That which will not be butter must be made into cheese.Proverb.
That which will not be spun, let it not come between the spindle and the distaff.Proverb.
That woman is despicable who, having children, ever feels ennui.Jean Paul.
That wretchedness which fate has rendered voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched, but the most.Carlyle.
That’s a lee wi’ a lid on, / And a brass handle to tak ho’d on.Proverb.
That’s my good that does me good.Proverb.
That’s the best gown that goes up and down the house.Proverb.
That’s the humour of it.Henry V., ii. 1.
That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly: he wants to make sure o’ one fool as’ll tell him he’s wise. But there’s some men can do wi’out that—they think so much o’ themselves a’ready—an’ that’s how it is there’s old bachelors.George Eliot.
The abandoning of some lower end in obedience to a higher aim is often made the very condition of securing the lower one.J. C. Sharp.
The abiding city and post at which we can live and die is still ahead of us, it would appear.Carlyle.
The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing.Goethe.
The absent party is still faulty.Proverb.
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star—she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he.Emerson.
The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out for ever.Sterne.
The acknowledgment of our weakness is the first step towards repairing our loss.Thomas à Kempis.
The actual well seen is the ideal.Carlyle.
The advice that is wanted is commonly unwelcome; that which is not wanted is evidently impertinent.Johnson.
The affections of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack’s beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.Thackeray.
The afflictions of earth exalt the spirit and lift the soul to God.Tiedge.
The age made no sign when Shakespeare, its noblest son, passed away.Willmott.
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.Burke.
The age of curiosity, like that of chivalry, is ended, properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep.Carlyle.
The age of great men is going; the epoch of the anthill, of life in multiplicity, is beginning.Amiel.
The age of miracles past! The age of miracles is for ever here.Carlyle.
The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.Hume.
The agnosticism of doubt is as far from the agnosticism of devotion as blindness for want of vision from blindness through excess of light.James Martineau.
The aim of all morality, truly conceived, is to furnish men with a standard of action and a motive to work by, which shall not intensify each man’s selfishness, but raise him ever more and more above it.J. C. Sharp.
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think.Beattie.
The aim of life is work, or there is no aim at all.Auerbach.
The aim of the legislator should be, not truth, but expediency.Buckle.
The air seems nimble with the glad, / Quaint fancies of our childhood dear.Dr. Walter Smith.
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered other things of greater value.Schopenhauer.
The all in all of faith is that we believe; of knowledge, what we know, as well as how much and how well.Goethe.
The almighty dollar.Washington Irving.
The alpha and omega of Socialism is the transmutation of private competing capital into united collective capital.Schæffle.
The amateur, however weak may be his efforts at imitation, need not be discouraged,… for one advances to an idea the more surely and steadily the more accurately and precisely he considers individual objects. Only it will not do to measure one’s self with artists; every one must go on in his own style.Goethe.
The ambitious are ever followed by adulation, for such alone receive most pleasure from flattery.Goldsmith.
The amount of intellect necessary to please us is a most accurate measure of the amount of intellect we have ourselves.Helvetius.
The ancient Spartan custom of killing weak-bodied children is not much crueller than that of propagating weak-minded ones.Jean Paul.
The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.Ben. Franklin.
The anger of a strong man can always bide its time.Ruskin.
The animal is capable of enjoyment, only man is capable of serenity of mind and gladness of heart.Jean Paul.
The animals look for man’s intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye.H. Powers.
The apparel oft proclaims the man.Hamlet, i. 3.
The apprehension and representation of what is individual is the very life of art.Goethe.
The apprehension of the good / Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.Richard II., i. 3.
The arch-enemy is the arch-stupid.Carlyle.
The archer who overshoots the mark misses, as well as he that falls short of it.Proverb.
The argument all bare is of more worth / Than when it hath my added praise beside.Shakespeare.
The army is a good book to open to study human life.Alfred de Vigny.
The army is a school in which the niggardly become generous and the generous prodigal.Cervantes.
The arrows of sarcasm are barbed with contempt…. It is the sneer in the satire or the ridicule that galls or wounds.W. Gladden.
The art of exalting lowliness and giving greatness to little things is one of the noblest functions of genius.Palgrave.
The art of living is like every other art; only the capacity is born with us; it must be learned and practised with incessant care.Goethe.
The art of pleasing is the art of deceiving.Vauvenargues.
The art was his to break vexations with a ready jest.Dr. Walter Smith.
The art which is produced hastily will also perish hastily.Ruskin.
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.Navalis.
The artist is the son of his age; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite.Schiller.
The artist must conceive with warmth (mit Feuer) and execute with coolness.Winkelmann.
The artist stands higher than the art, higher than the object: he uses art for his own purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.Goethe.
The artist’s vocation is to send light into the depths of the human heart.Schumann.
The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker, and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them.Tillotson.
The astonishing intellect that occupies itself in splitting hairs, and not in twisting some kind of cordage and effectual draught tackle to take the road with, is not to me the most astonishing of intellects. I want twisted cordage, steady pulling, and a peaceable base tone of voice; not split hairs, hysterical spasmodics, and treble.Carlyle.
The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.Sydney Smith.
The atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeur which reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet opens to every wretch that has reason the doors of the universe.Emerson.
The attainment of a truer and truer aristocracy, or government again by the Best,—all that democracy ever meant lies there.Carlyle.
The attempt, and not the deed, / Confounds us.Macbeth, ii. 2.
The attraction of love is in an inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy.Burns.
The author is often obscure to readers because, as has been said, he proceeds from the thought to the expression, whereas they proceed from the expression to the thought.Chamfort.
The awful shadow of some unseen Power / Floats, though unseen, among us.Shelley.
The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.Swift.
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.Holmes.
The back of one door is the face of another.Proverb.
The back-door robs the house.Proverb.
The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways.Bible.
The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; and the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.Saadi.
The bad (böse) man has not only the good, but also the bad against him.Bischer.
The barrenest of mortals is the sentimentalist.Carlyle.
The basest thought about man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest, that he has, or should have, no animal nature.Ruskin.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance.Emerson.
The battle of belief against unbelief is the never-ending battle.Carlyle.
The beams of joy are made hotter by reflection.Fuller.
The bearers of the thyrsus (the symbol of the Bacchus inspiration) are many, but the Bacchants (the truly inspired) are few.Greek Proverb.
The bearing and the training of a child is woman’s wisdom.Tennyson.
The beaten road is the safest.Proverb.
The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, but for its appearance, had been for ever concealed from us.Goethe.
The beautiful is higher than the good; the beautiful includes in it the good.Goethe.
The beautiful is like sunshine to the world; the beautiful lives for ever.Hans Andersen.
The beautiful rests on the foundation of the necessary.Emerson.
The beggar is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it.Lamb.
The beggar is not expected to become bail or surety for any one.Lamb.
The beggar is not required to put on court mourning.Lamb.
The beggar is the only free man in the universe.Lamb.
The beggar is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances.Lamb.
The beggar weareth all colours, fearing none.Lamb.
The beggar’s costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker’s.Lamb.
The beginning, and very nearly the end, of bodily education for a girl, is to make sure that she can stand and sit upright; the ankle vertical, and firm as a marble shaft; the waist elastic as a reed, and as unfatiguable.Ruskin.
The beginning of all good law, and nearly the end of it, is that every man shall do good work for his bread, and that every man shall have good bread for his work.Ruskin.
The beginning of all temptations and wickedness is the fickleness of our own minds and want of trust in God.Thomas à Kempis.
The beginning of creation (in man’s soul as in Nature) is light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds.Carlyle.
The beginning of inquiry is disease.Carlyle.
The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water: therefore leave off contention before it be meddled with.Bible.
The beginning of wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes (i.e., symbols), till they become transparent.Carlyle.
The being whose strength exceeds its necessities is strong; the being whose necessities exceed its strength is feeble.Rousseau.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time / But for its loss.Young.
The belly is chains to the hands and fetters to the feet. He who is a slave to his belly seldom worships God.Saadi.
The beloved of the Almighty are the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnanimity of the rich.Saadi.
The benefactors of mankind are those who grumble to the best purpose. Grumbling has raised man from the condition of the gorilla to that of the judge on the bench of justice.John Wagstaffe.
The benevolent heart will not solicit, but command our reverence and applause.Arliss.
The benevolent person is always by preference busy on the essentially bad.Carlyle.
The best advice is, Follow good advice and hold old age in highest honour.Goethe.
The best architecture is the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood.Ruskin.
The best courages are but beams of the Almighty.Lucy Hutchinson.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.Carlyle.
The best fish swim near the bottom.Proverb.
The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.Sterne.
The best gifts find the fewest admirers, and most men mistake the bad for the good.Gellert.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.Goethe.
The best independence is to have something to do, and something that can be done, and done most perfectly in solitude.P. G. Hamerton.
The best is best cheap.Proverb.
The best is but in season best.Allan Ramsay.
The best is not to be explained by words.Goethe.
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley, / And lea’e us naught but grief and pain / For promised joy.Burns.
The best loneliness is when no human eye has rested on our face for a whole day.Auerbach.
The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; / He’s more than mortal that ne’er err’d at all.Pomfret.
The best mirror is an old friend.Proverb.
The best of angels do not live in community, but by themselves.Swedenborg.
The best of lessons, for a good many people, would be to listen at a keyhole. It is a pity for such that the practice is dishonourable.Mme. Swetchine.
The best of men / That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer; / A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; / The first true gentleman that ever breathed.Decker.
The best of the sport is to do the deed and say nothing.Proverb.
The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off and ignorance begins.Holmes.
The best path through life is the highway.Amiel.
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.Macaulay.
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.Bacon.
The best remedy against an ill man is much ground between both.Proverb.
The best rules to form a young man are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one’s own opinions, and value others’ that deserve it.Sir W. Temple.
The best self-forgetfulness is to look at the things of the world with attention and love.Auerbach.
The best son is not enough a son.Emerson.
The best, the only correct actions are those which demand no explanation and no apology.Auerbach.
The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.Douglas Jerrold.
The best thing which we derive from history is the enthusiasm which it raises in us.Goethe.
The best things are worst to come by.Walker.
The best use of money is to pay debts.Proverb.
The best way to come to truth is to examine things as they really are, and not to conclude they are, as we have been taught by others to imagine.Locke.
The best way to make the audience laugh is by first laughing yourself.Goldsmith.
The best way to please one half of the world is not to mind what the other half says.Goldsmith.
The best work in the world is done on the quiet.Proverb.
The best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all.Ruskin.
The best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from unmarried or childless men, which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.Bacon.
The betrayer is the murderer.Gaelic Proverb.
The better a man is morally, the less conscious he is of his virtues. The greater the artist, the more aware he must be of his shortcomings.Froude.
The better day the better deed.Walker.
The better I know men the more I admire dogs. (?)
The better part of valour is discretion.1 Henry IV., v. 4.
The better you understand yourself, the less cause you will find to love yourself.Thomas à Kempis.
The Bible contains many truths as yet undiscovered.Butler.
The Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written.Sir William Jones.
(The Bible) contains plain teaching for men of every rank of soul and state of life, which so far as they honestly and implicitly obey, they will be happy and innocent to the utmost powers of their nature, and capable of victory over all adversities, whether of temptation or pain.Ruskin.
The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.Heine.
The Bible of a nation, the practically credited God’s message to a nation, is, beyond all else, the authentic biography of its heroic souls. This is the real record of the appearances of God in the history of a nation; this, which all men to the marrow of their bones can believe, and which teaches all men what the nature of this universe, when you go to work in it, really is.Carlyle.
The Bible tells us what Christian graces are; but it is in the struggle of life that we are to find them.Beecher.
The biography of a nation embraces all its works. No trifle is to be neglected. A mouldering medal is a letter of twenty centuries.Willmott.
The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food under hedges; the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared aloft and against the sun.Landor.
The birds without barn or storehouse are fed; / From them let us learn to trust for our bread.Newton.
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.Simons.
The birth of a golden deer is impossible.Hitopadesa.
The bishop has set his foot in it—i.e., the broth is singed.Proverb. (The explanation of which, according to Grose, is: Whenever a bishop passed through a town or a village, all the inhabitants ran out to receive his blessing; this frequently caused the milk on the fire to be left till burnt.)
The biter is often bit.Proverb.
The blanks as well as the prizes must be drawn in the cheating lottery of life.Le Sage.
The blast that blows loudest is soon overblown.Smollett.
The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.Johnson.
The blessed work of helping the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.George Eliot.
The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.Bible.
The blind man bears the lame, and onward hies, / Made right by lending feet and borrowing eyes.Plato the Younger.
The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.Carlyle.
The blood more stirs / To rouse a lion than to start a hare.1 Henry IV., i. 3.
The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity, the rest is crime.Burke.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.Tertullian.
The blue-bird carries the sky on his back.Thoreau.
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The blush is Nature’s alarm at the approach of sin, and her testimony to the dignity of virtue.Fuller.
The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.Bovee.
The body of Christ is wherever human bodies are, and he who has any bitterness against his brother is always committing sacrilege.Ward Beecher.
The book of Nature is the book of Fate.Emerson.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, / With loads of learned lumber in his head.Pope.
The books which help you most are those which make you think the most.Theodore Parker.
The borrower runs in his own debt.Emerson.
The bough that is dead shall be cut away for the sake of the tree itself. Let the Conservatism that would preserve the tree, cut it away.Carlyle.
The bounds of a man’s knowledge are easily concealed if he has but prudence.Goldsmith.
The boy stands astonished; his impressions guide him; he learns sportfully; seriousness steals on him by surprise.Goethe.
The boy’s story is the best that is ever told.Dickens.
The boy’s will is the wind’s will, / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.Lapland Proverb.
The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.Mer. of Ven., i. 2.
The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white roses please less than red.Holmes.
The brave man thinks of himself last of all.Schiller.
The bravest are the tenderest, / The loving are the daring.Bayard Taylor.
The breach of custom / Is breach of all.Cymbeline, iv. 2.
The breeding of a man makes him courageous by instinct, true by instinct, loving by instinct, as a dog is; and therefore, felicitously above, or below (whichever you like to call it), all questions of philosophy and divinity.Ruskin.
The British nation—and I include in it the Scottish nation—has produced a finer set of men than you will find it possible to get anywhere else in this world.Carlyle.
The bud may have a bitter taste, / But sweet will be the flower.Cowper.
The buke o’ May-bees is very braid.Scotch Proverb.
The burden one likes is cheerfully borne.Proverb.
The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will reappear.Carlyle.
The burst of new light, by its suddenness, always appears inimical to the unprepared heart.Jean Paul.
The busiest of living agents are certain dead men’s thoughts.Bovee.
The calling of a man’s self to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality is a little flat and dead … but the best receipt (best to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friend.Bacon.
The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows; yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.1 Henry IV., ii. 4.
The canary-bird sings the sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.Jean Paul.
The cancer of jealousy on the breast can never wholly be cut out, if I am to believe great masters of the healing art.Jean Paul.
The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons are disclosed, / And in the morn and liquid dew of youth / Contagious blastments are most imminent.Hamlet, i. 3.
The capacity of apprehending what is high is very rare; and therefore, in common life a man does well to keep such things for himself, and only to give out so much as is needful to have some advantage against others.Goethe.
The captive bands may chain the hands, / But love enslaves the man.Burns.
The Carlyles were men who lavished their heart and conscience upon their work; they builded themselves, their days, their thoughts and sorrows, into their houses; they leavened the soil with the sweat of their rugged brows.John Burroughs.
The casting away things profitable for the maintenance of man’s life is an unthankful abuse of the fruits of God’s good providence towards mankind.Hooker.
The castle which Conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad.Emerson.
The cat shuts its eyes when stealing the cream.Proverb.
The cause which pleased the gods has in the end to please Cato also. (?)
The centuries are all lineal children of one another; and often, in the portrait of early grandfathers, this and the other enigmatic feature of the newest grandson will disclose itself, to mutual elucidation.Carlyle.
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.Emerson.
The certain way to be cheated is to fancy one’s self more cunning than others.Charron.
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.Johnson.
The champion true / Loves victory more when, dim in view, / He sees her glories gild afar / The dusky edge of stubborn war, / Than if th’ untrodden bloodless field / The harvest of her laurels yield.Keble.
The chancre of a man’s self is a very laborious undertaking.Thomas à Kempis.
The character of a nation is not to be learned from its fine folks.Scott.
The character of the person that commends you is to be considered before you set a value on his esteem. The wise man applauds him whom he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world, him who is most wealthy. (?)
The character of the true philosopher is to hope all things not unreasonable.Sir John Herschel.
The characteristic mark of minds (Geister) of the first order is the directness (Unmittelbarkeit) of all their judgments. All that they bring forth (vorbringen) is the result of their own thinking.Schopenhauer.
The characteristic of a philosopher is that he looks to himself for all help or harm.Epictetus.
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spencer, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, everything.Hazlitt.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough / If she unmask her beauty to the moon.Hamlet, i. 1.