James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
The man who to The pains of power
The man who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.Schopenhauer.
The man whom grown-up people love, children love still more.Jean Paul.
The manifestation of one’s own superiority may render the purchase too dear, by being bought at the terrible price of our neighbour’s dislike.Lover.
The manners of the ill-mannered are never so odious, unbearable, exasperating, as they are to their own nearest kindred.P. G. Hamerton.
The many still must labour for the one! It is Nature’s doom.Byron.
The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.Southey.
The march of intellect, which licks all the world into shape, has reached even the devil.Goethe.
The march of the human mind is slow.Burke.
The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon.Emerson.
The marks of attachment, even to a fault, are an accumulation of virtues.Hitopadesa.
The mass of men consulted at hustings, upon any high matter whatsoever, is as ugly an exhibition of human study as the world sees.Carlyle.
The master of slaves has seldom the soul of a man.Henry Mackenzie.
The master-spirit who can rule the storm is great; but he is much greater who can both raise and rule it.E. L. Magoon.
The mastiff is quiet while curs are yelping.Proverb.
The material wealth of a country is the portion of its possessions which feeds and educates good men and women in it.Ruskin.
The May of our life blooms once, and not again.Schiller.
The mean of true valour lies between the extremes of cowardice and rashness.Cervantes.
The means that Heaven yields must be embraced, / And not neglected.Richard II., iii. 2.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.Emerson.
The mechanical occupations of man, the watching any object, as it were, coming into existence by manual labour, is a very pleasant way of passing one’s time, but our own activity is at the moment nil. It is almost the same as with smoking tobacco.Goethe.
The meditative heart / Attends the warning of each day and hour, / And practises in secret every virtue.Goethe.
The meek shall inherit the earth.Jesus.
The memory of absent friends becomes dimmed, although not effaced by time. The distractions of our life, acquaintance with fresh objects, in short, every change in our condition, works upon our hearts as dust and smoke upon a painting, making the finely drawn lines quite imperceptible, whilst one does not know how it happens.Goethe.
The memory of the just is blessed.Bible.
The men I am afraid of are the men who believe everything, subscribe to everything, and vote for everything.Bp. Shipley.
The merchant who was at first busy in acquiring money ceases to grow richer from the time when he makes it his business only to count it.Johnson.
The merciful shall obtain mercy.Jesus.
The mere existence and necessity of a philosophy is an evil.Carlyle.
The mere reality of life would be inconceivably poor without the charm of fancy, which brings in its bosom, no doubt, as many vain fears as idle hopes, but lends much oftener to the illusions it calls up a gay flattering hue than one which inspires terror.W. von Humboldt.
The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.Carlyle.
The meteor flag of England, / Shall yet terrific burn, / Till danger’s troubled night depart, / And the star of peace return.Campbell.
The milder virtues subsist only in co-existence with the severer, and the heart which pronounces a blessing on the poor and the merciful utters with the same breath sentence of excommunication against all who are proud-spirited and cruel-hearted.James Wood.
The mill will never grind with the water that is past.Proverb.
The mind becomes bankrupt under too large obligations. All additional benefits lessen every hope of future returns, and bar up every avenue that leads to tenderness.Goldsmith.
The mind can make / Substance, and people planets of its own / With beings brighter than have been, and give / A breath to forms that can outlive all flesh.Byron.
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.Joubert.
The mind content both crown and kingdom is.Robert Greene.
The mind goes antagonising on, and never prospers but by fits.Emerson.
The mind is enlarged and elevated by mere purposes, though they end as they begin by airy contemplation.Johnson.
The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.Goldsmith.
The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.Milton.
The mind must not yield to the body.Goethe.
The mind of a fool is empty; and everything is empty where there is poverty.Hitopadesa.
The mind of a good man doth not alter, even when he is in distress; the waters of the ocean are not to be heated by a torch of straw.Hitopadesa.
The mind of man is no inert receptacle of knowledge, but absorbs and incorporates into its own constitution the ideas which it receives.H. Lecky.
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.Pascal.
The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.Bulwer Lytton.
The mind that made the world is not one mind, but the mind.Emerson.
The minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more the stronger light there is shed upon them.Moore.
The mind’s the standard of the man.Watts.
The miracles which Christ and His disciples wrought were the scaffolding, not the building. The scaffolding is removed as soon as the building is finished.Lessing.
The miser is as much in want of that which he has as of that which he has not.Publius Syrus.
The miser is niggardly in death; two glances he casts on his coffin and a thousand with dismay on his anxiously-guarded treasures.Gellert.
The miserable have no other medicine, / But only hope.Meas. for Meas., iii. 1.
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.Johnson.
The misfortune in the state is that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern; and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account.Goethe.
The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analysed.Emerson.
The mob has many heads, but no brains.Proverb.
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus but the head of Polyphemus,—strong to execute, but blind to perceive.Colton.
The mob is a sort of bear: while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.Jane Porter.
(The mob is) the scum that rises uppermost when the nation boils.Dryden.
The modest virgin, the prudent wife, or the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens.Goldsmith.
The moment an ill can be patiently borne, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.Ward Beecher.
The moment must be pregnant and sufficient to itself if it is to become a worthy segment of time and eternity.Goethe.
The moment there is a bargain over the pottage the family relation is dissolved.Ruskin.
The moment which is the cradle of the future is also the grave of the past.Grillparzer.
The moon doth not withhold the light even from the cottage of a Chandala (outcast).Hitopadesa.
The moon that shone in Paradise.Hans Andersen.
The moral difference between a man and a beast is, that the one acts primarily for use, and the other for pleasure.Ruskin.
The morality of a king is not to be measured by vulgar rules. There are faults which do him honour, and virtues that disgrace him.Junius.
The morality of girls is custom, not principle.Jean Paul.
The morality of some people is in remnants—never enough to make a coat.Joubert.
The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people—the less, indeed, other people can be to him.Schopenhauer.
The more a man lives, the more he suffers.Amiel.
The more angels the more room.Swedenborg.
The more business a man has to do, the more he is able to accomplish; for he learns to economise his time.Judge Hale.
The more bustling the streets become, the more quietly one moves.Goethe.
The more fair and crystal is the sky, / The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.Richard II., i. 1.
The more generally persons are pleasing, the less profoundly do they please.H. Beyle.
The more haste, the worse speed.Proverb.
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.Lavater.
The more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and the fewer punishments to enforce.Ruskin.
The more men refine upon pleasure, the less will they indulge in excesses of any kind.Hume.
The more of the solid there is in a man, the less does he act the balloon.Spurgeon.
The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honour which set off virtue.Molière.
The more profound the thought, the more burdensome.Emerson.
The more riches a fool has, the greater fool he is.Anonymous.
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.Jean Paul.
The more sinful a man feels himself, the more Christian he is.Novalis.
The more the soul admires, the more it is exalted.Mme. de Krudener.
The more thou feelest thyself to be a man, so much the more dost thou resemble the gods.Goethe.
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.Hazlitt.
The more we have read, the more we have learned, the more we have meditated, the better conditioned we are to affirm that we know nothing.Voltaire.
The more we know, the greater our thirst for knowledge. The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals at the first pattering of showers, and rejoices in the raindrops with a quicker sympathy than the parched shrub in a sandy desert.Coleridge.
The more we work, the more we shall be trodden down.French Peasant Proverb.
The more weakness, the more falsehood; strength goes straight; every cannon-ball that has in it hollows and holes goes crooked. Weaklings must lie.Jean Paul.
The more you are talked about, the less powerful you are.Disraeli.
The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.Bible.
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.Emerson.
The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.Bovee.
The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness.Montaigne.
The most civilised are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.Rivarol.
The most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character.Tuckerman.
The most delightful letter does not possess a hundredth part of the charm of a conversation.Goethe.
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.Thales.
The most elevated sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or visionary beauty and rapture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge.James Usher.
The most enthusiastic Evangelicals do not preach a gospel, but keep describing how it should and might be preached; to awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred contagion, is not their endeavour, but, at most, to describe how faith shows and acts, and scientifically distinguish true faith from false.Carlyle in 1831.
The most enthusiastic mystics were women.Jean Paul.
The most essential fact about a man is the constitution of his consciousness.Schopenhauer.
The most finished man of the world is he who is never irresolute and never in a hurry.Schopenhauer.
The most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high.J. M. Barrie.
The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and the beginning of his life.Goethe.
The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.Hazlitt.
The most important moment in man’s life is certainly not the last.Jean Paul.
The most important part of education is right training in the nursery.Plato.
The most important period in the life of an individual is that of his development. Later on, commences his conflict with the world, and this is of interest only so far as anything grows out of it.Goethe.
The most important thing is to learn to rule one’s self.Goethe.
The most original modern authors are not so because they advance what is new, but simply because they know how to put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.Goethe.
The most objectionable people are the quibbling investigators and the crotchety theorists; their endeavours are petty and complicated, their hypotheses abstruse and strange.Goethe.
The most part of all the misery and mischief, of all that is denominated evil, in the world, arises from the fact that men are too remiss to get a proper knowledge of their aims, and when they do know them, to work intensely in attaining them.Goethe.
The most significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a great man.Carlyle.
The most sorrowful occurrence often, through the hand of Providence, takes the most favourable turn for our happiness; the succession of fortune and misfortune in life is intertwined like sleep and waking, neither without the other, and one for the sake of the other.Goethe.
The most unhappy and frail of all creatures is man, and yet he is the proudest.Montaigne.
The most universal quality is diversity.Montaigne.
The most virtuous of all men is he that contents himself with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.Plato.
The mother-grace of all the graces is Christian good-will.Ward Beecher.
The mother of the useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father, the former has intellect; the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.Schopenhauer.
The mother’s heart is always with her children.Proverb.
The mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.George Eliot.
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all and love but one.Balzac.
The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.Bible.
The movement of sound, such as will reach the soul for the education of it in virtue, we call Music.Plato.
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great, that everything must soon be reduced to extracts.Voltaire.
The multiplying villanies of nature / Do swarm upon him.Macbeth, i. 2.
The multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.Emerson.
The multitude is always in the wrong.Earl of Roscommon.
The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.Cicero.
The multitude unawed is insolent; once seized with fear, contemptible and vain.Mallet.
The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion; the unity which does not depend upon the multitude is tyranny.Pascal.
The Muses (daughters of Memory) refresh us in our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.Novalis.
The music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more.Wordsworth.
The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs, its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages.Chapin.
The mystery of a person is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike.Carlyle.
The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: democracy is virtually there.Carlyle.
The nation is worth nothing which does not joyfully stake its all on its honour.Schiller.
The native land of the poet’s poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble, and beautiful, which is confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he finds it. Therein is he like the eagle.Goethe.
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.Washington Irving.
The natural qualities pass over all others and mount upon the head.Hitopadesa.
The near explains the far.Emerson.
The nearer the church the farther from God.Proverb.
The nearer we approach the goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our existence, and the real weight of our opinions.Burke.
The necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie.Burns.
The necessities of things are sterner stuff than the hopes of men.Disraeli.
The neck on which diamonds might have worthily sparkled will look less tempting when the biting winter has hung icicles there for gems.S. Lover.
The negation of will and desire is the only road to deliverance.Schopenhauer.
The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders—these are the masters of victory.Burke.
The nerves, they are the man.Cabanis.
The never-absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere.Thoreau.
The new man is always in a new time, under new conditions; his course is the fac-simile of no prior one, but is by its nature original.Carlyle.
The next dreadful thing to a battle lost is a battle won.Wellington.
The night cometh, when no man can work.Jesus.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.St. Paul.
The night is for the day, but the day is not for the night.Emerson.
The night is long that never finds the day.Macbeth, iv. 2.
The night shows stars and women in a better light.Byron.
The nobility of life is work. We live in a working world. The lazy and idle man does not count in the plan of campaign. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Let that text be enough.Prof. Blackie, to young men.
The noble character at certain moments may resign himself to his emotions; the well-bred, never.Goethe.
The noble ones who have lived among us have not left us; they only truly came to us when they departed, and they were then first kissed by us into immortality.James Wood.
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the slower it is in attaining maturity.Schopenhauer.
The nobler the virtue is, the more eager and generous resolution do thou express of attaining to it.Thomas à Kempis.
The noblest charms of music, though real and affecting, seem too confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea. Harmony is always understood by the crowd, and almost always mistaken by musicians.James Usher.
The noblest mind the best contentment hath.Spenser.
The noblest vengeance is to forgive.Proverb.
The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.Bacon.
The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.Bible.
The Now is an atom of sand, / And the Near is a perishing clod; / But Afar is as Fairy Land, / And beyond is the bosom of God.Lord Lytton.
The nurse’s bread is sweeter than the mother’s cake.Frisian Proverb.
The oak first announces itself when, with far-sounding crash, it falls.Carlyle.
The object of all true policy and true economy is, the utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground.Ruskin.
The object of art is to crystallise emotion into thought and then to fix it in form.Delsarte.
The object of preaching is constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.Sydney Smith.
The object of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written.John Morley.
The object of the poet is, and must be, to “instruct by pleasing,” yet not by pleasing this man and that man; only by pleasing man, by speaking to the pure nature of man, can any real “instruction,” in this sense, be conveyed.Carlyle.
The object of the politician is expediency, and his duty is to adapt his measures to the often crude, undeveloped, and vacillating conception of the nation. The object, on the other hand, of the philosopher is truth, and his duty is to push every principle which he believes to be true to its legitimate consequences, regardless of the results that may follow.H. Lecky.
The object of true religion should be to impress the principles of morality deeply in the soul.Leibnitz.
The obligation of veracity may be made out from the direct ill consequences of lying to social happiness.Paley.
The obscure is what transcends us, and what imposes itself upon us by transcending us.Renan.
The ocean beats against the stern dumb shore, / The stormy passion of its mighty heart.L. C. Moulton.
The ocean may have bounds.Hitopadesa.
The offender never pardons.George Herbert.
The old fox is caught at last.Proverb.
The old gloomy cathedrals were good, but the great blue dome that hangs over all is better than any Cologne one.Carlyle.
The old never dies till this happen, till all the soul of good that was in it get itself transfused into the practical new.Carlyle.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils himself in many ways, / Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.Tennyson.
The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while among us prose is invariably written for the eye alone.Niebuhr.
The older we get the more we must limit ourselves, if we wish to be active.Goethe.
The oldest, and indeed only true, order of nobility known under the stars, is that of just men and sons of God, in opposition to unjust men and sons of Belial, which latter indeed are second oldest, and yet a very unvenerable order.Carlyle.
The oldest in years is not always the most experienced, and he who has suffered most has not always the best manners.Bodenstedt.
The one enemy we have in this universe is stupidity, darkness of mind; of which darkness there are many sources, every sin a source, and probably self-conceit the chief source.Carlyle.
The one essential point (in regard to a wrong) is to know that it is wrong; how to get out of it you can decide afterwards at your leisure.Ruskin.
The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.Aristotle.
The one intolerable sort of slavery, over which the very gods weep, is the slavery of the strong to the weak; of the great and noble-minded to the small and mean; the slavery of wisdom to folly.Carlyle.
The one prudence in life is concentration.Emerson.
The one thing of value in the world is the active soul.Emerson.
The one unhappiness of a man is that he cannot work, that he cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled.Carlyle.
The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.Mrs. Jamieson.
The only disadvantage of an honest heart is its credulity.Sir P. Sidney.
The only evolution of any really human interest, and worthy of any human regard, is the evolution that springs from resolution and the birth of freedom in the self-conscious soul.James Wood.
The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.George Eliot.
The only faith that wears well, and holds its colour in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction, and set with the sharp mordant of experience.Lowell.
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.Locke.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of this, or impede their efforts to obtain it.J. S. Mill.
The only genuine Romance for grown persons is Reality.Carlyle.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.Emerson.
The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking much about was, happiness enough to get his work done.Carlyle.
The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order.Burke.
The only means of overcoming adversities is a fresh activity.Goethe.
The only medicine which does women more good than harm is dress.Jean Paul.
The only ornament of old age is virtue.Amyot.
The only poetry is history, could we tell it aright.Carlyle.
The only point now is what a man weighs in the scale of humanity; all the rest is nought. A coat with a star, and a chariot with six horses, at all events, imposes on the rudest multitude only, and scarcely that.Goethe.
The only progress which is really effective depends, not upon the bounty of Nature, but upon the energy of man.Buckle.
The only satisfaction of the will is that it encounters with no resistance.Schopenhauer.
The only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals.J. S. Mill.
The only serious and formidable thing in Nature is will.Emerson.
The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.Emerson.
The only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions.Degerando.
The only substance properly so called is the soul.Amiel.
The only teller of news is the poet.Emerson.
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.Emerson.
The only true principle for humanity is justice.Amiel.
The only true source of politeness is consideration.Simms.
The only victory over love is flight.Napoleon.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.Emerson.
The only way to understand the difficult parts of the Bible is first to read and obey the easy ones.Ruskin.
The opinions of men are as many and as different as their persons; the greatest diligence and most prudent conduct can never please them all.Thomas à Kempis.
The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.Voltaire.
The ordinary man places life’s happiness in things external to him; his centre of gravity is not in himself.Schopenhauer.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.Emerson.
The outer passes away; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.Carlyle.
The over-curious are not over-wise.Massinger.
The owl of ignorance lays the egg of pride.Proverb.
The owl sees the sunshine and winks in its nest.Dr. Walter Smith.
The ox lies still while the geese are hissing.Proverb.
The pain of an unfilled wish is small in comparison with that of repentance; for the one stands in presence of the vast open future, whilst the other has the irrevocable past closed behind it.Schopenhauer.
The pain that any one actually feels is still of all others the worst.Locke.
The pain which conscience gives the man who has already done wrong is soon got over. Conscience is a coward; and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse.Goldsmith.
The pains of power are real, its pleasures are imaginary.Colton.