James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
The idle to The man who works
The idle always have a mind to do something.Vauvenargues.
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.Ward Beecher.
The ignorant peasant without fault is greater than the philosopher with many.Goldsmith.
The Iliad and the Shakespeare are tame to him who hears the rude but homely incidents of the road from every traveller.Thoreau.
The “Iliad” of Homer is no fiction, but a ballad history, the heart of it burning with enthusiastic, ill-informed belief.Carlyle.
The ill that’s wisely feared is half withstood, / And fear of bad is the best foil to good.Quarles.
The image of God cut in ebony—i.e., the negro.Fuller.
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature does.Thoreau.
The imagination is a fine faculty; yet I like not when she works on what has actually happened; the airy forms she creates are welcome as things of their own kind; but uniting with reality she produces often nothing but monsters, and seems to me, in such cases, to fly into direct variance with reason and common-sense.Goethe.
The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.Bible.
The imaginative power always purifies, the want of it therefore essentially defiles.Ruskin.
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.Emerson.
The importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness.Johnson.
The impressions of our childhood abide with us, even in their minutest traces.Goethe.
The indignation which makes verses is, properly speaking, an inverted love; the love of some right, some worth, some goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has been injured, and which this tempestuous feeling issues forth to defend and revenge.Carlyle.
The individual and the race are always moving, and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heaven more immediately over us.Chapin.
The individual loves and hatreds, which sum up existence and life, are the brood of Eros; for hatred is only love in some form, crossed and thwarted, and always in nature so much hostility, so much affection of some kind is there.James Wood.
The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.Novalis.
The infant, / Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. / And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school.As You Like It, ii. 7.
The infinite is more sure than any other fact. The infinite of terror, of hope, of pity; did it not at any moment disclose itself to thee, indubitable, unnameable? Came it never, like the gleam of preternatural eternal oceans, like the voice of old eternities, far-sounding through thy heart of hearts?Carlyle.
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.Voltaire.
The influence which we exercise over other objects depends on the influence we have over ourselves.Cötvös.
The injuries of life, if rightly improved, will be to us as the strokes of the statuary on his marble, forming us to a more beautiful shape, and making us fitter to adorn the heavenly temple.Mather.
The injustice done to an individual is sometimes of service to the public.Junius.
The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.Goldsmith.
The initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature, and submission to the laws of higher being.Ruskin.
The ink of the scholar and the blood of the martyr are of equal value in the eye of heaven.The Koran.
The innocent seldom find an uneasy pillow.Cowper.
The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.Bacon.
The insolence of condescension.Burns.
The insolence of office.Hamlet, iii. 1.
The inspiration of the Almighty giveth man understanding.Bible.
The instinctive feeling of a great people is often wiser than the wisest men.Kossuth.
The instruction merely clever men can give us is like baked bread, savoury and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be ground.Goethe.
The integrity of the upright shall guide them.Bible.
The intellect has only one failing: it has no conscience.Lowell.
The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.Hare.
The intellectual power, through words and things / Went sounding on a dim and perilous way.Wordsworth.
The intelligent have a right over the ignorant; namely, the right of instructing them.Emerson.
The intolerant man is the real pedant.Jean Paul.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.Emerson.
The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary.Carlyle.
The invisible world is near us; or rather it is here, in us and about us; were the fleshly coil removed from our soul, the glories of the unseen were even now around us; as the ancients fabled of the spheral music.Carlyle.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.Mid. N.’s Dream, v. 1.
The irreligious poet is a monster.Burns.
The is of this moment is not the explanation of the is of the next. Except in the idea of God there is no nexus between the two.James Wood.
The Israelitish people never was good for much, as its own leaders, judges, rulers, prophets have a thousand times reproachfully declared; it possesses few virtues, and most of the faults of other nations; but in cohesion, steadfastness, valour, and when all this would not serve, in obstinate toughness, it has no match.Goethe.
The jealous is possessed by a “fine mad devil” and a dull spirit at once.Lavater.
The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.Addison.
The jest which is expected is already destroyed.Johnson.
The joy of a peaceful conscience is sown in tears.Thomas à Kempis.
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.Bacon.
The judgment is like a pair of scales, and evidences like the weights; but the will holds the balance in its hand; and even a slight jerk will be sufficient, in many cases, to make the lighter scale appear the heavier.Whately.
The judgment of the world stands upon matter of fortune.Sir P. Sidney.
The judgments of the understanding are properly of force but once, and that in the strictest cases, and become inaccurate in some degree when applied to any other.Goethe.
The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.Bible.
The justice, / In fair round belly with good capon lined, / With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, / Full of wise saws and modern instances; / And so he plays his part.As You Like It, ii. 7.
The keeping of bees is like the directing of sunbeams.Thoreau.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys.Emerson.
The kind fool, of all kinds of fools, is worst.Sir Richard Baker.
The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.Carlyle.
The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he would.Spanish Proverb.
The king, like other people, has now and then shabby errands, and must have shabby fellows to do them.Scott.
The king may gang the cadger’s gate—i.e., may one day need his help.Scotch Proverb.
The king protecteth the people, and they support the greatness of their sovereign. But protection is better than greatness; for the one cannot exist without the other.Hitopadesa.
The king’s errand may come in at the cadger’s gate.Proverb.
The king’s favour is toward a wise servant.Bible.
The king’s honour is that of his people. Their real honour and real interest are the same.Junius.
The kings of modern thought are dumb.Matthew Arnold.
The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass.Bible.
The kingdom of God does not lie in elegance of speech or fineness of parts, but in innocence of life and good works.Thomas à Kempis.
The knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, “vesperina cognitio,” but that of God is a morning knowledge, “matutina cognitio.”Emerson, from the Schoolmen.
The knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.Cervantes.
The labour we delight in physics pain.Macbeth, ii. 3.
The labourer is worthy of his hire.Jesus.
The lake’s silver dulls with driving clouds.Sir Edwin Arnold.
The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.Schiller.
The lamp of the wicked shall be put out.Bible.
The land is mother of us all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all; in how many ways, from our first wakening to our last sleep on her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with blessed mother’s arms, enfold us all!Carlyle.
The land, properly speaking, belongs to these two: to the Almighty God; and to all his children of men that have ever worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it.Carlyle.
The language of truth is simple.Euripides.
The largest soul of any country is altogether its own.Ruskin.
The last act crowns the play.Quarles.
The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.Jean Paul.
The last drop makes the cup run over.Proverb.
The last ounce breaks the camel’s back.Proverb.
The last pale rim or sickle of the moon, which had once been full, now sinking in the dark seas.Carlyle by the bedside of his dying mother.
The last perfection of our faculties is that their activity, without ceasing to be sure and earnest, become sport.Schiller.
The last stage of human perversion is when sympathy corrupts itself into envy; and the indestructible interest we take in men’s doings has become a joy over their faults and misfortunes.Carlyle.
The last thing that we discover in writing a book is to know what to put at the beginning.Pascal.
The Latin word for a flatterer (assentator) implies no more than a person that barely consents; and indeed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or maintain him, cannot be bought too dear.Steele.
The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.Swift.
The law always limits every power which it bestows.Hume.
The law cannot equalise men in spite of nature.Vauvenargues.
The law has no eyes, the law has no hands, the law is nothing—nothing but a piece of paper, till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the dead letter.Macaulay.
The law is good if a man use it lawfully.St. Paul.
The law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.Bible.
The law is past depth to those that, without heed, do plunge into it.Timon of Athens, iii. 5.
The law is the friend of the weak.Schiller.
The law is what we must do; the gospel what God will give.Luther.
The law of nature is the strictest expression of necessity.Molescholte.
The law of perseverance is among the deepest in man; by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears.Carlyle.
The law of the wise is a fountain of life.Bible.
The law often permits what honour prohibits.Saurin.
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.Thoreau.
The law’s made to take care o’ raskils.George Eliot.
The laws of morality are also those of art.Schumann.
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them.Longfellow.
The laws of nature never vary; in their application they never hesitate, nor are wanting.Draper.
The laws undertake to punish only overt acts.Montesquieu.
The lawyer is a gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies, and keeps it to himself.Brougham.
The leafy blossoming present time springs from the whole past, remembered and unrememberable.Carlyle.
The lean and slippered pantaloon, / With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; / His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide / For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice / Turning again towards childish treble, pipes / And whistles in his sound.As You Like It, ii. 7.
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure.Quintilian.
The legacy of heroes—the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.Disraeli.
The legal and proper mercy of a king of England may remit the punishment, but ought not to stop the trial.Junius.
The lenient hand of time is daily and hourly either lightening the burden or making us insensible to the weight.Burns.
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him.Emerson.
The less men think the more they talk.Montesquieu.
The less routine the more of life.A. B. Alcott.
The less the wise man pleases himself, the more the world esteems him.Gellert.
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.Molière.
The less we have to do with our sins the better.Emerson.
The lessons of adversity are not always salutary; sometimes they soften and amend, but as often they indurate and pervert.Bulwer Lytton.
The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.St. Paul.
The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.Bible.
The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.Bible.
The liberty of writing letters with too careless a hand is apt to betray persons into imprudence in what they write.Blair.
The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.Jesus.
The life of a fool is worse than death.Apocrypha.
The life of a man is tormented not by things, but by opinions of things.Immermann.
The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks.Ruskin.
The life of all gods figures itself to us as a sublime sadness,—earnestness of infinite battle against infinite labour.Carlyle.
The life of an animal, until the hour of his death, passeth away in disciplines, in elevations and depressions, in unions and separations.Hitopadesa.
The life of an egoist is a tissue of inconsistencies, of actions that, from his own point of view, are absurd and foolish.Renan.
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.J. M. Barrie.
The life of every man is as the well-spring of a stream, whose small beginnings are indeed plain to all, but whose ulterior course and destination, as it winds through the expanses of infinite years, only the omniscient can discern.Carlyle.
The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be travelled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.Goldsmith.
The life of the Divine Man stands in no connection with the general history of the world in his time. It was a private life; his teaching was a teaching for individuals.Goethe.
The life of the lowest mortal, if faithfully recorded, would be interesting to the highest.Quoted by Carlyle.
The life which renews a man springs ever from within.Goethe.
The light by which we see in this world comes out from the soul of the observer.Emerson.
The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.George Eliot.
The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorus—seen plainest when all around is dark.Crowell.
The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.Jesus.
The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.St. John.
The light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.Bacon.
The light (which you refuse to take in) returns on you, condensed into lightning, which there is not any skin whatever too thick for taking in.Carlyle.
The lightning is the shorthand of the storm, / That tells of chaos.Eric Mackay.
The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin.Jean Paul.
The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire.W. R. Alger.
The lion is not so fierce as painted.Fuller.
The lips of the righteous feed many; but fools die for want of wisdom.Bible.
The litigant, unlike the goose, never gets trust (trussed), although he may be roasted and dished.John Willock.
The little done vanishes from the sight of man who looks forward to what is still to do.Goethe.
The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.As You Like It, i. 2.
The little man is still a man.Goethe.
The little mind will not by daily intercourse with great minds become one inch greater; but the noble man … will, by a knowledge of, and familiar intercourse with, elevated natures, every day make a visible approximation to similar greatness.Goethe.
The little that a just man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.Bible.
The lives of the best of us are spent in choosing between evils.Junius.
The loftier the building the deeper must the foundation be laid.Thomas à Kempis.
The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the same sort of things with the meanest, only from higher grounds and by higher paths.Jean Paul.
The loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest grief, because they have had the profoundest sympathies.Henry Giles.
The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming.Schopenhauer.
The longer life the more offence, / The more offence the greater pain, / The greater pain the less defence, / The less defence the lesser gain.Sir T. Wyatt.
The longer we live and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends.Johnson.
The longer you read the Bible the more you will like it.Romaine.
The longest day soon comes to an end.Proverb.
The longest life is scarcely longer than the shortest, if we think of the eternity that encircles both.Carlyle.
The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.Emerson.
The look of a king is itself a deed.Jean Paul.
The loom of Fortune weaves the fine and coarsest web.R. Southwell.
The loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down in the evening is weaving when it comes up to-morrow.Ward Beecher.
The Lord bestoweth his blessings where he findeth the vessels empty.Thomas à Kempis.
The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.Bible.
The Lord is a buckler to all that trust in him.Bible.
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.Bible.
The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked.Bible.
The loss of territory, or of a wise and virtuous servant, is a great loss,… for servants are not easily to be found.Hitopadesa.
The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.Bible.
The love of country produces good manners, and good manners also love of country. The less we satisfy our particular passions, the more we leave to our general.Montesquieu.
The love of gain never made a painter; but it has marred many.Washington Allston.
The love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind.F. W. Faber.
The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters.Hazlitt.
The love of money is the root of all evil.St. Paul.
The love season is the carnival of egoism, and it brings the touchstone to our natures.George Meredith.
The lover has more senses and finer senses than others.Emerson.
The lover, / Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.As You Like It, ii. 7.
The lower a man descends in his love, the higher he lifts his life.W. R. Alger.
The lower has oftentimes to be with sorrow sacrificed to the higher duties of the soul.James Wood.
The lower nature must always be dented when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.Ward Beecher.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, / Are of imagination all compact.Mid. N.’s Dream, v. 1.
The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off.Tacitus.
The lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, who shall sing of the gods and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.Emerson.
The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object.G. H. Lewes.
The magic power of love consists in its ennobling whatever its breath touches, like the sun whose golden ray transmutes even thunderclouds into gold.Grillparzer.
The main enterprise of the world for splendour, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man.Emerson.
The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.Johnson.
The make-weight! The make-weight! which fate throws into the balance for us at every happiness! It requires much courage not to be down-hearted in this world.Goethe.
The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.Goldsmith.
The man at the head of the house can mar the pleasure of the household; but he cannot make it. That must rest with the woman, and it is her greatest privilege.Helps.
The man comes before the citizen, and our future is greater than both.Jean Paul.
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.Emerson.
The man makes the circumstances, and is spiritually as well as economically the artificer of his own fortune, but the man’s circumstances are the element he is appointed to live and work in; so that in a no less genuine sense it can be said circumstances make the man.Carlyle.
The man of consequence and fashion shall richly repay a deed of kindness with a nod and a smile, or a hearty shake of the hand; while a poor fellow labours under a sense of gratitude, which, like copper coin, though it loads the bearer, is yet of small account in the currency and commerce of the world.Burns.
The man of genius can be more easily misinstructed (verbildet) and driven far more violently into false courses than a man of ordinary capability.Goethe.
The man of genius, like a dog with a bone, sits afar and retired off the road, hangs out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all possible hints and signs, “I wish to be alone—good-bye—farewell!”Thoreau.
The man of good common-sense may, if he pleases, in his particular station of life, most certainly be rich.Eustace Budgell.
The man of intellect at the top of affairs; this is the aim of all institutions and revolutions, if they have any.Carlyle.
The man of intellect is lost unless he unites energy of character to intellect. When we have the lantern of Diogenes we must have his staff.Chamfort.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.Young.
The man should make the hour, not this the man.Tennyson.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.Young.
The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; / The motions of his spirit are dull as night, / And his affections dark as Erebus: / Let no such man be trusted.Mer. of Ven., v. 1.
The man that makes a character makes foes.Young.
The man that stands by himself, the universe stands also.Emerson.
The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.Bible.
The man to whom the universe does not reveal directly what relation it has to him, whose heart does not tell him what he owes to himself and others—that man will scarcely learn it out of books; which generally do little more than give our errors names.Goethe.
The man truly proud thinks honours below his merit, and scorns to boast.Swift.
The man (Napoleon) was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon’s throat, that great doctrine, “La carrière ouverte aux talens,” “The tools to him that can handle them,” which is our ultimate political evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie.Carlyle.
The man who can be nothing but serious or nothing but merry is but half a man.Leigh Hunt.
The man who can thank himself alone for the happiness he enjoys is truly blest.Goldsmith.
The man who cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, cannot be a Christian anywhere.Ward Beecher.
The man who cannot blush, and who has no feelings of fear, has reached the acme of impudence.Menander.
The man who cannot enjoy his natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, but must wait and hope for their recognition by others, must expect to reap only disappointment and vexation.Goethe.
The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his own whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.Carlyle.
The man who cannot sometimes endure his own company must have a bad heart or a deficient intellect. (?)
The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable royal societies, and carried the whole “Méchanique Céleste” and Hegel’s Philosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.Carlyle.
The man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.Ruskin.
The man who does not learn to live while he is getting a living is a poorer man after his wealth is won than he was before.J. G. Holland.
The man who fears not death will start at no shadows.Greek Proverb.
The man who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.Proverb.
The man who has no enemies has no following.Donn Piatt.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like a potato,—the only good belonging to him is underground.Sir Thomas Overbury.
The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.Alexander Smith.
The man who in wavering times is inclined to be wavering only increases the evil, and spreads it wider and wider; but the man of firm decision fashions the universe.Goethe.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.Amiel.
The man who invented “Ifs” and “Buts” must have first made gold out of straw choppings.G. A. Bürger.
The man who is always fortunate cannot easily have a great reverence for virtue. (?)
The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.Goethe.
The man who is in a hurry to see the full effects of his own tillage must cultivate annuals, and not forest trees.Whately.
The man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.Goldsmith.
The man who lives by hope will die by despair.Italian Proverb.
The man who pauses in his honesty wants little of a villain.H. Martyn.
The man who small things scorns will next, / By things still smaller be perplexed.Goethe.
The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them, or, as the Italian proverb says, “The man who lives by hope will die by despair.”Addison.
The man who works at home helps society at large with somewhat more of certainty than he who devotes himself to charities.Emerson.