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More "Proverb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol, 'I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hard man, but out of it, kindly and benevolent, melting always to distress which came in his way; with a passionate love of animals and of nature. He was a poor business man, for he could never press for the payment of debts due to him, but his honesty was so rigid that it became a proverb in our town that a man should be "as honest as old Joe Stillman," and that good name was all he gave or ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Mrs. Bellairs gradually declined from her chair to her sofa. She made no effort to live after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if she had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any other subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "It is better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It is better to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... temper she was fond of boasting of the handsome fortune she intended securing for her own daughter, even though the step-children should be unprovided for. But, as the old proverb says, "Man proposes, but God disposes." We shall therefore see how ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... thumb again. Now, if any one of the young gentlemen would set us an example, would show us, "See, this is how you ought to manage!" ... What will be the end of it? Can it be that I shall die without seeing the new methods?... What is the proverb?—the old is dead, but the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'he who sows land, reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a pause, and in a more irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on—nay, if among all my tribe of dainty ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... they will, has the most reason to consider the disasters of the unfortunate, and be compassionate to them under their pressures and disasters, of any other men; because they know not—no, not the most prosperous of them—what may be their own fate in the world. There is a Scripture proverb, if I may call it so, very necessary to a tradesman in this case, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... before dinner: so called from its damping, or allaying, the appetite; eating and drinking, being, as the proverb wisely observes, apt to take away ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... cause, that made the ancient-learned affirm, it was a divine gift, and no human skill: sith all other knowledges lie ready for any that hath strength of wit: a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried unto it: and therefore is it an old proverb, orator fit; poeta nascitur. Yet confess I always, that as the fertilest ground must be manured, so must the highest-flying wit have a Dadalus to guide him. That Dadalus, they say, both in this and in other, hath ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... happiness in so many cases. Even if some only of these measures are adopted, the nation as a whole cannot fail to benefit mentally, morally and physically. The success of the measures, of course, depends to some extent on their being taken in time, but in this, as in many other directions, the old proverb holds good: Better ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... French prisoner, who remained on deck, over-joyed at the recapture, and anticipating an immediate return to his own country; by which it would appear that the "L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose" of France, is quite as sure a proverb as the more homely "Many a slip between cup and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... enough or fool enough to follow him, and a few malignant falsifiers who worship at his shrine. He is a wretched and vile caterer to the morbid foreign and Catholic appetite of this country. "It is a dirty bird that fouls its own nest," says the proverb; and it applies to this man Johnson with as much force as to the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... came into spiritual possession; and later on, episcopal rule succeeded to the influence of Loyola's disciples. The relative estimation in which these various orders of the Church were held being illustrated by a Canadian proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... opened the alley gate and came into the yard. The unconscious Mrs. Bassett was about to have her first experience of a fatal coincidence. It was her first, because she was the mother of a boy so well behaved that he had become a proverb of transcendency. Fatal coincidences were plentiful in the Schofield and Williams families, and would have been familiar to Mrs. Bassett had Georgie been permitted greater intimacy with ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... such an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought to eat a gored ox, or something—what is the proverb, 'better a dinner of stalled ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... an' ciphered et out, an' cudn' see the sense o't. 'But,' says he, 'when you'm in Turkey you do as the Turkeys do, 'cordin' to the proverb, so I guess 'tes all right; an' ef et 'pears wrong, 'tes on'y that I bain't used to travellin' wi' corpses;' an' wi' that he settles down ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... these perverse fanatics parade their cursed doctrine as the Word of God, and, flying the flag of God's name, they deceive many. The devil knows better than to appear ugly and black. He prefers to carry on his nefarious activities in the name of God. Hence the German proverb: "All mischief begins ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... learned from the countries where the democratic experiments have been tried; but they do not care to be told how M. Waddington has emended the Monumentum Ancyranum, what connection there was between Mariana and Milton, or between Penn and Rousseau, or who invented the proverb Vox Populi Vox Dei. Sir Erskine May's reluctance to deal with matters speculative and doctrinal, and to devote his space to the mere literary history of politics, has made his touch somewhat uncertain in treating of the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the head that wears a crown, says the proverb, and it was true in the case of Servius, for he could never forget that the people had not voted in his favor. For this reason he divided among them the lands that he had taken from the enemies he had defeated, and then, supposing that he had obtained their ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... this choice proverb Mr Cargrim beat a hasty retreat. Altogether Miss Whichello was too much for him; and for once in his life he was at a loss how to gloss over his defeat. Not until he was in Tinkler's office did he recover his feeling ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... punished and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, did seem rather unfair.... So I—walked around to—to see if I could find something to look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb, isn't there Pa-pah?—something about ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... for Italy that Cavour always pleaded; Italy, and not Piedmont or even Lombardy and Venetia. He invariably asserted the right of his King to uphold the cause of all the populations from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. If he adopted the proverb 'Chi va piano va sano,' he kept in view the end of it, 'Chi va sano va lontano.' In short, if he did not believe in Italian unity, he acted in the same way as he would have acted had he believed ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... that is ended, the lust of variety, the distinguishing characteristic of a rake, haunts him incessantly, like a ghost, and soon extinguishes all his principles of love, justice, and generosity. It is true, indeed, the proverb goes, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. It may be so, but then it is a truth of equal importance with this, that a pick-pocket going to the gallows is an honest man. His hands are tied ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... "A proverb is a stone flung into a pack of starlings. It may scare the most, but may hit one. By mine I referred to the ways of providence, under a figure. Destiny is always ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... might easily have found a truer explanation of Nelly's failing energies than this convenient proverb, in the unwholesome atmosphere she was breathing by night and day, as well as in the quantity and quality of the food provided for her. Mrs. Williams would have indignantly repelled the charge of starving Nelly, but ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... proverb that mamma has often quoted to us, for she's awfully keen on our all being 'plucky,' and, on the whole, I ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... northern Indians, the Camanches resort to the buffalo dance only on rare occasions, but when they do undertake it, their persistence is admirable; and for this reason, the other tribes have a saying, or sort of proverb, that when the Camanches dance for "buffalo" it is a good moon to hunt, but a bad moon on the war-path. Their meaning probably is, that the buffalo are sure to "come," when the Camanches dance for them, but that the Camanches are equally ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... to learn, Rosendo, little by little. You know, the Spanish proverb says, 'Step by step goes a great way.' But meantime, let us go forward, clinging to this great truth: God is infinite good—He is love—we are His dear children—and evil was not made by Him, and does not have His sanction. It therefore cannot ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... constitution, that was a proverb in Greenfield, conquered at last, and Hitty became conscious, to find herself in a chamber whose plastered walls were crumbling away with dampness and festooned with cobwebs, while the uncarpeted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... scholar and monk Roger Bacon, must have been some one of the same type. Another Christian exegete of the same period, William of Mara, cites Rashi's commentary under the title of Perus. The admiration felt for Nicholas de Lyra, which now seems somewhat excessive, is expressed in the well-known proverb: Si Lyra non lyrasset, totus mondus delirasset. A modification of the proverb, si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherius non saltasset, is not an exaggeration; for the works of the Franciscan monk were soon translated into German, and they exercised ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... go? So be it—but follow me! We bear the blame together, let us bear The punishment as well! Dost thou not know The ancient proverb: "None shall die alone?" One home for both, one body—and one death! Long since, when Death stared grimly in our eyes, We sware that oath. Now keep ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... strive a medium to procure; Redundance never can success insure: This proverb will in all things be found true, That good itself, should have its limits due. Christian! avoid revenge and strife, For anger tends to embitter life: And he who readily forgives his foe, Ev'n here on earth ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the good God will arise to work miracles again, such things might be; but how can we look for Him to do so? What manner of man is the Dauphin of France that he should look for divine deliverance? 'God helps those who help themselves,' so says the proverb; but what of those who lie sunk in lethargy or despair, and seek to drown thought or care in folly and riotous living—heedless of the ruin of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... necessary, to make a nation happy; all depends upon management, Concordia res parvae crescunt. I fear not these articles, though they were ten times worse than they are, if we once cordially forgive one another, and that, according to our proverb, bygones be bygones, and fair play for time to come. For my part, in the sight of God, and in the presence of this honorable house, I heartily forgive every man, and beg that they may do the same to me; and I do most humbly propose that his grace, my lord commissioner, may appoint ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... subject to violent winds, of which the most disastrous is the mistral. The popular proverb is, however, somewhat exaggerated, Avenio ventosa, sine vento venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa (windy Avignon, pest-ridden when there is no wind, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... events. We are all about to divide, break up, separate. Emily is going to school, Branwell is going to London, and I am going to be a governess. This last determination I formed myself, knowing that I should have to take the step sometime, 'and better sune as syne,' to use the Scotch proverb; and knowing well that papa would have enough to do with his limited income, should Branwell be placed at the Royal Academy, and Emily at Roe Head. Where am I going to reside? you will ask. Within four miles of you, at a place neither of us is unacquainted with, being ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the bed-tester; now, the bed being shifted, the spike is shifted; and its distance from the window, having been always four feet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore, must be added to that which would have sufficed if measured from the window. But courage! God, by the proverb of all nations in Christendom, helps those that help themselves. This our young man thankfully acknowledges; he reads already, in the very fact of any spike at all being found where hitherto it has been useless, an earnest of providential aid. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... hell, as, with fever and famine leering at him from the shadows, he made his way through the empty desolation of the wilderness. Franca, the cook, quoted out of the melancholy proverbial philosophy of the people the proverb: "No man knows the heart of any one"; and then expressed with deep conviction a weird ghostly belief I had never encountered before: "Paishon is following Julio now, and will follow him until he dies; Paishon fell forward on his hands and knees, and when a murdered man falls like that ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... "This is the proverb which men speak: 'A poor man's name is only his own matter.' I am he of whom you spake, even the Lord Steward of whom you think." Thereon he took to him branches of green tamarisk and scourged all his limbs, ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... early years of Meiji the Ko[u]jimachi-ido still existed, to be pointed out to the superstitious ever present in this land. The Bancho[u], for many decades of years, had become the crowded Bancho[u] of the proverb which asserts that one born and living out life therein, yet could not be expected to know the windings and intricacies of its many ways and byways. In time the yashiki of hatamoto disappeared; in recent years ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... enlarged, almost with the rapid accumulation of a snow-ball, into an enormous mass of territory, under the title of French Republic, what would he not have to say in a sermon? Rien de nouveau sous le ciel, though an old proverb, would not now suit as a maxim. This, in fact, seems the age of wonders. The league of monarchs has ended by producing republics; while a republic has raised a dukedom into a monarchy, and, by its vast preponderance, completely overturned ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... There is a proverb about carrying 'owls to Athens'—an absurd undertaking, considering the excellent supply already on the spot. Had it been my intention, in presenting Nigrinus with a volume of my composition, to indulge him of all people with a display of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... among themselves, even concerning subjects which are simple and easily understood; while, on more difficult and complicated issues, this tendency is, of course, very much more pronounced. Hence, the well-known proverb: "Quot homines, tot sententiae"—there are as many ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... truth. Ask if you like how I know it? To begin with, I am not bound to please you with my answer. Who will compel me? I know the same day made me free, which was the last day for him who made the proverb true—One must be born either a Pharaoh or a fool. If I choose to answer, I will say whatever trips off my tongue. Who has ever made the historian produce witness to swear for him? But if an authority must be produced, ask of the man who saw Drusilla translated to heaven: ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... is finished. There is a proverb: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in." It depends upon what you are after. The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar. I remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... the indestructibly and final omnipotence of the Force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the logical consequence of that unity of force which science is now beginning to teach. The same essential force that is me is also you. Says the Indian proverb: "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes, and they were all my twin brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times closer to me even than the common conception of twin brothers. We are all of us the same ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... names, no matter how unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;—I don't know what a verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "Quand le cheval est sellé ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... men of Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." There is truth back of most proverbs, although to-day both horses and men of Texas are losing something of their erstwhile bronco character. That ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... of Porto Santo we enjoyed a dry deck and a foretaste of the soft and sensuous Madeiran 'Embate,' the wester opposed to the Leste, Harmattan, Khammasin, or Scirocco, the dry wind which brings wet. [Footnote: The popular proverb is, 'A Leste never dies thirsty.'] Then we rolled over the twenty-five geographical miles separating us from our destination. Familiar sites greeted my eyes: here the 'Isle of Wood' projects a dwarf tail composed of stony vertebrae: seen upon the map ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... it, for we could have claimed a night's lodging at the ladies' guest-house, where all creeds, classes, and nationalities are received with a cead-mile-failte, [*] and where any offering for food or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure. The Celtic proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be written over the cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who teach in the schools or who attend visitors are ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at the apparent presumption and vain-glory of this last communication for today...My modesty will sufficiently come to my rescue to prevent my putting too many feathers in my cap! [The German proverb of which Liszt makes use is "allzugrosse Rosinen im Kopfe tragen." Besides, thank God, I am too honest and truth-loving to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... man should guard himself against the defects that he might have, without knowing it." That is a Persian proverb, which you will find in Hafiz. I believe you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... has just been observed, is apt to overreach itself, has passed into a proverb; and the case of Jacopo and his employers was one in point to prove its truth. The unusual silence of those who ordinarily sought him on similar occasions, had not been lost on the agent; and the sight of the felucca, as he strayed along the quays, gave an accidental ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the sinking to the rising star. Even if you go to the depth of a desert, to the jungles of an Indian archipelago, to the woods at Caffraria, to the desert plains of North America, or to the Cordilleras, you will not escape from the miserable spectacles of human hypocrisy. The Turks have a proverb which says, 'Cure the hand you cannot spare.' Now we can add to this maxim, 'Cure the hand which can serve you, satisfy your pride, avarice and egotism.' Young and happy when you first entered on life, dear Ireneus, you have seen much. A sudden revolution ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... wants to be pretty should be taught what "pretty" really is. The old proverb says, "Pretty is as pretty does," thus recognizing the power of the inward Sculptor Thought, and its controlling ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... of the earth, or breeders of cattle, depending on agricultural pursuits alone for subsistence. To use a common proverb of their own, "the earth is the Arab's portion." They are divided into small tribes or families, each separate tribe having a particular patriarch or head, by whose name they distinguish themselves, and each occupying its own separate portion ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... won a signal victory over Commodore Barclay after a long and hotly contested battle. There has never been such a remarkable naval victory on fresh water. Perry's famous dispatch to General Harrison, "We have met the enemy and they are ours," has become a proverb. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... life of Franklin is sketched from his childhood to the time he was established in business, thus showing what he was in boyhood and youth; and the achievements of his manhood are summed up in a closing chapter, to substantiate the truth of the above proverb. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... of character which is the foundation of his greatness. He was no fumbler, led away from his purpose by the first diversion; his ambition was clear before him, and he never fell below it. He defied Scotland for fifteen years, was hanged so high that he passed into a proverb, and though his handsome, sinister face might have made women his slaves, he was never betrayed by passion (or by ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... rose to her feet. "My medical attendant," she said, with an assumption of dignity; "I must explain myself." She held up one hand, outstretched; and counted her fingers with the other. "First my husband. Then my son. Now my maid. One, two, three. Mr. Null, do you know the proverb? 'It's the last hair that breaks the camel's back.'" She suddenly dropped on her knees. "Will somebody pray for me?" she cried piteously. "I don't know how to pray for myself. Where ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... now and then, just to pass the time away a little agreeably. By this means he may readily mark down his man, and the game once in view, he should not appear too eager in the pursuit of it, but take good care, as the proverb says, to give a sprat, in order to catch a herring. This should be done by allowing some temporary success, before he make a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... have come close up to Goliath before he was observed; and then, with almost a snort of contempt, the giant resents the insult of sending such a foe to fight him with such weapons. Perhaps he was nearer the truth than he thought, when he asked if he was a dog; and any stick will do, as the proverb says, to beat that animal, especially if God guards the hand that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Gaze, and within late years, not a rustic spot possessed of a mineral spring but has become metamorphosed into a second Plombires. Grardmer—"Sans Grardmer et un peu Nancy, que serait la Lorraine?" says the proverb—is resorted to, however, rather for its rusticity and beauty than for any curative properties of its sparkling waters. Also in some degree for the sake of urban distraction. The French mind when bent on holiday-making ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... bores me—this money bag!" cried Esther, a courtesan once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper and wrote all over it, as close as it could go, Scribe's famous phrase, which has become a proverb, "Prenez ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... seeing the horde pass through, I could perceive no difference in loathsomeness between the devils and the damned. Some wished to crouch at the bottom of the river, there to remain in suffocation to all eternity, rather than find further on a worse dwelling; but as the proverb says: "He whom the devil urges must run," so these damned beings, thrust on by the demons, were swiftly borne along the stream of destruction to their eternal ruin; where I too saw at the first glimpse more tortures and torments than man's heart can imagine, far ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... It is a proverb on the lips of every moujik in Petersburg that all Russia obeys the Czar, and the Czar obeys the Tchin. Ever since the bureaucracy deliberately allowed Alexander II. to be assassinated by the Nihilists out of anger at his reforming tendencies, the Russian monarchs have felt more real dread ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... in authority, in general, used their ingenuity to keep the people from thinking. The most vital reason why many humans appear to be, and are often called, "stupid," is that they have been spoken to in a language of speculation which they instinctively dislike and distrust; thus there arose the proverb that speech was made to conceal the truth. It is no wonder that they appear "stupid," the wonder is that they are not more "stupid." The truth is that they will be found to be far less stupid when addressed in the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... abused. Meat and drink, so easily provided, were always improvidently spent. Probably few buccaneer ships returned from a cruise with the hands on full allowance. The rule was "drunk and full, or dry and empty, to hell with bloody misers"—the proverb of the American merchant sailor of to-day. They knew no mean in anything. That which came easily might go lightly: there was more ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... but he seeth, that these use much more policy in procuring the hurt and damage of the good, than those in defending themselves. Therefore, brethren, gather you the disposition and study of the children by the disposition and study of the fathers. Ye know this is a proverb much used: "An evil crow, an evil egg." Then the children of this world that are known to have so evil a father, the world, so evil a grandfather, the devil, cannot choose but be evil. Surely the first head of their ancestry was ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... an old and true proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. And in like wise it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot make them breathe it. Their own folly, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... obstinate in the greatest absurdities, even after they are exposed in the clearest manner. All religions are easily combated, but with difficulty extirpated. Reason avails nothing against custom, which becomes, says the proverb, a second nature. Many persons, in other respects sensible, even after having examined the rotten foundation of their belief, adhere to it in contempt of the most striking arguments. Whenever we complain of religion, its shocking absurdities, and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Remember often that proverb—"The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing." Study, therefore, to withdraw your heart from the love of visible things, and turn yourself to the invisible. For those who follow their sensuality stain their conscience, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... simmer, and I to swell and swell away, till the string got tighter and tighter round my throat, while a thick black smoke arose from some coals which she had just put on. I was looking out of the pot, and meditating on the proverb, "Out of the frying-pan into the fire," when, being unable to stand it any longer, I jumped out of the pudding-bag, and found myself rolling at the bottom ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... to Mrs. Langloh Parker's book can be more than that superfluous 'bush' which, according to the proverb, good wine does not need. Our knowledge of the life, manners, and customary laws of many Australian tribes has, in recent years, been vastly increased by the admirable works of Mr. Howitt, and of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. But Mrs. Parker ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... news to break and end our efforts at any moment, but the quickness with which I had seized upon Preblesham's information confirmed the proverb about the early bird; the threehour reprieve stretched to five and by the time Havas flashed the news I had liquefied almost all of my now worthless assets—and to potential financial rivals. Needless to say I had not ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... been mistaking a symptom for a cause. This has led us to absurd and injurious extremes in both cases. On the moral and prudential side it has led to such outrageous exaggerations as the well-known and oft-quoted proverb, "Speech is silver, but silence is golden." Articulate speech, the chiefest triumph and highest single accomplishment of the human species, the handmaid of thought and the instrument of progress, is actually rated below silence, the attribute ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... crawled on them from room to room. All the four chambers were deserted—not forlorn or untidy, for everything seemed to have been done for his comfort—the breakfast and dinner things were laid, the food spread in order. He might live "like a prince," as the proverb is, for several days. But the place was entirely forsaken—there was evidently not a creature but himself ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... lives ill one year, will sorrow for it seven. And again, as the Spaniards have it—Who lives well, sees afar off! Far off indeed; for he sees into eternity, as a man may say. Then that other fine saying, He who perishes in needless dangers, is the Devil's martyr. Another proverb I picked up at Madrid, when I accompanied Lord Lexington in his embassy to Spain, which might teach my nephew more mercy and compassion than is in his nature I doubt to shew; which is this, That he who pities another, remembers himself. And this that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to divert her thoughts. Madame d'Avrigny was getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted Jacqueline to take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought to put her lessons in elocution to some use. The piece chosen was to illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable as it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with its morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... can estimate the power which emanated from the pulpits of Dr. McElroy, or Dr. DeWitt, or Dr. Spring, or Dr. Krebs? Their work will go on in New York though their churches be demolished. Large-hearted men were these pulpit apostles, apart from the clerical obligations of their denominations. No proverb in the world is so abused as the one which declares that the children of ministers never turn out well. They hold the highest places in the nation. Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania, Governor Taylor of Tennessee, were sons of Methodist ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige him to hire himself out as clerk to an attorney in Philadelphia. In his office, Paine earned his daily bread by copying law-papers until he was appointed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Zora. "I want to get everything clear in my mind. I've had a great shock. I feel as if I had been beaten all over. For the first time I recognize the truth of the proverb about a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree. Why did you send ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Darsie; 'for the nearer the church—the proverb is somewhat musty. But how did these liberal opinions of yours agree with the very opposite prejudices of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... in jest or earnest, that the theological and Sorbonnical wine, and their feasts, are turned into a proverb, I find it reasonable they should dine so much more commodiously and pleasantly, as they have profitably and seriously employed the morning in the exercise of their schools. The conscience of having well ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... have in some respects a different course of study, but be subjected to the influence of different minds, and examples, and rules, and scenes, and associations, corresponding to the different relations which they will sustain. 'Non omnia possumus omnes,' is a proverb applicable both to teachers and to pupils, and it would forbid the supposition, that minds which act upon others for widely different purposes, should do it always with the best effect, or that they who are so acted upon, should not sometimes suffer injury from the inadequate or ill appropriated ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the state, or otherwise taken from the original possessors, was divided among the people. The laws enacted from time to time for this purpose were called Agrarian laws; and the phrase afterward passed into a sort of proverb, inasmuch as plans proposed in modern times for conciliating the favor of the populace by sharing among them property belonging to the state or to the rich, are designated by ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... was too good off that part of the Cornish coast to be neglected, and the Colonel made allusions to the old proverb about all work and no play making Jack ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Hebe; soon after the Graces dropped in, the most delightful personages in the world for a soiree, so useful and ready for anything. Afterwards came a few of the Muses, Thalia, Melpomene, and Terpsichore, famous for a charade or a proverb. Jupiter liked to be amused in the evening. Bacchus also came, but finding that the Gods had not yet left their wine, retired to ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the workmen generally declared it to be a "perfect plague." Mr. Blackett did not obtain credit amongst his neighbours for these experiments. Many laughed at his machines, regarding them only in the light of crotchets,—frequently quoting the proverb that "a fool and his money are soon parted." Others regarded them as absurd innovations on the established method of hauling coal; and pronounced that they ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." These were assembled for to join argument with the king's son and his fellows, and on them was fulfilled the proverb, "Gazelle against lion." The one made the most High his house of defence, and his hope was under the shadow of his wings; while the others trusted in the princes of this world, who are made of none effect, and in the ruler of the darkness of this world, to ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... says— Yet so to temper passion, that our ears Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears Both smile and weep.] He had not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakspeare acted conformably to this ingenious maxim without having learned it. The paradoxical ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... je te dirai qui tu es," is the old French proverb. Mr Courtenay never chose his companions but among the more intellectual classes of the society around him, and, of course, these stories were not only well told, but interesting in their subject. Often the conversation would fall ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... bits of the paternal home. Both my parents gave me their solemn benediction. My father said, "Adieu, Peter. Serve faithfully him to whom your oath is given; obey your chiefs; neither seek favor, nor solicit service, but do not reject them; and remember the proverb: 'Take care of thy coat whilst it is new, and thy ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... realised that once set out upon that easy path there is no turning aside and no turning back. And many have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the mark unmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most men unconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wise saws of all the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... that the more objectionable idiosyncrasies of the Maltese, Corsicans and Sicilians become diluted on African soil. Can it be the mere change from an island to a continent? There may be some truth in Bourget's "oppression des iles." Insulani semper mali, says an old Latin proverb.... ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... currents, atmospheric phenomena, geologic history, etc. The same earth, the same lands and oceans, furnish the outline in each case, and we travel over the same ground three or four times successively, each time adding new facts to the original nucleus. There is an old proverb that "repetition is the mother of studies," and here we have a systematic plan for repetition, extending through the school course, with the advantage of new and interesting facts to add to the grist each ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Ossian came to me again and laid the double-footed key upon my lap, as he had done at Beauseincourt—staining my white dress with blood, not mud, this time, and that Colonel La Vigne struck it furiously to the floor, and handed me instead the wooden one I had carved, with the words of the proverb: ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... by that time, but, most unfortunately, he was bound over to prosecute. "You couldn't take a lump sum to let me off?" he said, jokingly, to the inspector. But I knew in my heart it was one of the "true words spoken in jest" that the proverb tells of. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... house-boot such boughs and branches of such trees in his contiguous wood of Dunmere, as they could reach with a hook and a crook without further damage to the trees. From whence arose the Cornish proverb, they will have it by hook or by crook."—Hitchins and Drewe, Hist. Cornwall, p. 214. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice among ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... their assistance, and to conduct us to Senegal. This offer being accepted of with gratitude by all of us, the Moors, of whom we had been so afraid, became our protectors and friends, verifying the old proverb, there are good people every where! As the camp of the Moors was at some considerable distance from where we were, we set off altogether to reach it before night. After having walked about two leagues through the burning sands, we found ourselves again upon ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... spite of the French proverb, "Toute verite n'est pas bonne a dire," that I think all truth is to be told; that is the teller's part: how it is received, or what effect it has, is the receiver's.... I think to suspect a person of wrongdoing more painful than to know that ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... in his humour] To claw is to flatter. So the pope's claw-backs, in bishop Jewel, are the pope's flatterers. The sense is the same in the proverb, Mulus mulum scabit. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... courtier, saying, "Here is your drawing." The courtier seems to have thought that Giotto was fooling him; but the pope was easily convinced, by the roundness of the O, of the greatness of Giotto's skill. This incident gave rise to the proverb, "Tu sei piu tondo che l' O di Giotto", the point of which lies in the word 'tondo', signifying slowness of intellect, as well as a circle. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked for. And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say among themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and the sun of righteousness ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at my own littleness as people do at their own faults. The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day; and, continuing in his mirth, protested he would have gladly given a hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle's bill, and afterward in its ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... with the choicest wines, a table worthy of a bishop, served by the best cook in the department but without the pretensions of luxury; for she kept her household strictly to the conditions of the burgher life of Arcis. It was a proverb in Arcis that you must dine with Madame Beauvisage and spend your ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... he born, a pleasant city, Famous for oranges and women,—he Who has not seen it will be much to pity, So says the proverb[24]—and I quite agree; Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty, Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;— Don Juan's parents lived beside the river, A noble stream, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... was she regarded that nothing she chose to write, however poor, could fail. And she certainly did write a good deal of poor stuff: it was all in a sense poor, but books and books, poor soul, she had to write. It was in a sense poor because it was mostly ambitious stuff, and, as the proverb says, "You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren." She was driven to fly, and gave her little wings too much to do, and her flights were apt to be mere little weak flutterings over the surface of the ground. A ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Of course she ought not. Neither ought she to have suffered her thoughts to stray, in the manner they did, towards Mr. Carlyle. She ought not, but she did. If we all did just what we "ought," this lower proverb touching fruit defendu would go ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... lady. This is not the Galician manner of wooing. A bolder course is necessary. You are a young man of good ability, a rising young man. You will be rich some day. Who is this girl without family, without dower to make you fear or hesitate? What says the proverb? 'A bone for my dog, a stick for ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... Latin. In spite of his learning he made many enemies by his arrogance; and his restless and ambitious spirit carried him into enterprises which were outside the proper sphere of his philosophy. In this he followed the example of many other luckless authors, to whom the advice of the homely proverb would have been valuable which states that "a shoemaker should ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... onward as through life we go, Amid the pomp, and glare, and show, We oft some proverb misconstrue And mutter boldly, "'Tis not true." But in their calm, majestic way, We hear the tongues of wise men say: "You go way back And ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... if it wasn't in olden time. The proverb says, 'Young people think old people to be fools, but old people know young people to be fools.' We must alter that, for I says, 'Old people think young people to be fools, but young people know old ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... me, Daphne,' he sighed, 'for you know it's A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? 'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over: If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and reach at the name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple, so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly they ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... bodily organs, together with its corollary, hygiene, the care of the health. From ancient times psychology and physiology have been considered as equally associated and of prime importance. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old Latin proverb. The need of every one to "know himself," both in mind and body, was taught by the earliest "Wise Men" of Greece. The Roman emperor Tiberius said that any one who had reached the age of thirty in ignorance of his physical constitution was a fool, a thought that has been ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... prosperity of the firm had already given rise to a new proverb, and men said: "Do you think I am Mahmoud's-Nephew?" when they were asked to lend money or in some other way to jeopardize a few coppers in the service of God or ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... examining incoming drafts. The men have all been passed fit at home before they start, and it does not seem reasonable to suppose that their constitutions have seriously deteriorated on the journey. But the new examination is really necessary. Doctors, according to the proverb, differ. They even seem to differ more widely than other men. The home doctor for some reason takes an optimistic view of human ailments, and is inclined to pass a man fit who will certainly collapse when he gets up the line. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... "What a strange folk, to be sure, are these women; and just like the children; Both of them bent upon living according as suiteth their pleasure, While we others must never do aught but flatter and praise them. Once for all time holds good the ancients' trustworthy proverb: 'Whoever goes not forward comes backward.' So must ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... task, Fenrir shook himself violently, stretched his limbs, rolled on the ground, and at last burst his chains, which flew in pieces all around him. He thus freed himself from Dromi, which gave rise to the proverb "at leysa or laeethingi eetha at drepa or droma" (to get loose out of Laeding, or to dash out of Dromi), when anything is to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... his cousin had been watching that window for months in the hope of an opportunity of shooting him there.' In fact the chief was actually shot at this window a short time after the visit. From the universal enmity existing between cousins in Afghanistan the proverb 'as great an enemy as a cousin' has become a household word. 'The causes of 90 per cent. of these feuds are described by the Afghans as belonging to one of three heads—women, money, and land; and on such ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... carnivores we know—dogs and hyaenas, for instance—will readily attack a disabled or sleeping man when pressed by hunger; and when driven to desperation no animal is too small or too feeble to make a show of resistance. In such a case "even the armadillo defends itself," as the gaucho proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is in contradiction to many other well-known facts. Putting-aside the puma's passivity in the presence of man, it is a bold hunter that invariably prefers large to small game; in desert places killing peccary, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... help you at all. Without doubt, a rascal capable of deceiving such a charming girl as you deserves death ten times over; but be careful not to make an exposure! My dear, scandal always splashes mud over every one concerned, and there is a rather vulgar but exceedingly sensible Turkish proverb that says that the more garlic is crushed, the stronger becomes its odour. Believe me, you would not come off without a tinge of ridicule; certain mistakes always appear a little ridiculous, and it is useless to proclaim them to the universe. Thank ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... the close of 1840, London lost one of its choicest spirits, and humanity one of her kindest-hearted sons, in the death of Thomas Hill, Esq.—"Tom Hill," as he was called by all who loved and knew him. His life exemplified one venerable proverb, and disproved another; he was born in May, 1760, and was, consequently, in his 81st year, and "as old as the hills;" having led a long life and a merry one. He was originally a drysalter; but about the year 1810, having sustained a severe loss by a speculation in indigo, he retired ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... understood that kind of mountain work. Rutton Singh said that Koran Sahib jolly well knew every Pathan was a born deserter, and every Sikh was a gentleman, even if he couldn't crawl on his belly. Stalky struck in with some woman's proverb or other, that had the effect of doublin' both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malo'ts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because Sikhs ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... enough to intend to live a noble life and then retire to a cell, there to brood over this intention. No wisdom thus acquired can truly guide or beautify the soul; it is of as little avail as the counsels that others can offer. "It is in the silence that follows the storm," says a Hindu proverb, "and not in the silence before it, that we should ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... heard many stories, we had joined in a song or two, we had set proverb and guess and witty saying round and round, and it was the young morning when through the long grass to the fold came a band of strangers. We were their equal in numbers, whatever their mission might be, and we waited calmly ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... question of Nathanael, who, on being informed that the Messiah had been found in Jesus of Nazareth, asked: "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"[272] The incredulous query has passed into a proverb current even today as expressive of any unpopular or unpromising source of good. Nathanael lived in Cana, but a few miles from Nazareth, and his surprize at the tidings brought by Philip concerning the Messiah incidentally affords evidence of the seclusion ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... kill the two guards in the proper fashion—rather a large proviso, I admit—the thing was simple as shelling peas which, notwithstanding the proverb, in my experience is not simple at all, since generally the shells crack the wrong way and at least one of the peas remained in the pod. So it happened in this case, for Janee, whom we had both ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... law tell you, 'Yes, you are right, your husband is a bad fellow, justice shall be done you; but this justice will cost you five hundred francs.' Five hundred francs! that would support you and your family for a whole year! Now, do you see, Jeanne? all this proves what the proverb says, that there are only two kinds of people: those who are hung and those who ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... other to put another to the blush and not having well measured their own powers with those of the latter, find that confusion, which they thought to cast upon another, recoil upon themselves. Wherefore, so you may know how to keep yourselves and that, to boot, you may not serve as a text for the proverb which is current everywhere, to wit, that women in everything still take the worst, I would have you learn a lesson from the last of to-day's stories, which falleth to me to tell, to the intent that, even as you are by nobility of mind distinguished from other women, so likewise you ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... on, dying by inches as it were, and preserving to the last his grim enigmatical silence. Victor had not heard one word from his lips to substantiate his hopes; but actions— which, as the proverb says, speak louder than words—all seemed to range themselves in his favour. His three rivals had retired in disfavour, and, receiving no replies to their first letters, had gradually ceased writing, so that ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed contemptible in comparison with ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... not a word about the pocketbook ever dropped from me. You will ask how I know it. My dear, I should have heard of it from my husband, if I had let that out—and he is as much in the dark as you are. Wonderful are the workings of the human mind, as the poet says; and drink drowns care, as the proverb says. But can drink deliver a person from fear by day, and fear by night? I believe, if I had dropped a word about the pocketbook, it would have sobered me in an instant. Have you any remark to make on ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... mortal if they could resist the influences of a counter-revolution, and of strong bodies of enemies in the heart of their country, aided by a mighty foe without. 'Hercules was a strong man,' says the proverb, 'but he could not pay money when he had none;' and the South may be strong, but she can hardly fail to be entirely crippled when certain agencies shall be brought to bear against her. Let us examine them, and find wherein ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... again some day," he said. "They have a proverb here, 'Meet before dawn—part not till dawn.' They see into the future in a few drops of water in any hollow thing. Well, good-night"—and before she could answer he was off beyond the hotel up the road and then turning to the right on a sand-path, galloped out of sight into what must ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... on both sides from the beginning. It is an accepted proverb that no house is large enough to hold two families, and certainly no family is large enough to contain two factions. As soon as the son of the household marries, an antagonistic element is introduced. Mother and sisters immediately bring to bear upon the new bride ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of.—C. Knight, in his Pictorial Shakspeare, explains Mrs. Quickly's phrase in Henry the Fourth—"'Tis a long loan for a poor lone woman to bear,"—by the synonym great: asserting that long is still used in the sense of great, in the north of England; and quoting the Scotch proverb, "Between you and the long day be it," where we talk of the great day of judgment. May not this be the meaning of the name Long Friday, which was almost invariably used by our Saxon forefathers for what we now call Good Friday? The commentators on the Prayer Book, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... turning aside and no turning back. And many have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the mark unmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most men unconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wise saws of all the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the only cause of two is the participation in duality—this is the way to make two, and the participation in one is the way to make one. You would say: I will let alone puzzles of division and addition—wiser heads than mine may answer them; inexperienced as I am, and ready to start, as the proverb says, at my own shadow, I cannot afford to give up the sure ground of a principle. And if any one assails you there, you would not mind him, or answer him, until you had seen whether the consequences which follow agree with one another or not, and when you are further required ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... oneself beloved, says an old French proverb, this is, after all, the best way to be useful. That is one of the deep sayings which children think flat, and which young men, and even young women, despise; and which a middle-aged man hears with a certain troubled surprise, and wonders if there is not something ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would cause them to fall before their enemies. They should go out one way before them and flee seven ways. Their cities should be taken and their wives ravished. They should be led captives into every land. They should become a proverb, a byword, a hissing and a scorn. Every hand should be against them to do them ill. They should find no ease whither they went, nor should the soles of their feet have rest. Amidst those nations the Lord should give them a trembling heart, failing eyes ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... upon the remaining pages which treat of Biography, nor upon two interesting chapters concerning Proverbs. It may be noticed, however, that Ellesmere insists that the best proverb in the world is the familiar English, one, 'Nobody knows where the shoe pinches hut the wearer;' while Milverton tells us that the Spanish language is far richer in proverbs than that of any other nation. But we ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of the king; nor could he confide in the friendship either of the duke or the Venetians, having no assurance of the sincerity of the latter, or the valor of the former. He concluded by quoting that trite proverb, "Meglio un magro accordo che una grassa vittoria."[*] On the other hand, Lorenzo de' Medici, thinking this an opportunity for exhibiting his prudence and wisdom, and being strenuously supported by those who envied the influence of Tommaso ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... pilgrim now, brother," said Wulf, laughing aloud, while even the grave Arab smiled and Godwin muttered between his teeth the old proverb "Woman on croup, devil on bow." But aloud he said, "I am indeed honoured; yet, friend Masouda, if harm should come of this, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... without farther ceremony on some vessels, which, notwithstanding the orders of the Greek Emperor, had been allowed to remain on the Asiatic side of the strait. Some less able horsemen met with various accidents; for though it was a proverb of the time, that nothing was so bold as a blind horse, yet from this mode of equitation, where neither horse nor rider saw the way he was going, some steeds were overthrown, others backed upon dangerous obstacles; and the bones of the cavaliers themselves suffered much more ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought to eat a gored ox, or something—what is the proverb, 'better a dinner of stalled ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... execrable. The Chinese have a proverb which says: "A road is good for ten years and bad for ten thousand," and this applies most excellently to those of Yuen-nan. The main caravan highways are paved with huge stones to make them passable during the rainy season, but after a few years' wear the blocks ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... ground of his dislike to the handsome young store-keeper, and his dread that Swan's eyes would somehow interfere with his own cherished plans of a union between the Fox and Mower farms. Whatever Colonel Fox determined on was done or to be done. He had anticipated the French proverb; and the "impossibility" made not the slightest difference. Therefore Dorcas had no notion of disobedience in her head, permanently. She solaced herself by the occasional luxury of departure from set rules, and she intended to depart in that way to-morrow,—for just five minutes,—just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... such a neat manoeuvre at Gilling's. One or two of the papers actually published leaderettes upon the subject, severely criticising the incompetency of the police in such matters. I have since heard, however, that at Scotland Yard there is a proverb that the wealthier the thief the less chance of his being caught. Bindo and his friends certainly did not lack funds. The various hauls they had made, even since my association with them, must have put many thousands ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... says the Italian proverb, e un paradiso o un inferno. In fact, nothing can be compared to the happiness of a married couple, united by sympathy. To them, marriage is really a terrestrial paradise. But what more horrid than the reverse, that is, two beings cursing the fatal hour which brought ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... To that all his training had tended, but notwithstanding his robust physique, and the indicia of great strength with which nature had endowed him, he was a weakling in the field of Venus. He came within the category of a Latin proverb with which Ninon was familiar: "Pilosus aut fortis, aut libidinosus." (A hairy man is either strong or sensual.) Wherefore, one day when Ninon was enjoying his society, she looked at him narrowly and exclaimed: "Ah, Monseigneur, il faut que vous soyez bien fort!" (Ah, Monseigneur, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the honour of their country and of their brave forefathers, I do not say that they would conquer, but I am sure that not a man of them would give way. The Corsicans," said he, "have a steady resolution that would amaze you. I wish you could see one of them die. It is a proverb among the Genoese, 'I Corsi meritano la furca e la sanno soffrire. The Corsicans deserve the gallows, and they fear not to meet it.' There is a real compliment to us in ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... and compressed laterally from near the base. They are thus agitated by the slightest breath of wind with that quivering, restless motion characteristic of all the poplars, but in none so striking as this. 'To quiver like an aspen-leaf has become a proverb. The foliage appears lighter than that of most other trees, from continually displaying the under ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... ones can persist! The racy old odors, which are as new as now, that still hover about the political and amorous quips of the Greeks. The nose-crinkling ones of the French, more vinegar-acrid than perfumed, although a seventeenth-century proverb calls France "a monarchy tempered by epigrams." The didactic Teutonic ones, ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... be quite open, quite straightforward—who like to COMPASS their ends, as the old saying is, that is to go round about, towards what they want, instead of going boldly up to it; who like to try two or more ways of getting the same thing done; and, as the proverb has it, have many irons in the fire; who love little schemes, and plots, and mysteries, even when there is no need for them. Do such people get most work done? Far, far from it. They take more trouble ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... hardly believe my own ears! Well, 'Live and learn' is an old proverb. I thought I knew your ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... of opinion, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that there is no proverb which is not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, the mother ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... quail carried about a man, and the heart of a female quail carried about a woman, causes natural love and fruitfulness. Let them, also, that would increase their seed, eat and drink of the best, as much as they can; for sine Cerere el Libero, friget Venus, is an old proverb, which is, "without good meat and drink, Venus will be frozen ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Ozone is oxygen in a state of great intensity; and oxygen is a general acidifier of many organic substances. Milk may be prevented from becoming sour by boiling it, or bringing it nearly to boiling point, for, as the old proverb says, "Milk boiled is milk spoiled." Heating ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the proverb. "The birds of the air shall carry the matter," says Holy Writ; and it is so. No bolts nor bars, no promises nor precautions, can long shut out a great calamity from the ears it is to blast, the heart it is to wither. The very air seems full of it, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... cravings, has discovered and converted into luxurious use; and the philosopher finds himself at last driven to take shelter from his own unanswerable inquiries behind the concluding power of that most true, but somewhat musty proverb: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... purposely tempered the impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical softening of our sympathy.[25] He had not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespeare acted conformably to this ingenious ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... whom they freely murdered, but even in many cases the very Exarchists, who came to dislike the komitadji bands, whom they were required to shelter and to feed and to assist with a subscription to their funds. "Still more," says a Bulgarian proverb—"still more than if you have a boat on the sea or a Roumanian wife, are you certain to sleep ill if you have a property in Macedonia." As year after year went by and the komitadji men appeared to be doing very little beyond ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Rensi, the son of Meru. There is no doubt that he hath driven every robber out of the whole country, and shall I be robbed on his estate?" And this Tehutinekht said, "Is not this an illustration of the proverb which the people use, 'The name of the poor man is only mentioned because of his master?' It is I who speak to thee, but it is the steward [Rensi, the son of Meru] of whom thou art thinking." Then Tehutinekht seized a cudgel of green tamarisk wood, and beat cruelly with ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... poured out in abundance when the need of them is past. Stately monuments are erected to them, and their children are petted and caressed, and a tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world strives to win self-respect by the payment of a debt long overdue. "Speak nothing but good of the dead" is a proverb that had its birth in the world's sense of its own meanness,—the consciousness that it had not done justice to the dead while they were living. Many a man is systematically abused during all his active life, only to lie down ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... after a queer fashion of her own. But Theo's bound to make his mark on the Frontier, like his father before him; and you know the proverb, 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.' Tis hardly meself, though, that should be upholding ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... body of bribery against him, was providentially freed from Nundcomar, one of his accusers, and, as good events do not come alone, (I think there is some such proverb,) it did so happen that all the rest, or a great many of them, ran away. But, however, the recorded evidence of the former charges continued; no new evidence came in; and Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stewards of a feast, who are usually troublesome and press liquor too much upon the guests. For the Dorians in Sicily (as I am informed) called the steward, [Greek omitted] a REMEMBRANCER. Others think that this proverb admonisheth the guests to forget everything that is spoken or done in company; and agreeably to this, the ancients used to consecrate forgetfulness with a ferula to Bacchus, thereby intimating that we should either not remember any irregularity committed in mirth and company, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... shall be prudent and wise, and my shadow shall increase in the land." But it was not decreed that these resolutions were to endure, and that he was to become a mighty agriculturist in the west. Farmer Attention, as the proverb says, is a good farmer, all the world over, and Burns was such by fits and by starts. But he who writes an ode on the sheep he is about to shear, a poem on the flower that he covers with the furrow, who sees visions on his way to market, who makes rhymes ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... God." Its oppositions are no part of its realness; and therefore they can be overcome. Is there not here, then, abundance of practical work for you to do; work which is the direct outcome of your mystical experience? Are there not here, as the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to comb? And isn't it just here, in the new foothold it gives you, the new clear vision and certitude—in its noble, serious, and invulnerable faith— that mysticism is "useful"; even for the most scientific of social reformers, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... cultivators of the earth, or breeders of cattle, depending on agricultural pursuits alone for subsistence. To use a common proverb of their own, "the earth is the Arab's portion." They are divided into small tribes or families, each separate tribe having a particular patriarch or head, by whose name they distinguish themselves, and each occupying its own separate portion ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... oracles, the sibyls (N. B., the word is often mis-spelled sybils,) and augury. Every respectable Pagan religion had some mysteries, just as every respectable Christian family has a bible—and, as an ill-natured proverb has it, a skeleton. It was considered a poor religion—a one horse religion, so to speak—that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of the American character is a propensity to brag. Brother Jonathan's egotism long since passed into a proverb. In no section of this land of the alleged free and home of the ism does the blowhard blow longer and louder than in the South. We are the people, the nonpareil; there are none like us beneath the sun! From the empyrean we look down ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to Hades," an ancient proverb Tells us, "and one of them thou thyself shalt follow, Doubt not!" My sweetest Sappho, who can doubt it? Tells not each day the old tale? Yet the foreboding word in a youthful bosom Rankles not, as a fisher bred by the seashore, Deafened by use, perceives the breaker's thunder no more. —Strangely, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... accept popular assertions ofttimes repeated as truisms, and in this way man's superiority has passed into a proverb, and the sex in general believe it. When Milton penned the line, "God, thy will, thou mine," and made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that you can tell him, but you might hint. Diplomacy, my dear, is one of the necessary elements of life. Whatever else you do remember to be diplomatic. My poor husband used to have a pet proverb—he was interested in politics, my dear, and some of his sayings were a trifle grotesque but very much to the point. He used to say that one could get rid of more flies with molasses than with a club. And I think he was right. Now let me consider. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is a proverb that's nothin' more than trash; And many a time I've seen it all pulverized to smash. For folks in no way sim'lar, I've noticed ag'in and ag'in, Will often take to each other, and stick ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... "You weigh the butter, I will weigh the sugar, Rosy the treacle, and Margaret measure the vinegar. It is such an advantage to have so many helpers; we get the work done so quickly. There is a proverb which says 'Many hands make light work.' It ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... people now do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another great war; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption, and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. As an old Stoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and ingenuity ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the genuine interest in the work, the most painstaking efforts are put forth; the passing of time is not considered; and the belief of the majority of such quilt makers, though unconfessed, doubtless, is the equivalent of the old Arab proverb that "Slowness comes from God, but hurry from ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... accepted at once and energetically carried out. A sort of heathen revival took place, for even the ministers and deacons turned Musclemen; old ladies tossed bean-bags till their caps were awry, and winter roses blossomed on their cheeks; school-children proved the worth of the old proverb, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," by getting their backs ready before the burdens came; pale girls grew blithe and strong swinging their dumb namesakes; and jolly lads marched to and fro embracing clubs as if longevity were corked up in ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... Liv. II. Ode vi. Oeuvres de Jean Baptiste Rousseau, p.121, edit. 1820. One of the latter strophes of this ode concludes with two lines, which, as the editor observes, have become a proverb, and of which the thought and expression are borrowed from Lucretius: cripitur persona, manet res: ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... is yours! And, might we lay the old proverb to your charge, So like you 'tis the worse.—Behold, my lords, Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father,—eye, nose, lip, The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley, ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... very effort that he made to keep back his tears became another cause of suffering. The day ended in a black sadness, a sadness he could not shake off. It stifled him. Then he remembered the Greek proverb—"The bath drives away sorrow;" and he determined to go and bathe. He went into the tepidarium and stretched himself out on the hot slab. Useless remedy! "The bitterness of my trouble was not carried ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... ground among the coffins, looking distinctly depressed. No wonder; night was closing in, the thunder was beginning to growl and echo through the forest and rain to fall in big drops. In short, although Stephen remarked that every cloud has a silver lining, a proverb which, as I told him, I seemed to have heard before, in no sense could the outlook be ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the least doubt now that this region was a very dangerous one, and the fact that we essayed to cross it in this light-hearted fashion can only be ascribed to our ignorance. With us, I am afraid, there were not a few occasions when one might have applied the proverb that "Fools rush in where angels fear ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... success of the colony would expose the colonists to a great and terrible danger. Travellers must have noticed that the fellahin cultivate their fields with long guns slung over their shoulders, and an armoury of pistols and daggers in their belts. Why is this? Because, as the proverb, tested by experience, has it—"A Turkish judge may be bribed by three eggs, two of them rotten; and a fellah may be murdered for his jacket without a button ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... close quarters." Almost quicker than the word, Claudius leaped into the hollow way. Taurea, bold in words more than in reality, said, "Never be the ass in the ditch;" an expression which from this circumstance became a common proverb among rustics. Claudius having rode up and down the way to a considerable distance, and again come up into the plain without meeting his antagonist, after reflecting in reproachful terms on the cowardice of the enemy, returned in triumph ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... me with the reason of your blackening your faces and the meaning of your words, 'We were seated at our ease, but our impertinent curiosity would not let us be,' let me leave you and return to my own people and be at rest from seeing these things, for as says the proverb, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... not a thing of rare occurrence, that the rich are thus distinguished from the poor, but it is a fact so notorious that it has long since passed into a proverb. This being the course of conduct which men practice, the impression has therefore become general that reputation, influence and power depend on wealth. Hence the great inquiry, uppermost in every mind, is "how shall I get rich, so that I may stand ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... decidedly preponderates over the artist now. His face, though still quite young, has grown yellow, his hair is thinner than it used to be, and he neither sings nor draws any longer. But he secretly occupies himself with literature. He has written a little comedy in the style of a "proverb;" and—as every one who writes now constantly brings on the stage some real person or some actual fact—he has introduced a coquette into it, and he reads it confidentially to a few ladies who are very kind to him. But he has never married, although ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... comes when your hands are tied," says the Turkish proverb. Win had been yearning for a spin. She kept silence and sped on, wondering whether she could surprise the enemy by ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... warn you, sweet lady, that love would find a way?" he said. "We have a proverb in Spain that the way to make sure of winning a girl is to make love to her mother. As you have no mother, I made love last night to Lady Fermanagh, who, I was told, is your guardian, and she invited me to call. Hence my presence here. The fates are kind, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... of persons may play this game. One is sent out of the room while the rest choose some proverb. Then he is called in and asks each player in turn a question. In the answer, no matter what the question is, one word of the proverb ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and DHAL were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial. In my later world travels, I was charmed to see that a similar respect for visitors is manifested in rural sections of many countries. The city dweller finds the keen edge ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in their hearts to recognise how great they are. Many a man whose affectations and assumptions are a proverb, has lost the magnificent virtue of simplicity, for no other reason than that he needed courage to take his own measure, and so finally confirm to himself the reality of his pretensions. With Byron, as with some of his ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... alone," Has to a common proverb grown. 'Tis thus confirm'd in Aesop's way:— The larks to build their nests are seen Among the wheat-crops young and green; That is to say, What time all things, dame Nature heeding, Betake themselves to love and breeding— The monstrous whales and sharks, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... wish he hadn't heard," broke in Tom. "That's the germ of the idea, and once it becomes known that I am working on that— Well, there's no use crying over spilled milk," and he smiled at the homely proverb. "I'll have to work in ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... in elementary science and art, but it provides what is still more important, viz. a means of giving children of high natural ability, who are just as abundant among the poor as among the rich, a helping hand. A good old proverb tells us that "One should not take a razor to cut a block:" the razor is soon spoiled, and the block is not so well cut as it would be with a hatchet. But it is worse economy to prevent a possible Watt from being anything but a stoker, or to give a possible ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... was interrupted by the slave's indignant exclamation: "What contradictions! 'Woman's hair is long, but her wit is short,' says the proverb. 'Waiting is the merchant's wisdom,' I have heard your master say more than once, and to obey the words of shrewd people is the best plan for those who are not so wise. Meanwhile, I am of the opinion that curiosity alone brought Daphne—who, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty proverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what is called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self- laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too small for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... gold that remained in the trench. Alas, when I think that a Spaniard might have taken it, or even a Frenchman! For just now there are so many people who take all they find, as if it were their own; and then, as the proverb says, 'What falls in the ditch is for the soldier.' They might also have taken the four hundred gold crowns that Monsieur le Marquis, be it said without reproach, forgot to take out of the holsters. And the pistols! Oh, what pistols! I bought them in Germany; and ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... word of glowing encouragement for all sad hearts. 'Fools and children,' says the old proverb, 'should not see half-done work '; at least, they should not judge it. When the ploughshare goes deep into the brown, frosty ground, the work is only begun. The earth may seem to be scarped and hurt, and, if one might say, to bleed, but in six months' time 'you scarce can ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks." ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... beginning at home was not in the literal sense of the proverb. It turned out that he had been neighbouring to some purpose. Old Simpson could not move himself about indoors or attend to his work without, and Jim, who had not before this attached himself by regular employment, had by some freak of good-nature ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... know that, father; but 'nothing venture, nothing win,' says the proverb.—Well, Amos, what do you say? will you ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... diligently to discover what kinds of food suited me best. But, first, I resolved to try, whether those, which pleased my palate, agreed or disagreed with my stomach, in order to judge for myself of the truth of that proverb, which I once held true, and is universally held as such in the highest degree, insomuch that epicures, who give a loose to their appetites, lay it down as a fundamental maxim. This proverb is, that whatever pleases the palate, must agree with the stomach, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... Russian gypsies profess Christianity; but, as the religion of the Greek church, as I saw it, appears to be practically something very little better than fetich-worship, I cannot exalt them as models of evangelical piety. They are, however, according to a popular proverb, not far from godliness in being very clean in their persons; and not only did they appear so to me, but I was assured by several Russians that, as regarded these singing gypsies, it was invariably the case. As for morality in gypsy girls, their principles ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... spectators. In this manner he traversed the space of a league, till he came to the spot where his church now stands, the angels meanwhile chanting around him Gloria tibi Domine, and others repeating three times the Alleluia. It was this unusual promenade that gave rise to the well-known proverb that it is only the first ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... see yourself! Well, no, I'll never be handsome: brown I may be, never handsome. But I'm better than that, if the proverb's true; for I'm ten hundred thousand fathoms deep in love. I bring you a faithful sailor. What! you don't think much of that for a curiosity? Well, that's so: you're right; the rarity is in the girl that's worth it ten ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... first place, from the references made to it both by the Lord and his apostles, and especially from the iteration of the same maxim by Paul in two distinct epistles, that the similitude was current and familiar among the people as a proverb. It is conceded, that apart from this parable, wherever its application is expressly indicated, it is employed to designate the progress of evil; but it ought to be borne in mind that Paul has twice, in the same words, enunciated the universal proposition, "A little ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... hermit, to guide us in the vast catacombs over which the hermitage stands. It was a trial to follow him—the rank woollen dress, uncleansed till it falls to pieces, diffuses an odour which, in such confined passages, is particularly unpleasant. Cleanliness, says an English proverb, is next to godliness; but, in cowled society, it assuredly forms no part of it. Catacombs, in general, are called interesting—we never saw one in which we did not pay heavy penalty for gratifying curiosity. Those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... our trust in it. "Nothing walks with aimless feet." Our life is no lottery. We may make foolish experiments with it, but we do so at our own risk. It is no plaything of chance, it is a stern responsibility which is determined by law that brooks no interference and excuses no indifference. The proverb tells us that "our lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing is of the Lord." And just as the dark forces that sweep through our life are not necessarily hostile forces but form part of the order of the world, so things that we regard ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the new fire of love my wounded bosom burns; Love knows not any ruth, all tender pity spurns; How true the proverb speaks that saith to him that yearns, "Where love is there is pain; thy ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... back to primal lore that we seem to feel true passion at its best and purest, as somehow all truth of legend, proverb and fable has come from those misty ages of the earth. The drooping harmonies merge in the returning swing of the first solemn hymn,—a mere line that is broken by a new tender appeal, that, rising to ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... "resting" his "tired and terribly jaded horses." But, in telling of his exploits, he says nothing about losing two pieces of his artillery. The saying of Bonaparte's, "False as a war bulletin," has passed into a proverb, and this bulletin of Gen. ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... by [682]Thevenot, and Herbert. In respect to the grottos I am persuaded, that they were temples, and not tombs. Nothing was more common among the Persians than to have their temples formed out of rocks. Mithras e [683]Petra was in a manner a proverb. Porphyry assures us, that the Deity had always a rock or cavern for his temple: that people, in all places, where the name of Mithras was known, paid their worship at a [684]cavern. Justin Martyr speaks to the same [685]purpose: and Lutatius Placidus mentions that this mode ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... purport to be representations of children, but they are certainly not like the children of our own households, nor, indeed, like those of the same artist's domestic pictures. They reverse the proverb, by being young heads on old shoulders, the face and features of childhood on the mature and well-developed figure of womanhood. The expression, too, is a curious combination of childlike simplicity with the sentimental melancholy of young maidenhood; and one cannot escape the impression ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... of this apple tree illustrates the African proverb that though you can count the apples on one tree, you can never count the trees in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... do not at all expect it this year, as there are a great many candidates, far better men than I...I shall think myself lucky if I get it next year. Don't say anything about the matter till I tell you...As the old proverb says, there is many a slip 'twixt the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... with cutting sarcasm: "Come now, I see that you don't catch the criminals nor do you know what is going on in your own house, yet you try to set yourself up as a preacher to point out their duties to others. You ought to keep in mind that proverb about the fool in his own ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... several handsome donations were promised, and a lot of "fellows" put their names down as good for the fivers, but when, a little time after, Edmunds' (alias Wombwell's) agents were trying to find here a purchaser for their well-known travelling collections, the piecrust proverb was again ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... 310: See Kennedy, and Duport, Gnom. p. 52, who compare the phrases "pilo minus amare", "pili facere." There is, however, much uncertainty respecting the origin and meaning of the proverb. Cf. Alberti on Hesych. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... with you, ye kine that you do not welcome me? I am difficult of being attained. Why then do you not accept me? It seems, ye creatures of excellent vows, that the popular proverb is true, viz., that it is certain that when one come to another of one's own accord and without being sought, one meets with disregard. The Gods, the Danavas, the Gandharvas, the Pisachas, the Uragas, the Rakshasas and human beings succeed in obtaining ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that, just before reaching Bideford the silencer worked loose, and so got upon Mrs. Norton's nerves that Apollo was stopped in the pouring rain for Young Nick to right the wrong. As if to prove the truth of the proverb, "the more haste the less speed," in his hurry poor Buddha burnt his hand. While he was wringing it like a distracted goblin, along came the Tyndal car, which had left Tintagel about half an hour after Apollo. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to the water-mill, through all the live-long day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour away; How languidly the autumn wind doth stir the withered leaves, As on the field the reapers sing, while binding up the sheaves! A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... consider the darky as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... question how to prevent the degeneration of mankind would be a simple and natural one, if history and proverb had not taught us that as often as a new truth appears "the very oxen butt their horns against it." They cannot help this, the "disposition" is natural; for when Pythagoras had found the Master of Arts, Mathesios, he was so overjoyed that he sacrificed one hundred oxen to the gods, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... brings us an opportunity for blessing. Then we must remember that in this world alone can we get the good that can come to us only through pain, for in the life beyond death there is to be no sorrow, no tears. An old Eastern proverb says, "Spread wide thy skirts when heaven is raining gold." Heaven is always raining gold when we are sitting under the shadow of the cross. We should diligently improve the opportunity, and learn the lessons ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... uniform principle of reason or justice running through them, are among the blindest of all the mazes in which unsophisticated minds were ever bewildered and lost. The uncertainty of the law under these systems has become a proverb. So great is this uncertainty, that nearly all men, learned as well as unlearned, shun the law as their enemy, instead of resorting to it for protection. They usually go into courts of justice, so called, only as men go into battle when there is no alternative ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... between my son's wife and me; but we live together as politely as possible. Her singular conduct shall never prevent me from keeping that promise which I made to the late King in his last moments. He gave some good Christian exhortations to Madame d'Orleans; but, as the proverb says, it is useless to preach to those who have ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... be more sensible of my failures than I am," Washington remarked with his usual modesty. "If an old proverb will apply to my case, I shall certainly close with a share of success, for surely no man ever made a worse beginning than I have. Still, I want a fair chance to redeem my ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... promised to reconstitute her, and the Poles fought by thousands in his armies and won many victories for him. Then came the campaign of Russia and ended all that. To-day, Poland is remembered in France only by a proverb, 'Saoul comme un Polonais,' 'Drunk as a Pole.' It is so we think of them, when we think of them at all, which is not often. This disdain, this forgetfulness, has been carefully fostered by Germany and Russia. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... groups of three or four words. These are distributed among the guests. There should be at least two words, and preferably more, on each slip. Each individual then seeks to find those others holding the words which complete his proverb. ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... sir." "No matter," I reflected. "What has been left incomplete now, shall be finished another day." Nor did I fail to keep the promise thus made to myself. It was difficult to get even a few words of particular conversation with one pupil among so many; but, according to the old proverb, "Where there is a will, there is a way;" and again and again I managed to find an opportunity for exchanging a few words with Mdlle. Henri, regardless that envy stared and detraction whispered whenever ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... had most of their cities is the famous Maremma, a wonderfully fertile area, covered with beautiful forests, but where the water having no outlet forms marshes that poison the air. "In the Maremma," says an Italian proverb, "one gets rich in a year, but dies ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... has served the institution as its secretary and treasurer. Perhaps the highest tribute that can be paid to the ability with which Miss Dunlop has discharged the responsible and complicated duties of her double office, lies in the fact that with the General Assembly of the State it has passed into a proverb that "The Woman's Reformatory is the best and most economically managed of the State institutions." The committees appointed to visit the penal institutions always report that "The accounts of the reformatory are kept so accurately that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... forget the past and to live the life of an English lady would have been heaven to her. But she, who was sometimes scorned and sometimes feared in the eastern cities of her own country, whose name had become almost a proverb for violence out in the far West,—how could she dare to hope that her lot should be so ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... cruel fate was not yet weary of pursuing me; and in my experience I fully realised the old proverb of, "out of the frying- pan into the fire." On this vessel, and during the time we had to keep quarantine in Alexandria, I was almost worse off than during my stay in Beyrout. It is necessary, in dealing with the captain of a vessel of this description, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... a sense of its duty to the people of England. This he failed to do, and his reward was perpetual imprisonment, lingering torture, and a premature death, inflicted upon him by the very same sovereigns that he had spared from annihilation. The old proverb, of "Save a thief from the gallows and he will cut your throat," was never more truly verified than in ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... some, from Columba's own misdeeds. He copies by stealth the Psalter of St. Finnian. St. Finnian demands the copy, saying it was his as much as the original. The matter is referred to King Dermod, who pronounces, in high court at Tara, the famous decision which has become a proverb in Ireland, that "to every cow belongs her own calf." {283} St. Columba, who does not seem at this time to have possessed the dove-like temper which his name, according to his disciples, indicates, threatens to avenge upon the king his unjust decision. The ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... late Cornish were usually rather more assimilated to English, but apparently some memory of Celtic prosody lingered on. Lhuyd quotes a proverb, of which he gives two versions, in the old three-lined metre known in Welsh as the Triban Milwr, or Warrior’s Triplets, which is found as early as Llywarch Hen’s Laments for Geraint ap Erbyn and for the ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... what he meant by that, for he knew it was a proverb, a boy's proverb that was as good as ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... and the evening wind fitful. Bitter smoke on an empty stomach might be appropriately substituted for the last straw of the proverb—when the proverb has to do with hungry Mexicans. Most of the recumbent vaqueros merely cursed a little deeper and drew their serapes closer, but Jose Guiterrez grunted, threw off his blanket, and approached ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... the country. For James J. Hill has kept faith in the smallest detail with every man who ever entrusted a dollar to his hands. The loyalty of the employes of the Great Northern has passed into a proverb, "Once a Hill man, always a Hill man," and it is true. He knows his road as few other men do. Before he bought the St. Paul & Pacific, he traveled over the route in an ox-cart, studying not only the road, but the people along the way—there weren't many—and the resources of the country. Before ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... for her than the well-favoured,—since, like workers of tapestry, they know not what they do,—gives the same appetite to all and to all the same mouth for pudding. So every beast finds a mate, and from the same fact comes the proverb, "There is no pot, however ugly, that does not one day find a cover." Now the lord of Valennes searched everywhere for nice little pots to cover, and often in addition to wild, he hunted tame animals; ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... unannealed, as the saying goes. Well! I suppose it's a matter of thirty to forty years since any human foot has trod these precincts. Certain it is that I've never set foot in them before. Well, well! what's the old proverb about angels fearing to tread? It's proved true once again in this case.' Humphreys' acquaintance with Cooper, though it had been short, was sufficient to assure him that there was no guile in this allusion, and he forbore the obvious remark, merely suggesting that it was fully time to get back to ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... beckoned to her to draw nearer. "I want to speak to that lady yonder, only for a moment. Do you think she would come here?" Harwin, for it was he, was a fine illustration of the proverb that he who asks timidly, teaches denial. If he had demanded her mistress, Nancy would have spoken to her at once. Now she scanned the intruder curiously, and judged from the hesitation of his manner that his ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... an old proverb, found in English, French, and even Latin, meaning that the idea or ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the conversation she displays a grace which is otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were not echoing at the present moment through all the salons ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... young man might have had a very different life, for he had a good heart both in childhood and after childhood, that I know. But the Russian proverb says, 'If a man has one head, it's good, but if another clever man comes to visit him, it would be better still, for then there will be two heads ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... easy, but the effect Most hazardous; for straight, upon the alarm, The city would be sure to be in arms; Therefore, to undertake, and not to compass, Were to come off with ruin and dishonour. You know the Italian proverb—Bisogna copriersi[6],— He, that will venture on a hornet's nest, Should arm his head, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... without suspicion. We believe that we are quite within the mark, if we attribute one-eighth of the robberies committed in large cities, to the police, or perpetrated with their connivance. Many, we hesitate not to say, are done by men whom the public believe to be in prison. It has become a proverb, "Set a thief to catch a thief," and the public seem to have acquiesced that thus it shall ever be. There is an allowed and constant connection between the criminal and the officer engaged in suppressing crime, but whether it be necessary and unavoidable, or the best disposition ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... an indescribable charm for her in summers past, now tossed their bare boughs toward her in mute complaining of the desolation which surrounded them. The reckless indifference of tenants has deservedly grown into a proverb, and here Beulah beheld an exemplification of its truth. Of all the choice shrubbery which it had been the labor of years to collect and foster; not a particle remained. Hoses, creepers, bulbs—all were destroyed, and only the trees and hedges were spared. The very outline of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... is "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." Here is one which sounds like an Eastern saying: "Learning is fine clothes for the rich man, and riches for the poor man." But I know of no foreign parentage for a proverb like this: "A green hill when far away; bare, bare ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... results,—was I to permit myself to go without reward? Fame? Ah, bah! what bread would Fame butter? 'Twas a bubble, a name, an empty, profitless sound, this coquin of Fame! 'Proximus sum egomet mihi,' says Terence,—or, as your English proverb has it, 'Charity begins at home.' I bethought me of the usual fate of discoverers and inventors,—neglected, scoffed at, ill-used, left to starve. The blesser of the world with infinite riches must nibble his crust ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... God's will, sir! 'The blessing of the parents builds houses for the children,' says the proverb; hence we could not build a house, sir, for we had not the blessing of our parents. Now you have it, Elza brings it to you, and she brings you love, sir, and happiness. No, do not shake your head; she brings you happiness. You do not believe it now, for your heart grieves, and he who has such a ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the plan, To make a quarrel if they can; But none with you can hold dispute, If you're determined to be mute; For sure this proverb must be true, That ev'ry quarrel ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... seem to mean, etymologically, "surges," "storm-tossed waters,"—"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts." Our word "deep" is apt to give us the idea of stillness—we have the proverb, "Still waters run deep,"—whereas in some instances teh[o]m is used in Scripture of waters which were certainly shallow, as, for instance, those passed through by ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... godfathers and godmothers do: they represent and stand in the place of the whole Church. In one sense, every Christian who meets that child through life, or hears of it, ought to behave, as far as he can, as its godfather; ought to help and improve it if he can. But what is everybody's business, says the proverb, is nobody's business; and therefore these godfathers and godmothers are called out from the rest, as examples to the rest, to watch over the child, and to help and advise its father and mother in guiding and training it: but not by interfering ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... be sure I could not resist a peep, and at once thought of Solomon's proverb about the "Wonderful way of a man with a Maid," and now was a chance to learn something. So kneeling behind the glass door, I slipped a little corner of the blind aside and what did I see? Your own Mother leaning forward over the scroll end of the couch, with her dress and skirts ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... generally allowed, by the critics in this kingdom, to be the greatest master of humour that ever wrote. Indeed, I allow him to have possessed most admirable talents of this kind; and, if Rabelais was his master, I think he proves the truth of the common Greek proverb— that the scholar is often superior to the master. As to Cervantes, I do not think we can make any just comparison; for, though Mr. Pope compliments him with sometimes taking Cervantes' serious air—" "I remember ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... powder-pots, by which many of the assailants were scorched and severely burned. To guard against this, the Khan has now sent over many coats and jackets of leather, as not so liable to catch fire as their calico coats, quilted or stuffed with cotton wool. Yet, according to the English proverb, The burnt child dreads the fire; notwithstanding their leathern coats, none of them are hardy enough to attempt this new breach, though much easier to enter than the former, any farther than to pillage certain bales of bastas and other stuffs which have fallen down from a barricade ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... purely a subsidiary affair. None of the best critics have been men of destructive minds. They are like gardeners whose business is more with the flowers than with the weeds. If I may change the metaphor, the whole truth about criticism is contained in the Eastern proverb which declares that "Love is the net of Truth." It is as a lover that the critic, like the lyric poet and the mystic, will be ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was only used in extreme danger, and was hence peculiarly termed iera or sacra, whence the proverb sacram anchoram solvere, as flying ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... caused the brave old man's eyes to be put out, and he was stripped of all his possessions. It is said that he stood in front of his former palace with a wooden dish for alms. "Date obolum Belisario," give a penny to Belisarius, has become a proverb. However, Justinian seems to have repented, and he restored to Belisarius his wealth and his palace, in which, shortly after, the old man died on the 13th of March, 565, only eight months before his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... with the Moors, who said, that far from wishing to do us harm, they had come to offer us their assistance, and to conduct us to Senegal. This offer being accepted of with gratitude by all of us, the Moors, of whom we had been so afraid, became our protectors and friends, verifying the old proverb, there are good people every where! As the camp of the Moors was at some considerable distance from where we were, we set off altogether to reach it before night. After having walked about two leagues through the burning sands, we found ourselves again upon the shore. Towards night, our conductors ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... thus smiling continued: "What a strange folk, to be sure, are these women; and just like the children; Both of them bent upon living according as suiteth their pleasure, While we others must never do aught but flatter and praise them. Once for all time holds good the ancients' trustworthy proverb: 'Whoever goes not forward comes backward.' So must it be always." Thereupon answered and said, in a tone of reflection, the doctor: "That, sir neighbor, I willingly grant; for myself I am always Casting about for improvement,—things ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... replied to them. Now let the cause be tried in this way, and I should not be afraid to attempt the proof of the paramount efficacy of preaching on the scheme, and in the line of argument laid down by himself in this section. In short, Hooker frequently finds it convenient to forget the homely proverb; 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating.' Whose parishes were the best disciplined, whose flocks the best fed, the soberest livers, and the most awakened and best informed Christians, those of the zealous preaching divines, or those ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... opinion, which no longer depended upon religion and ancient habits, but upon bare hopes and fears. Every man wanted to know, not who was his neighbour, but who was to be his ruler; whose feet he was to kiss, and by whom his feet were to be ultimately beaten. Treat your friend, says the proverb, as though he were one day to become your enemy, and your enemy as though he were one day to become your friend. The Syrians went further, and seemed inclined to treat every stranger as though he might one day become their Pasha. ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... to raise the cloth, when Chodowiecki waved him back. "Do not look at it," said he, quickly; "I dislike to appear as a mechanic before you, as I wish that you should honor only the artist. We poor toilers are badly off, as the old proverb is ever proving true with us, 'Art goes for bread.' We must be mechanics the chief part of our lives, in order to have a few hours free, in which we are allowed to be artists. I have to illustrate the most miserable works ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... and behold France without a king, and that kingdom, not crumbled away, but enlarged, almost with the rapid accumulation of a snow-ball, into an enormous mass of territory, under the title of French Republic, what would he not have to say in a sermon? Rien de nouveau sous le ciel, though an old proverb, would not now suit as a maxim. This, in fact, seems the age of wonders. The league of monarchs has ended by producing republics; while a republic has raised a dukedom into a monarchy, and, by its vast preponderance, completely overturned ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... other footmen who were so comfortably housed, he was sure. And Patch was in clover. Anthony reflected that he had much to be thankful for. A dinner of herbs was infinitely better than none at all. He was, you observe, unconsciously converting the proverb to his own use. Stalled oxen, with or without hatred, were not nowadays in his line. He had quite forgotten what they were like, and cared as little. Indeed, but for Valerie, his Ambition would have been dead. Even now it lay very sick. High stomachs are easily upset. But a nodding acquaintance ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... almost wholly dependent upon speed for survival in the battle of life. Hence, they never went to sleep, and in only a single instance recorded in history had a tortoise won a footrace from a hare. Yet an old proverb, even if based upon a solitary exception, is wonderfully consoling, and John was able to use it ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb,—To innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, unchanged. The consequences are before us,—not in remote history, not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Unfortunately, however, the peculiar construction of this closet was unknown even to the brilliant Gentleman of the Bedchamber, or he would have been at once aware that they could not have chosen a more dangerous position in which to discuss any forbidden topic. The trite proverb that "walls have ears" was perhaps never more fully exemplified than when applied to those of the Louvre at that period; many of them, and those all connected with the more public apartments, being composed of double panelling, between which a sufficient ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... they say, Hang him, he is a turn-coat; he was not true to his profession. I think God has stirred up even his enemies to hiss at him, and make him a proverb, because he hath forsaken the way (Jer. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... little avail. Numbers have owed their elevation to their attention to the toilet. Place, fortune, marriage have all been lost by neglecting it. A man need not mingle long with the world to find occasion to exclaim with Sedaine, "Ah! mon habit, que je vous remercie!" In spite of the proverb, the dress often does make ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... do, Monsieur Fouquet, you will not find yourself the worse for it; that happens only once in a lifetime to men like yourself, and the chief thing is, to do it well when the chance presents itself. There is a Latin proverb—the words have escaped me, but I remember the sense of it very well, for I have thought over it more than once, which says, 'The ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... He had very fierce opinions; he attacked everybody and everything; his vehemence and vituperation were seasoned with a kind of wit, and he made himself, if not a power, at least an important factor in the House of Commons. Indeed, it passed into a kind of proverb at St. Stephen's that there were three parties in the State—the Ministry, the Opposition, and Lord George Gordon. Parliament had seen before, and has seen since, many a politician fighting thus like Hal o' the Wynd for his own ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a proverb in this country which says prevention is better than cure," interrupted Mr Vladimir, throwing himself into the arm-chair. "It is stupid in a general way. There is no end to prevention. But it is characteristic. They dislike finality in this country. Don't you be too English. And ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... England, vol. ii. p. 100., small edition). Mr. Stirling (Cloister Life of Charles V., p. 151., 2nd edition) tells us that it was a favourite adage of {586} that temporising monarch. Perhaps it was a well-known Spanish proverb. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case. I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; And therefore contented like others to fare, To the shades of Elizium I strait did repair; Where Dryden and other great wits o' the town, To reward all their labours, are damn'd to write on. Here Johnson may boast ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... the women of Yezd are the handsomest women in Persia. The proverb is, that to live happy a man must have a wife of Yezd, eat the bread of Yezdecas, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... [The proverb, "A hair of the dog that bit you," which probably had originally a literal meaning, has long been used to inculcate the advice of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I wish he hadn't heard," broke in Tom. "That's the germ of the idea, and once it becomes known that I am working on that— Well, there's no use crying over spilled milk," and he smiled at the homely proverb. "I'll have to work in secret, once ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom, stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... and, when it comes, the most important part of the Nation's business. A Nation that for many years neglects this branch of its affairs is liable to suffer to any extent. The proverb, "a stitch in time saves nine," gives a very fair idea of the proportion between the amount of effort required in a properly-prepared and well-conducted war, and the amount required when there has been ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... the edge worn off, Arthur Channing partially recovered his cheerfulness. The French have a proverb, which is familiar to us all: "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." There is a great deal of truth in it, as experience teaches us, and as Arthur found. "Of what use my dependence upon God," Arthur also reasoned ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... imagine with what approbation this piece was received by court and people." It was impossible to tire of seeing it, nothing else was talked of in company; everybody knew some portion by heart; it was taught to children, and in many parts of France it had passed into a proverb to say, "Beautiful as the Cid." Criticism itself was silenced for a while; carried along in the general twirl, bewildered by its success, the rivals of Corneille appeared to join the throng of his admirers; but they soon recovered their breath, and their first sign of life was an effort ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Anglicanus stupor mundi. I believe that this complimentary proverb originally referred to the learning of the English clergy, but it would apply with equal truth to their social agreeableness. When I was writing about the Art of Conversation and the men who excelled in it, I was surprised to find how many of the best sayings ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... erected a kind of a staging near to the camp, on which the valuable loads of meat and furs were safely placed. Memotas had to have another drive or two at them, and so he ironically congratulated them on their late precautions. Sam said it looked like the old proverb of locking your stable after the horse was stolen. Alec's more charitable remark was, "It is best to be made wise by the loss, and then strive ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... right. The distress consequent upon them, increases in proportion as the reactive powers of the organism decrease, which is more particularly the case in the present generation. The suppression of these abuses has never been more necessary than in our age. Indeed, the old proverb is again verified: "Where need is greatest, there help ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... season was regularly set in, they meant to return to Bendigo for another spell at work. On representing to them the folly of not making better use of their hard-earned wages, the answer invariably was, "Plenty more to be got where this came from," an apt illustration of the proverb, "light come, light go." Two of these diggers had with them their licences for the current month, which they offered to sell for ten shillings each; two of our company purchased them. This, although a common proceeding, was quite illegal, and, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... business transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me that proverb and ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... tree illustrates the African proverb that though you can count the apples on one tree, you can never count the trees in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... of that proverb which we so often quote with reference to young ladies, and which so seldom can be quoted with truth, "Beauty unadorned, adorned ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... a continuation of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?—In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief, and he will steal; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, and he will ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that my ten-year dream is actually dissolved; and that is that it reverses my horoscope. The proverb says, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whether up or down, white or black, ain't been nothin' but luck. Which nacherally, bein' a kyard sharp that a-way, I studies luck the same as Peets yere studies drugs; an' my discov'ries teaches that luck is plumb gregar'ous. Like misery in that proverb, luck loves company; it shore despises to ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... sentence, [Greek omitted] was principally designed against the stewards of a feast, who are usually troublesome and press liquor too much upon the guests. For the Dorians in Sicily (as I am informed) called the steward, [Greek omitted] a REMEMBRANCER. Others think that this proverb admonisheth the guests to forget everything that is spoken or done in company; and agreeably to this, the ancients used to consecrate forgetfulness with a ferula to Bacchus, thereby intimating that we should ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... noon now, and fifty or more boys were trooping out of school. I carefully scanned the throng. The old proverb has it that it is a wise child who knows its own father; but it is not so difficult for a father to know his own children. The moment I put my eyes on Sarah's son, I knew him; he was the very image of me; I could have picked him out of a thousand. I beckoned ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... guided," says the Scotch proverb; and the same may be said of bachelors' wives. So I will cease the strain, and return to Adela, the change in whom first ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... account be as ready to say and swear that they did see them as the Devil is to present their shape to them. Add but this also, that, when they are once under his power, he puts them on headlong (they must needs go whom the Devil drives, saith the proverb), and the reason is clear,—because they are taken captive by him, to do his will. And we see, by woful and undeniable experience, both in the afflicted persons and the confessors, some of them, that he torments them at his pleasure, to force them to accuse others. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... distance from Shenfield. The manor-house of Blackmore is called Jericho; so when Harry chose to retire with his mistresses, the cant phrase among the courtiers was, "He was gone to Jericho." Hence this proverb or saying. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... As it was, their volley only killed the remaining French prisoner, who remained on deck, over-joyed at the recapture, and anticipating an immediate return to his own country; by which it would appear that the "L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose" of France, is quite as sure a proverb as the more homely "Many a slip between cup and lip" of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Roger Bacon, must have been some one of the same type. Another Christian exegete of the same period, William of Mara, cites Rashi's commentary under the title of Perus. The admiration felt for Nicholas de Lyra, which now seems somewhat excessive, is expressed in the well-known proverb: Si Lyra non lyrasset, totus mondus delirasset. A modification of the proverb, si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherius non saltasset, is not an exaggeration; for the works of the Franciscan monk were soon translated into German, and they exercised ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under all the circumstances. Let her be as well cared for as any lady in that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though it's never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new version to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's never ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... proved once more the truth of the old proverb, 'Necessity is the mother of invention,'" I said. "And, besides, you have given me a new idea. I am going home to work it out. When it is finished, I will show it to you." Then I went home, and made rows and rows of strong pockets ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of that extremely witty preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great influence over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody that even this was a misfortune. She had passed into a proverb in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... name—and the old proverb holds good even at the antipodes. My trampings are now transcribed ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... and that proverb's truth was doubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of his excursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked the supreme vanity that is the attribute of most poetasters, and he ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... History of Human Marriage quotes a number of authorities to prove that among many ancient nations marriage was a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, 'He who has no wife is no man.' In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried is regarded as a deplorable misfortune by the Chinese, and among the Hindus of the present day a man who remains ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Bourguignon, and requested a second dinner, but he was of too timid a character for that, and the result was, that he had to search among his stock of proverbs for the most consoling, and having found, between his situation and the proverb, "He who sleeps dines," an analogy which seemed to him most direct, he resolved to make use of it, and, as he could not dine, to endeavor ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... should so far emancipate themselves as to feel a preference for younger and more attractive men when they had been honoured by his notice. The dissolute monarch did not pause to reflect that with women the national proverb, il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute, is but too often realized, and that he was, in fact, the architect of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... conquered, till the country was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their spear thrusts, it is said that the great king ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... is a bad beginning, I confess, but you know the proverb and, I trust, the good ending will ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... an oyster's-shell, and should fit him just as perfectly; in fact, that it should be created, not built. From architects and their works he prayed devoutly to be delivered, and having theretofore illustrated that part of the proverb which avers that "fools build houses," he declared himself determined thenceforth only to illustrate the latter-part of the proverb:—"and wise men live ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... McChesney was not a woman given to jerky conversations, interspersed with exclamation points. Her poise and balance had become a proverb in the business world. Yet her lips were trembling now. Her eyes were very round and bright. Her face had flushed, then grown white. Her voice shook a little. "Yes, of course I am. Only, I'm so surprised. Yes, I'll be home ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... a low bow to the angry prince, and retired. The prince sneaked out of the position by an untruth, instead of an apology. On the following day he caused a written assurance to be conveyed to the Chancellor, that the offensive speech "was nothing personal, but simply a proverb—a proverbial way of saying a man was governed by his wife." It is needless to say that the expression was not proverbial, but distinctly and grossly personal. Lord Malmesbury's comment on this affair is "Very absurd of Lord Eldon; but explained by ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... measured their own powers with those of the latter, find that confusion, which they thought to cast upon another, recoil upon themselves. Wherefore, so you may know how to keep yourselves and that, to boot, you may not serve as a text for the proverb which is current everywhere, to wit, that women in everything still take the worst, I would have you learn a lesson from the last of to-day's stories, which falleth to me to tell, to the intent that, even as you are by nobility of mind distinguished from other women, so likewise ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... quarter of Santa Brigida. As not infrequently happens in old Spanish cities, this unsavory neighborhood surrounded the cathedral and corresponded in character with the localities known in western America as "across the track." Indeed, a Castilian proverb bluntly plays upon the juxtaposition of ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... was he born, a pleasant city, Famous for oranges and women,—he Who has not seen it will be much to pity, So says the proverb[24]—and I quite agree; Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty, Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;— Don Juan's parents lived beside the river, A noble stream, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... to do, and Murray noticed a peculiar twitching about his officer's lips as he turned at last to the smiling, sneering man, his first words showing his hearers how bitterly he felt his position and the necessity for obeying the teachings of the proverb that discretion is the better ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... uncle, all the pinch is in the pain. For as for shame, I perceive well now that a man may with wisdom so master it that it shall nothing move him at all—so much so that it is become a common proverb in almost every country that "shame is as it is taken." But, by God, uncle, all the wisdom in this world can never so master pain but that pain will be painful, in spite of all the wit ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... study, but be subjected to the influence of different minds, and examples, and rules, and scenes, and associations, corresponding to the different relations which they will sustain. 'Non omnia possumus omnes,' is a proverb applicable both to teachers and to pupils, and it would forbid the supposition, that minds which act upon others for widely different purposes, should do it always with the best effect, or that they who are so acted upon, should not sometimes suffer injury from the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Klutz, either upright or prostrate. Well, if he were in a ditch, he said to himself, he would not drown; the ditches were all as empty, dry, and burnt-up as four weeks' incessant drought and heat could make them. He turned back repeating that eminently consolatory proverb, Unkraut vergeht nicht, and walked quickly to his own gate; for it was late, and he had work to do, and he had wasted more time than he could afford with Klutz. A man on a horse coming from the opposite direction passed him. It was Dellwig, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... is a cock-fighter, a gambler, and a brawler; he has an overweening opinion of himself, his country, and his race; he is at once ignorant, irreligious, and unintellectual; and his arrogance has passed into a proverb.[5] He has many good qualities also, and is, above all things, manly and reckless,—as those who know him well, and love him, can bear witness,—but his faults are very much on the surface, and he is at no pains ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... You need not draw well, for it's much more fun if you don't. I'll tear these leaves in two, Cricket, to make them long and narrow. Now, we must each illustrate some proverb at the bottom of the slip, or some line of poetry, if you prefer. Only label it, which it is. When we are all done, we each pass our slips to the next one, who writes what she thinks it is, and folds back the writing, and ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... in the least, save me from being hurt. On regaining my feet, I found that my injuries were but slight, and that I still retained my bridle rein, therefore I quickly regained my seat in the saddle and started on again, remembering the old proverb, which says, "All is fair in war." While riding on, I was joined by a soldier whose horse had broken down in the charge. As we now advanced together, our route led us by some large sand hills, behind which several Indians had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Lake to come to church, and having once begun she came often. She tried to persuade her husband to go, and told him how sweetly the boys' voices sounded, led by Master Swift's fine bass, which he pitched from a key which he knocked upon his desk. But Master Lake had a proverb to excuse him. "The nearer the church, the further from GOD." Not that he pretended to maintain the converse ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... be anxious; I'll answer for it that I can kill anybody as well as any doctor in the town. The proverb usually is, "after death comes the doctor," but you will see that if I have anything to do with it, it will be, "after the doctor comes death!" But now, while I think of it, it must be difficult to play the doctor; and ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... of a drive to the sea for Christmas. At a meeting of the Town Council a new Mayor (Mr. Oliver) was chosen for the year 1900. General Clery, we were informed, was getting towards Ladysmith; the news was vague, but we were glad to hear it. Any news not bad was good. The old proverb is wrong; for who would dare after all the suspense we had endured to put "no news" in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... to the old." Though the dullest of dramas, it is so brightened by brilliant legs that it dazzles every beholder. Why, then, should the stern advocate of the legitimate drama refuse to acknowledge that the Twelve Temptations has its redeeming legs? How runs the ancient proverb, "Singed milk is better than it looks;" or that equally ancient philosophical maxim, "There is no use in crying over spilt cats"? The stupid story of ULRIC'S folly is made more attractive than one would suppose that it could be, and we ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... back, and stood, that evening, before the fire in the sitting room, with his arm about my shoulder ... even as he did so I remembered the picture taken of him and the celebrated poet L'Estrange, together ... their arms about each other's shoulders ... and the current Eos proverb, that Spalton always quarrelled not long after with anyone about whose shoulder he ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the Levant in general, have been mainly due to the want of commonsense in the race, and the incapacity of individuals to subordinate their personal views and interests to the general good. The Italians have a proverb, "Six Greeks, seven captains," which in a pithy way expresses the reason why the Greeks have never been able to succeed in any national movement—the necessary subordination and self-effacement needed for civic or military solidity are, and always ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Badger, Reynard's nephew: "It is a common proverb, Malice never spake well: what can you say against my kinsman the fox? All these complaints seem to me to be either absurd or false. Mine uncle is a gentleman, and cannot endure falsehood. I affirm that he liveth as a recluse; ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... winter season—the successful prosecution of which calls forth more endurance, a keener sight, a more thorough knowledge of the habits of the animal, a deeper self-control and greater sagacity, than does the English sport; for, as the proverb truly says, "Pour attraper la bete, faut etre plus ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... France, born at Perigord; served bravely under Henry IV.; though a Catholic, favoured the Huguenots; narrowly escaped at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; was killed at the siege of Epernay; carried a note-book with him everywhere, and so observant was he that it passed into proverb, "You will find it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the old proverb that "extremes meet," the materialistic doctor and the cure of Nemours were soon friends. The old man loved backgammon, a favorite game of the priesthood, and the Abbe Chaperon played it with about as much skill as he himself. The game was the first ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... character and experiences of a baby. That baby is the hero of our tale. True, it is as a young man that he is to play his part; but a great philosopher has told us that he always felt constrained to look upon children with respect; and a proverb states that, "the child is ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... and address to which your valise was committed, and myself, for having waited till I heard of your being again immerged into the land of newspapers before forwarded your key. However, as you have at length got them safe, I claim absolution under the proverb, that 'all is ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... just too bad! I was so sure of it, too. I told him about our plans—about our promise, indeed, and how I had counted on him, and all he said was: 'Don't you know the old proverb, sis: "Never count your chickens before they are hatched;" or, a more elegant phrasing of it, "Never eat your fish till you catch him?" Now, I'm not caught yet; someway the right sort of bait hasn't reached me yet.' I was never so disappointed in my life! Didn't you ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... am astonished that your hand has not been already raised to give it, as you are a French gentleman, and know the proverb." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... persons, like soft wax, to which one may give what form he pleases, are very susceptible of every sort of impression; that they keep tenaciously, when age has now hardened them, those which they had early received, and reject others. Thence the well-known proverb taken from the Scripture, 'A young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.' Suffer not, then, venerable brethren, the children of this world to be more prudent in this respect than the children ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... and forty nights Moses now devoted to the study of the Torah, and in all the time he ate no bread and drank no water, acting in accordance with the proverb, "If thou enterest a city, observe its laws." The angels followed this maxim when they visited Abraham, for they there ate like men; and so did Moses, who being among angels, like the angels partook of no food. He received nourishment from radiance of the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of the Cebuan champion was a heap of bloodied feathers. The "match" was quickly over and the triumphant sailors, collecting their bets, departed for their ship. Ever since then there has been a proverb in Cebu—"Never match your ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... thy house defend. But, certes, to move war or suddenly to do vengeance, we may not deem [judge] in so little time that it were profitable. Wherefore we ask leisure and space to have deliberation in this case to deem; for the common proverb saith thus; 'He that soon deemeth soon shall repent.' And eke men say, that that judge is wise, that soon understandeth a matter, and judgeth by leisure. For albeit so that all tarrying be annoying, algates [nevertheless] it ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... business of religion; and when the substance of divine worship consisted in the ordinances of Augurs who, to make themselves necessary in the world, were obliged to keep up and quicken men's apprehensions of the wrath of God, took special care to cultivate comets, and bring it into a proverb, that "so many comets so many calamities." They knew, as Livy expresses it, that it was best to fish in troubled waters, where, speaking of a contagious distemper, which, from the country villages, spread over the city, occasioned ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... away now, then, you gaping idiot, and see that he does not bite you, to put an old proverb to shame.—This is a new incident, Mr. Morton, that dead men should rise and push us from our stools. I must see that my blackguards grind their swords sharper; they used not to do their work so slovenly.—But we have had a busy day; they are tired, and their blades blunted with their bloody work; ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... getting it this year or the next. I do not at all expect it this year, as there are a great many candidates, far better men than I...I shall think myself lucky if I get it next year. Don't say anything about the matter till I tell you...As the old proverb says, there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... lived in a village. He had a mill. He could shoot with a gun, ride on a horse, and swim like a devil. One summer he was bathing in the river, and was drowned. Of him they said the proverb had been invented: "All good swimmers are drowned." He left after him the mill, two horses, a young widow, and one child. The mill was neglected; the horses were sold; the young widow married again, and ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... never been praeaperly broken in, and she wants a strong man to do it," said Furnese at the Woolpack. He had repeated this celebrated remark so often that it had almost acquired the status of a proverb. For three nights Joanna had been the chief topic of conversation in the Woolpack bar. If Arthur Alce appeared a silence would fall on the company, to be broken at last by some remark on the price of wool or the Rye United's last match. Everybody was ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... duty, as well able, say, to scan the distant horizon, as a large; and by the same token men with no great confidence in themselves or in their horses are not ill-qualified to guard, or withdraw within shelter (8) the property of friends; since fear, as the proverb has it, makes a shrewd watchman. The proposal, therefore, to select from these a corps of observation will most likely prove true strategy. But what then of the residue not needed for outpost duty? If any one imagines he has got an armament, ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... Sauvager, and the President du Ronceret looked at Camusot, and one thought troubled their minds. The lady's tone, the way in which she flung her proverb in the faces of the eight conspirators against the house of d'Esgrignon, caused them inward perturbation, which they dissembled as provincials can dissemble, by dint of lifelong practice in the shifts of a monastic existence. Little Mme. Camusot saw ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... have a proverb, Tell me who you are with, and I will tell you what you are; and we ourselves say, Birds of a feather flock together. It is generally allowed that proverbs are built upon experience, and contain great truths; and though at this ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... (Vol. ii., p. 413.).—Ray's anecdote concerning the proverb, "Bate me an ace, quoth Bolton," is perhaps more correctly told in the Witty Aunsweres and Saiengs of Englishmen (Cotton MS. Jul. ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life. . . . We have only to call to mind the Prologue to 'The Canterbury Tales.' The right comment upon it is Dryden's: 'It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.' And again: 'He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.' It is by a large, free, sound representation of things, that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... counsel concerning a bridge?" "There is none," said he, "except that he who will be chief let him be a bridge. I will be so," said he. And then was that saying first uttered, and it is still used as a proverb. And when he had lain down across the river, hurdles were placed upon him, and the host ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... last number is a query about Scarborough Warning. Grose, in his Provincial Glossary, give the meaning as "a word and a blow, and the blow first;" it is a common proverb in Yorkshire. He gives the same account of its origin as does Ray, extracted from Fuller, and gives no notion that any other ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... Above all, a large share of the world's best thought is being expressed in them. The point requires no arguing, that translations cannot take the place of originals: traduttore traditore, says an excellent Italian proverb. If we are really to know what other nations think,—whether we accept or reject their thought makes little or no difference here,—we can do so only by knowing their language. And the better we know it, the greater our insight will be. To speak at least one ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... to me, so false to his written word," she said, and the letter was hidden away, and she passed into the dangerous stage of irresolution, where temptation is secretly dwelt upon. She hesitated, and, according to the proverb, the woman who does this is lost. Instead of indignantly casting temptation from her, she left her course open, to be decided somewhat by circumstances. She wilfully shut her eyes to the danger, and tried to believe, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... remember watering Darby and Joan, who have lived twenty years under our porch, when you were little boys? You thought they seemed to enjoy a rain so much that you would give them a shower. Poor Darby and his wife realized the proverb, 'It never rains but it pours.' A gentle, steady rain was agreeable enough; but you floated them out of house and home, and I do not think they ever ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... course, presented sharp differences to Russia where social conditions were written in black and white with little shading, like a demonstration of the Chinese proverb, "Where one man lives in luxury, another is dying ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... credit, an' that is, he's lived over sixty years an' never been heard of stealing fruit out of people's gardens, an' as for looks—'Han'some is who han'some does,'" said grandma, which effected the collapse of Andrew. In the Clay household there were ever current reminders of the truth of the old proverb, warning people in glass-houses to abstain ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... advises us to be sure we are right, then go ahead. To the last part of the proverb Hartwell was paying diligent heed; the first, so far as he was concerned, he took for granted. Hartwell was carrying out energetically his declared intention of informing himself generally. He was accumulating a vast fund of data on various subjects connected with the affairs of the Rainbow ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... their subjects and the members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, 'He who gives his own life can take a tyrant's,' had worked itself into popular language. At this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public murder which prevailed in Italy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... drawing." The courtier seems to have thought that Giotto was fooling him; but the pope was easily convinced, by the roundness of the O, of the greatness of Giotto's skill. This incident gave rise to the proverb, "Tu sei piu tondo che l' O di Giotto", the point of which lies in the word 'tondo', signifying slowness of intellect, as well as a circle. —Adapted from ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... sexual reproduction: it is a matter of perfectly common experience, that the tendency on the part of the offspring always is, speaking broadly, to reproduce the form of the parents. The proverb has it that the thistle does not bring forth grapes; so, among ourselves, there is always a likeness, more or less marked and distinct, between children and their parents. That is a matter of familiar and ordinary observation. We notice the same thing occurring ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... individuals. It will be sufficient to add, that to the most favourable accounts that have been written of them, I fully and most heartily subscribe; and that personal intercourse and free communication have bred within me, not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... his day, so shrewd that by common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the Seven Sages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world's tradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... always comes from within, and is born of a life of love, kindliness, and service. This is the universal language, known and understood everywhere, even when our words are not. There is, you know, a beautiful old proverb which says, "He who is kind and courteous to strangers thereby shows himself a citizen of the world." And there is nothing so remembered, and that so endears one to all mankind, as this universal language. Even dumb animals understand ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... announced the fact, and all the guests and attendants testified their satisfaction by loud shouts. Our little Matthias laughed and said: She who has the bean will marry Mr. Michael (kto dostal migdala dostanie Michala) a Polish proverb always repeated upon such occasions. It is also a common saying that when a young girl has it, she will be married before the end of the carnival. God grant that this prophecy may be verified, for then we shall have a wedding, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rest did nothing more than put the worst school of Italian love poetry into an awkward English dress. The Italian proverb says, "Inglese italianizzato, Diavolo incarnato," that an Englishman Italianized is the very devil incarnate, and one feels the truth of it here. The very titles of their poems set one yawning, and their wit is the cause of the dulness that is ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... lie in the depths of those dark eyes! The young man felt the truth of the proverb, "Still waters run deep:" and his heart had sunk into their depths. He often talked of his adventures, and the mamma was as simple and eager in her questions as on the first evening they met. It was a pleasure ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about this time that a reconciliation took place between King Alfonso's mother, Queen Isabella, and Don Carlos, of a personal but not official character. The proverb, "Blood is thicker than water," sometimes comes true. The two were near relations. They had no personal quarrels. Her own destiny was settled and Don Carlos's own efforts to wrest the Crown from her son had ended in failure. Why, therefore, any need for further enmity? I am reminded ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... on the text that "The weakest goes to the Wall," showing how this proverb has been for many years directly contradicted, not only in theory but in practice during the Foot-ball time; it being at Eton the strongest who invariably go ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... you the impression that poor Charlotte had been hasty and violent even to imperiousness and rudeness. I can you assure that it was not so; she was quick, and even violent, but I never have seen anybody so open to conviction, and so fair and candid when wrong. The proverb says, and not without some truth, that ladies come always back to the first words, to avoid any symptom of having been convinced. Generous minds, however, do not do this; they fight courageously their battles, but when they clearly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... On reaching the part of the forest where I had been, the day before, chopping wood, I filled the cart with a heavy load, as a security against another running away. But, the neck of an ox is equal in strength to iron. It defies all ordinary burdens, when excited. Tame and docile to a proverb, when well trained, the ox is the most sullen and intractable of animals when but half broken ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... puts out of action certain injurious substances or acids that may be formed, and thus makes the conditions more favourable for plants and for the useful micro-organisms; farmers and gardeners express this by saying that it "sweetens the soil." A United States proverb runs: "A lime country is a rich country." Very many soils in England are improved by adding lime or chalk. There are considerable areas in the south-eastern and eastern counties where the soil is very ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... his general report on the Scottish Training Colleges, gives several curious answers which he had received from candidates and pupil-teachers. A young lady in commenting on the proverb, "Penny wise and pound foolish," wrote—"This proverb clearly shows that for every wise and good action a man does, he will commit two hundred and forty ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... famous Commander, a martyr. I appointed him Captain of Scouts, and from the moment that he commenced his work I saw that a man had come forward. It was sad to think in what manner such a man was deprived of his life. I shall speak more of him later on, for, as our proverb says, "I had eaten too much salt" to pass over ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... England than when you are constantly endeavouring to increase it by giving advice. I think that the right of giving advice has of late years been largely used; and that it has sometimes been not only used, but abused. Still, there is truth in the proverb which says that lookers-on see more of the game than the players; and cases do occur when warning given by a friendly and neutral Power—by a Power which is well known to have no interest of its own to serve, by a Power desiring nothing more than the restoration of peace, and ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... necessary. The aimless drifter must be given a central purpose or taught to seek one; the dissatisfied and impatient must be asked, "Why should life give you all you want?" "What cannot be remedied must be endured!" What a wealth of wisdom in the proverb! One seeks to establish an ideal of fortitude, of patience, of fidelity to duty,—old-fashioned words, but serenity of spirit is their meaning. Suddenly to come face to face with one's self, to strip away the self-imposed disguise, to see clearly that jealousy, impatience, luxurious, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... dangerous one, and the fact that we essayed to cross it in this light-hearted fashion can only be ascribed to our ignorance. With us, I am afraid, there were not a few occasions when one might have applied the proverb that "Fools rush in ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... I have preserved the balance of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained and forced, after the wont ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... reproaches of conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect, the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, justice, and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, or alloyed with the pride, of the world, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the fool thinks.' The proverb is somewhat stale. I marvel thou findest not its application to thine own ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... own fault somehow that he has that; and he has evidently been always conscious of a likeness between this difficulty and perversion of a process natural to his body, and the difficulty and perversion of his getting sensible and just opinions; for it has passed into the immortality of a proverb that a shrewd man is a man who has "cut his eye-teeth;" and the four last teeth, which we get late in life, and which cost many people days of real illness, are called in all tongues, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... be a witch," cried Richard; "and I think you will hardly venture upon such an assertion after what you have seen of her to-day. If she be a witch, I would there were many such—as fair and gentle. And see you not how easily the matter is explained? 'Give a dog an ill name and hang him'—a proverb with which you are familiar enough. So with Mother Demdike. Whether really uttered or not, the abbot's curse upon her and her issue has been bruited abroad, and hence she is made a witch, and her children are supposed to inherit the infamous taint. So it ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... most usual occupation of the Gypsies. In Hungary, this profession is so common, that there is a proverb: "So ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... we had joined in a song or two, we had set proverb and guess and witty saying round and round, and it was the young morning when through the long grass to the fold came a band of strangers. We were their equal in numbers, whatever their mission might be, and we waited calmly where ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... know about that! There's a proverb which says, "He laughs longest who laughs last," and we've yet to see who that will be. So far, the men have burnt Balmoral, but that loss is insured against; but they have not bettered their position, and they are losing money, whereas the ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... her hair hang unkempt, and assumes the hermit's dress of bark. While she is spending her days in self-denial, she is visited by a Brahman youth, who compliments her highly upon her rigid devotion, and declares that her conduct proves the truth of the proverb: Beauty can do no wrong. Yet he confesses himself bewildered, for she seems to have everything that heart can desire. He therefore asks her purpose in performing these austerities, and is told how her desires are fixed upon the highest of all objects, upon the god Shiva himself, and how, since Love ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... as an agricultural rather than a manufacturing county, and has long been famed for its corn and cattle. Fuller mentions the vale of Aylesbury as producing the biggest bodied sheep in England, and "Buckinghamshire bread and beef" is an old proverb. Lace-making, first introduced into this county by the Fleming refugees from the Alva persecution, became a very profitable industry. The monopolies of James I. considerably injured this trade, and in 1623 a petition was addressed to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... descent,—facilis descensus Averni. Ib. The darkness at the entrance to the shades is humorously described by Lucian. Div. Legat. Vol. I. p. 241. And the horror of the gates of hell was in the time of Homer become a proverb; Achilles says to Ulysses, "I hate a liar worse than the gates of hell;" the same expression is used in Isaiah, ch. xxxviii. v. 10. The MANES or GHOST appears lingering and fearful, and wishes to drag after him a part of his mortal garment, which however adheres to the side ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... herself get "down in the mouth." There is so much real, unavoidable suffering and sorrow in the world that nobody has any right to add to them unnecessarily, and "as cheerful as a Girl Scout" ought to become a proverb. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... earnest request, I sat up with him last night; and, poor man! it is impossible to tell thee, how easy and safe he thought himself in my company, for the first part of the night: A drowning man will catch at a straw, the proverb well says: and a straw was I, with respect to any real help I could give him. He often awaked in terrors; and once calling out for me, Dear Belford, said he, Where are you!—Oh! There you are!—Give me your friendly hand!—Then grasping it, and putting ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Laura quoted the Italian proverb to signify that he had flown; how, she could not say, and none could inform her. The joy of their hearts rose in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had not awoken me." "Well," said I, "I beg your pardon once more. I assure you that what I did was with the best intention." "Oh! pray make no further apology," said the individual, "I make no doubt that what you did was done kindly; but there's an old proverb to the effect 'that you should let sleeping dogs lie,'" he added, with a smile. Then, getting up, and stretching himself with a yawn, he took up his book and said, "I have slept quite long enough, and it's quite ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in the hand is the soul of business, as the good old proverb says. I have accepted for myself, anyhow; but I would be sorry to leave you on ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted Jacqueline to take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought to put her lessons in elocution to some use. The piece chosen was to illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable as it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with its morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed by young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas. ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... himself against the defects that he might have, without knowing it." That is a Persian proverb, which you will find in Hafiz. I believe you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... had passed, when the cardinals began to look with dismay and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb—None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lord's procurement, sent at his heels, and to command in chief, and to convey Norris only to his government at Munster; which aggravated the great heart of the general to see himself undervalued, and undermined, by my lord and Burrows, which was, as the Proverb speaks, JUVENES DOCERE SENES. ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... intimately associated with French's name. One man had stoutly proclaimed that all promotion was a matter of luck, and French had claimed that only work and ability really counted in the end. Yet "French's luck" has become almost a service proverb—for those who have not closely studied his career. Luck is frequently a word used to explain our own failure and ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... passions are restrained, then the capital of health increases, for the saving of the vital secretions is equal to compound interest. This illustrates the truth of the Latin proverb: "No gain is so certain as that which proceeds from the economical use of what you have"! The patient actually acquires confidence and manly courage by the retention of the seminal fluid, which directly ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... continent from Missouri to Cape Horn, and still goes on conquering and to conquer. And the climax of this kaleidoscopic "symphony in purple and gold"—the New Zealander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge—has become a proverb, and is repeated daily by men who never heard of Macaulay, much less of Von Ranke, and is an inimitable bit of picturesque colouring. It is very telling, nobly hyperbolic, no man can misunderstand it, or forget it. The most practised hand will not find ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... really married after all, for God, Who gives sons-in-law, can also take them away, especially when He was not asked for them. Ah!" he went on, lapsing into French, as was his wont when moved, "qui vivra verra! qui vivra verra!" Then, shouting this excellent but obvious proverb at the top of his voice, he struck his horse with the butt of his gun, and galloped away ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... outline of his interview with Mr. Turvey, he wrote a note as follows:—"I suppose I must have held forth about the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but I had quite forgotten it, though I remember repeatedly quoting my favourite proverb, 'Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.' To this they have paid ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... she is in His holy glory and beyond the desires of this rough and wearisome world. Then the next thing is to be watchful and exert one's self in the service of the King, our Lord, and to strive to keep him from being troubled. His Highness is the head of Christendom. See the proverb which says that when the head aches, all the members ache. So that all good Christians should entreat that he may have long life and health: and those of us who are obliged to serve him more than others must join in this supplication with great earnestness and diligence. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespeare acted conformably to this ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuade the Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over his ears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying to Tartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has the credit of getting up early may sleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard, he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, vai, Mont Blanc... what a humbug..." Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... down on the Coast they have an old proverb in the Negro-English jargon which says, 'Softly, softly catchee monkey.' Let us proceed cautiously, bear our trials with patience, seek not to incense these brutal Arabs against us, and we may ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Porto Santo we enjoyed a dry deck and a foretaste of the soft and sensuous Madeiran 'Embate,' the wester opposed to the Leste, Harmattan, Khammasin, or Scirocco, the dry wind which brings wet. [Footnote: The popular proverb is, 'A Leste never dies thirsty.'] Then we rolled over the twenty-five geographical miles separating us from our destination. Familiar sites greeted my eyes: here the 'Isle of Wood' projects a dwarf tail composed of stony vertebrae: ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... their hand upon a man his senses are wont to be blunted and dimmed, so Gallus, being led on by these alluring persuasions to the expectation of a better fortune, quitted Antioch under the guidance of an unfriendly star, and hurried, as the old proverb has it, out of the smoke into the flame;[20] and having arrived at Constantinople as if in great prosperity and security, at the celebration of the equestrian games, he with his own hand placed the crown on the head of the charioteer Corax, when he ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... her maternal instincts had been well developed in the large family in which she was next to the eldest. She had always confessed that there were perhaps a trifle too many babies at Sunnybrook Farm, but, nevertheless, had she ever heard it, she would have stood loyally by the Japanese proverb: "Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters nothing; more than a treasure of one thousand ryo a ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... natural and necessary evil. I am, it is well known, of a robust and corpulent appearance, and at the same time somewhat diminutive in stature. What wonder, then, that the lath-like tenuity of my acquaintance, and his altitude, which has grown into a proverb, should have met with all due estimation in the eyes of Mrs. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and the whole household offered sacrifices to heaven, worshipped the ancestors, paid their vows, burnt incense, exchanged congratulations, and distributed presents. And these formalities observed, Chia Lien once more moved back into his own bedroom and was reunited with lady Feng. The proverb is indeed true which says: "That a new marriage is not equal to a long separation," for there ensued between them demonstrations of loving affection still more numerous than heretofore, to which we need not, of course, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... might be considered well enough in the old proverb that two is company and three is none. This proverb is the truth put popularly: that is, it is the truth put wrong. Certainly it is untrue that three is no company. Three is splendid company: three is the ideal number for pure comradeship: as in the Three Musketeers. But if you reject ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... ask me. I shouldn't have said even that. But remember, it is father's pet proverb. I must go. Please give my love to your mother and tell her I shall call again ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb,—To innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, unchanged. The consequences are before us,—not in remote ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lived in continual terrour, frighted by every noise at the door, and terrified at the approach of every step quicker than common. I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much, borrow the pillow of a debtor:" my solicitude and vexation kept me long waking; and when I had closed my eyes, I was pursued or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... admirable state of mind while I went off to put myself a little in shape after my day's work and my journey out of town. I kept thinking how perfectly right in the affair Tedham's simple, selfish instinct had been, and how our several consciences had darkened counsel; that quaint Tuscan proverb came into ray mind: Lascia fare Iddio, ch' e un buon vecchio. We had not been willing to let God alone, or to trust his leading; we had thought to improve on his management of the case, and to invent a principle for poor Tedham ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... regularity, apparently as fixed as the laws of a planetary system, were interrupted whenever Jacinto was ill or had to take a journey. Useless celibacy of the clergy! The Council of Trent prohibits them from having children of their own, but God—and not the Devil, as the proverb says—gives them nephews and nieces in order that they may know the tender anxieties ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... resort of this set, after dark, was a certain house kept by a widow of the name of Benedetta Galopo, the uses of which were plainly enough indicated by a small bush that hung dangling from a short pole, fastened above the door. If Benedetta knew anything of the proverb that "good wine needs no bush," she had not sufficient faith in the contents of her own casks to trust to their reputation; for this bush of hers was as regularly renewed as its withering leaves required. Indeed, it was a common remark among her customers, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... There is an old proverb which says: 'Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.' It is not all men who know hot to wait, any more than it is all men who can learn by experience; but Gilguerillo was one of the few and instead of thinking his life wasted because he could not ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... picture itself deserves. Thus we each aspire to a plain frame, and when we desire to pour scorn on each other's drawings, we condemn them to a gilded frame. Some day perhaps "the gilt frame" will become a proverb among us, and we shall be surprised to find how many people show what they are really made of by ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic self is misery, because it makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the desire to find like satisfaction again. The appetite comes in eating, as the proverb says, and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic self, torn with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Sickness has taken me shorter by a Foot. My Head is somewhat too big, considering my Height; and my Face is full enough, in all Conscience, for one that carries such a Skeleton of a Body about him. I have Hair enough on my Head not to stand in need of a Peruke; and 'tis gray, too, in spite of the Proverb. My Sight is good enough, tho' my Eyes are large; they are of a blue Colour, and one of them is sunk deeper into my Head than the other, which was occasion'd by my leaning on that Side. My Nose is well enough mounted. My Teeth, which in the Days of Yore look'd like ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... bounteous tree, Dethroning, in the Rosy Isle, the rose, You shall find food, drink, odour, all at once; Cool leaves to bind about an aching brow. And, never much away, the nightingale. Sing them a strophe, with the turn-again, Down to the verse that ends all, proverb like. And save us, thou Balaustion, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... indicates, is to show that the Jesuits endeavoured to turn all to their own profit. In this, if it was the case, they do not seem to have been greatly different from every other associated body of men, whether lay or clerical. The celebrated Spanish proverb, 'Jesuita y se ahorca, cuenta le hace', meaning, Even if a Jesuit is hung he gets some good out of it, may just as well be applied to members of other learned ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain —adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In another place in the same chapters ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... the harking back to primal lore that we seem to feel true passion at its best and purest, as somehow all truth of legend, proverb and fable has come from those misty ages of the earth. The drooping harmonies merge in the returning swing of the first solemn hymn,—a mere line that is broken by a new tender appeal, that, rising to ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... little recourse to tact might have settled the matter with equal facility and without open disrespect to the Throne. But the Bakufu prime minister behaved after the manner of the deer-stalker of the Japanese proverb who does not see the mountain, and he thus placed in the hands of the Imperialist party a weapon which contributed materially to the overthrow of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in their hearts to recognise how great they are. Many a man whose affectations and assumptions are a proverb, has lost the magnificent virtue of simplicity, for no other reason than that he needed courage to take his own measure, and so finally confirm to himself the reality of his pretensions. With Byron, as with ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... took care of her as well as her own mother could have done. Letitia had all the care and comforts and pleasant society that she really needed, but she was not a very contented little girl. She was naturally rather idle, and her Aunt Peggy, who was a wise old woman and believed thoroughly in the proverb about Satan and idle hands, would keep her always ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that kind of mountain work. Rutton Singh said that Koran Sahib jolly well knew every Pathan was a born deserter, and every Sikh was a gentleman, even if he couldn't crawl on his belly. Stalky struck in with some woman's proverb or other, that had the effect of doublin' both men up with a grin. He said the Sikhs and the Pathans could settle their claims on the Khye-Kheens and Malo'ts later on, but he was going to take his Sikhs along for this mountain-climbing job, because ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... told this tale, but Sir Henry Witherington did acknowledge himself to be the man that I had given the loaf unto two and twenty years before, where I found the proverb true, that men have more privilege ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... probably came the proverb about paying the piper; and it is one of many stories which turn on the magical power of a voice or a sound to draw men, women, and children to their doom. These very interesting stories are not like the stories which are made up just to please people and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win hearts by your mere being—by only being what you are. And Mena too loved you tenderly; but 'absence,' says the proverb, 'is the one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of any I had yet experienced. I literally shed a torrent of tears, in all the bitterness of unmixed despair; I could not reconcile myself to the humiliation which would make me a proverb to all my acquaintances, and the disgrace of my family. I passed a week in the most profound dejection, without being capable of gaining any information, or of occupying myself with anything but my own degradation. The remembrance even of ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... the chief sources of his greatness. At that period, perhaps at any period, he would have been incapable of such brilliant and dashing exploits as had made the name of Egmont so famous. It had even become a proverb, "the counsel of Orange, the execution of Egmont," yet we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of St. Quentin in the great political combat which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gentleman went on writing and Frank went on sleeping, and Barney's bright glance was fixed on the shining object opposite, much as a raven or a jackdaw will eye the silver spoon he means to steal by and by. "Everything comes to him who knows how to wait," and though Barney had never heard the proverb it was now verified in his case; the old gentleman paused in his writing, stuck his pen absently behind his ear, and proceeded to read over his manuscript. It pleased him evidently, for he smiled ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... six years, I have realized the pretty Eastern proverb, "By patience and perseverance, and a bottle of sweet-oil, the snail at length reaches Jerusalem,"—now that by God's unfailing help I have finished my difficult task, I can but commit the book into the hands of the women who have ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate, whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France. Advocates, young counselors, judges had saluted, bowing low in token of profound respect, remembering that grand face, pale and thin, illumined by two bright, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... upon it, and stooping down under pretence of pulling up his stocking, slipped it into his pocket. We stole some flints from our attendants, and made tinder by burning an old shirt. "Necessity is the mother of invention," says an old proverb, which, in our case, spoke truly, for by untiring perseverance we succeeded in constructing a compass, which, though of course imperfect, answered every purpose. After many entreaties, we procured from our attendants a couple of needles, under ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... passed into immortality as a proverb. Perhaps a few other grains of corn might be picked out of these hundred and seventy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... their birth tremblingly, he mourned their death but little—at any rate they were unnecessary to him. He began to beat his wife during the second year of their married life; at first he did it while being intoxicated and without animosity, but just according to the proverb: "Love your wife like your soul and shake her like a pear-tree;" but after each confinement, deceived in his expectation, his hatred for his wife grew stronger, and he began to beat her with pleasure, in revenge for not bearing ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... her web every twenty-four hours, and the part of the day she chooses to do this is always significant. If it occurs a little before sunset, the night will be fine and clear. Hence the old French proverb: "Araignee du ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... company,' says an old proverb. If that is true we should be happy," remarked one of the tourists as we gathered on the deck gazing at an animated scene. "Look! There are thirty boats in the same predicament as ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... possess his own desire. According to Aristotle, virtuous activity is the highest reward the good man can attain; virtue has no end beyond action; according to the modern proverb, "Virtue is ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... pointedly your own funeral, gentlemen," he said curtly. "'Nothing venture, nothing have' is an old proverb, but it is as true now as it was when it was coined. With P. S-W. stock at thirty-eight and steadily declining; with another dividend about to be passed; and with the certainty that the July interest on the bonds will ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... misgivings as to the success of her experiment. However, she knew that Nan could be trusted to repeat to the other servants all that she had said, and that it would lose nothing in the recital; and, as for the future, one of Hetty's first principles of action was an old proverb which her grandfather had explained to her when ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... of these remarkable persons, who had their mouths in the middle of their faces. They had no sooner placed themselves about the table, but they began to stare upon one another, not being able to imagine what had brought them together. Our English proverb says: ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... always returned upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to him; sacrificed Busiris, killed Antaeus in wrestling, and Cycnus in single combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence, they say, comes the proverb of "a Termerian mischief"), for it seems Termerus killed passengers that he met, by running with his head against them. And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had inflicted upon others, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... who betrayed his country to the people of Prien. When asked what he purposed, he replied, "Nothing bad," which expression had therefore passed into a proverb. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... contemplating the bare table before him, over which so much of his good gold had slipped away. "Take care! Luck at play, mischance in love, says the proverb." ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... warrant you it will be worser and worser before long; so I must e'en go home soon, and look after the corn and the wheat, or else old father will bring his pigs to a fine market, as the old proverb goes. ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... hath affirmed that he only intended the proverb used in the west country, nor do we believe he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... familiar, if not checked; and, with all his good-natured affability, he was not one to permit it; besides, his position was changed, and he could not help feeling that it was. "Necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows," says the very true proverb; and what might have been borne yesterday would not ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... our hay while the sun shines, and as soon as it's dark," said Jem, earnestly, and unconscious of the peculiarity of his use of the proverb. "Let's lie still just as the others do, and then, I'm sorry for 'em; but this here's a case where ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... away is evident from a statement in his report, in which he says he was then (June 30th) "resting" his "tired and terribly jaded horses." But, in telling of his exploits, he says nothing about losing two pieces of his artillery. The saying of Bonaparte's, "False as a war bulletin," has passed into a proverb, and this bulletin of Gen. Shelby's ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Irish accounts, promising their lives to the Spaniards, had them executed; and Raleigh appears to have directed that execution, whereby eight hundred prisoners of war were cruelly butchered and flung over the rocks in the sea. From that time out the phrase "Grey's faith" (Graia fides) became a proverb with the Irish. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... contentedly fills the lowly sphere, and 'the humblest duties on herself doth lay.' We need not pause to point out that such an ideal is dead against the fashionable maxims of this generation. Personal ambition is glorified as an element in progress, and to a world which believes in such a proverb as 'devil take the hindmost,' these two exhortations can only seem fanatical absurdity. And yet, perhaps, if we fairly take into account how the seeking after personal advancement and conspicuous work festers the soul, and how the flower of heart's-ease ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you more than once for the small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Then, because the newness has passed away and events no longer stimulate his mind, death withdraws man from the scene and enters him in a new school. Vast is the educational value therefore attaching to the newness of life. God is so rich that no day or scene need repeat a former one. The proverb, "We never look upon the same river," tells us that all things are ever changing, and clothes each day with fresh fascination. "Whilst I read the poets," said Emerson, "I think that nothing new can be said about morning and evening; but when I see the day break I ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... soon," said Zora. "I want to get everything clear in my mind. I've had a great shock. I feel as if I had been beaten all over. For the first time I recognize the truth of the proverb about a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree. Why did you send ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... them and will be carried lightly, as the victor wears his wreath; while, on the other hand, if these be lacking no amount of symbolism or attribute will supply their place. "Cucullus non facit monachum," as the old proverb says—"It is not the hood that makes the monk," but the ascetic face you depict within it. Indeed, rather beware of trusting even to the ordinary, well-recognised symbols in common use, and being misled by them to think ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... hard-trodden ground with thick powder of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the fire of sunset, red as a blowing spray of blood. "It is a sign of trouble when the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to her mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sanded, the door of the toril was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the pick of the corrida should be fifth on the list. It was also a compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... has said: "Everything that exists upon earth has its ethereal counterpart.'' Christ said: "As a man thinketh so is he.'' A Hindu proverb says: "Man is a creature of reflection; he becomes that upon which he reflects.'' A modern metaphysicist says: "Our thoughts are real substance and leave their images upon our personality, they fill our aura with beauty or ugliness according to our intents and purposes in life.'' ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... non fit Mercurius.' This Roman proverb, Courteous Reader! is adequately rendered by a homely one of our own—"You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Certainly it is difficult to do so; and none can speak to that more feelingly than myself; but not impossible, as I would hope that my Walladmor ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... hindered; not that a later hour would not have been preferred had the choice been free; but it was better to have a certainty at a bad hour, than by waiting for a better hour to make it an uncertainty. For it was a camp proverb—Pransus, paratus; armed with his daily meal, the soldier is ready for service. It was not, however, that all meals, as Isidore imagined, were indiscriminately called prandium; but that the one sole meal of the day, by accidents of war, might, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of every kind, what employment for tradesmen of every class, what business for shops might have resulted from the local expenditure of 50,000 l. or 60,000 l. a year! What public buildings would have been erected—how local institutions would have flourished! The proverb that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' does not apply to the relations of landlord and tenant. But there is another proverb that applies well—'Out of sight, out of mind.' Of this I shall now give two or three illustrations. Some years ago, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... accents flow. Yet every joy has he resigned And cleaves to thee with heart and mind. Thus by the deeds that he has done A name in heaven has Bharat won, For in his life he follows yet Thy steps, O banished anchoret. Thus faithful Bharat, nobly wise, The proverb of the world belies: "No men, by mothers' guidance led, The footsteps of their fathers tread." How could Kaikeyi, blest to be Spouse of the king our sire, and see A son like virtuous Bharat, blot Her glory with so ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Japan. Ginseng is sometimes chewed, but is generally soaked, the liquid being drunk. Ginseng is popularly supposed to be an invigorant, and Japanese doctors in Korea have lately declared that it has some value. The root is costly, hence the proverb about eating ginseng and hanging oneself, i.e. getting ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... all his measures were right in their intent. He stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he told the country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that honesty is the best policy. One of the most striking things ever said of him is, that "he changed mankind's ideas of political greatness."[22] To commanding talents, and to success, the common elements ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... a hermit, to guide us in the vast catacombs over which the hermitage stands. It was a trial to follow him—the rank woollen dress, uncleansed till it falls to pieces, diffuses an odour which, in such confined passages, is particularly unpleasant. Cleanliness, says an English proverb, is next to godliness; but, in cowled society, it assuredly forms no part of it. Catacombs, in general, are called interesting—we never saw one in which we did not pay heavy penalty for gratifying curiosity. Those of Syracuse are vast indeed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... by the falcon, which thinks that the buzzard is carrying some heavy quarry in its talons. Now, the buzzard is a weakling among the raptores and all the other birds of prey despise it. Accordingly, the falcon, unmindful of the proverb which says that honesty is the best policy, swoops down on the buzzard with intent to commit larceny, and becomes entangled in the nooses. Then both buzzard and falcon fall to the ground, struggling violently. All that the bird-catcher has to do ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... love and war,'" exulted the Skeptic, somewhat breathlessly. It seemed to be a favourite maxim with him. I recalled his having excused himself for eluding Dahlia by that same well-worn proverb. "No—don't run! Have ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... with only half his heart. In the theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were shabby fellows both, and were treated ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... then," and this is why the wood pigeon's nest is so untidy in our days. In its own mind it knew all about nest building, and was above receiving instruction, and hence its present clumsy way of building its nest. This fable gave rise to a proverb, "As the wood pigeon said ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... payment for leave to pass through his country. No one, we were assured, was allowed that liberty, or even to behold him, without something of the sort being presented. Having humbly explained our circumstances, and that he could not expect to "catch a humble cow by the horns"—a proverb similar to ours that "you can't draw milk out of a stone"—we were told to go home, and he would speak again to us next day. I could not avoid a hearty laugh at the cool impudence of the savage, and made the best of my way ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the two rascals to find out who had done the mischief. It stood to reason neither one had. According to an old proverb, Mischief has no master. That they had scuffled, their faces bore evidence; John had a black and blue spot under the eye, and Samuel a bloody scratch on his brow, but ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... and of most of ours too. Johnson liked satisfying food, such as a leg of pork, or veal pie well stuffed, with plum pie and sugar, and he devoured enormous quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea has almost passed into a proverb,—he has actually been credited with twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu, spoken to Miss Reynolds, points ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the cause that made the ancient learned affirm it was a divine, and no human skill, since all other knowledges lie ready for any that have strength of wit; a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it. And therefore is an old proverb, "Orator fit, poeta nascitur." {79} Yet confess I always, that as the fertilest ground must be manured, so must the highest flying wit have a Daedalus to guide him. That Daedalus, they say, both in this and in ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... respects a different course of study, but be subjected to the influence of different minds, and examples, and rules, and scenes, and associations, corresponding to the different relations which they will sustain. 'Non omnia possumus omnes,' is a proverb applicable both to teachers and to pupils, and it would forbid the supposition, that minds which act upon others for widely different purposes, should do it always with the best effect, or that they who are so acted upon, should not sometimes ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... centuries before Christ, long after we know it was a received Zoroastrian tenet, and long after the Hebrews had been exposed to the whole tide and atmosphere of the triumphant Persian power. The unchangeable tenacity of the Medes and Persians is a proverb. How often the Hebrew people lapsed into idolatry, accepting Pagan gods, doctrines, and ritual, is notorious. And, in particular, how completely subject they were to Persian influence appears clearly in large parts of the Biblical history, especially in the Books ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... politics and I don't. But both of us know the proverb about what you catch flies with. So we'll try both methods together. You can put out the molasses, and I'll put out the vinegar; and between us, we ought to ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... friend—you have asked me to tell you a story, and I am going to try, because there is not anything I would not try if you asked it of me. I do not yet know what it will be about, but it is impossible that I should disappoint you; and if the proverb says, "Needs must when the devil drives," I can mend the proverb into a show of grace, and say, The most barren earth must needs bear flowers when an angel ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Literature, from Homer to the Anthology teems with references to the vice and so common was it among them that from that fact it derived its generic; "Greek Love." So malignant is tradition that the Greeks of the present time still suffer from the stigma, as is well illustrated by the proverb current among sailors: "Englisha man he catcha da boy, Johnnie da Greek he catcha da blame." The Romans are supposed to have received their first introduction to paederasty and homosexuality generally, from the Etruscans or ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Another vessel, which escaped that dreadful tempest, was soon afterwards dashed to pieces against a rock; so that the sea was covered with dead bodies and with rich merchandize of all kinds: Thus, as the proverb says, wealth ill acquired is ill lost. Of all these ships one small caravel only rode out the storm, and brought intelligence of the destruction ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... A Chinese proverb compares a pupil who excels his teacher to the color green, which originates with blue but is superior to it. This may aptly be applied to Westerners, for they originally learned literature, science, and other arts from ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... with your very being, so that, as in wool dyed in the grain, the colour will never come out. What I am, that I have; what I only have, that, in the deepest sense, I have not. 'Shrouds have no pockets,' says the Spanish proverb. 'His glory will not descend after him,' says the psalm. That is a poor possession which only is outward whilst it lasts, and which ends so soon. But there is wealth that comes into me. There are riches that cannot ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wee, mater, bide a wee! Everything comes to the man who can wait, as the old proverb says. But I must confess I am at the end of my patience with those ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... not speak to her, nor remind her of his presence otherwise than by pulling up the glass on her side when the wind blew in too chill. It was his carriage they were in, Eleanor then perceived; and she wanted to ask a question; but on the whole concluded it safe to be still; according to the proverb, Let sleeping dogs lie. One other time he drew her shawl round her which she had let ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... everything that it was possible to know about the people who lived in Franklin Street, and yet her mind was so constituted that she never by any chance knew it correctly. Though she was not old, she had already passed into a proverb. To receive any statement with the remark, "You have heard that from Bessie Spencer," was ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the power of the Will, and must assume that you have some knowledge of the subject. If you have no acquaintance with the subject, you will find that the actual practice of the exercises themselves will give you a much clearer knowledge than any amount of theoretical teaching, for as the old Hindu proverb says, "He who tastes a grain of mustard seed knows more of its flavor than he who sees an elephant ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... upon which the wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an unfamiliar sound. The dingy houses of gray stone, barren and ugly in architecture, are huddled along the incline and encroach upon the narrow street. The place and its situation are a proverb of ugliness in all the countryside; one dweller in Airedale told us that late in the evening of the last day of creation it was found that a little rubbish was left, and out of that Haworth was made. But, grim and rough as it is, the genius ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... these preliminaries, he descended into the cave by a narrow passage. This place could be entered only in the night. The person returned from the cave by the same narrow passage, but walking backwards. He appeared melancholy and dejected; and hence the proverb which was applied to a person low-spirited and gloomy, "He has been consulting ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the ground a little sluggish on that account, it was a good while finding out where your well was. If I had happened along when you was talking about a well, I think I should have said to you that I knew a proverb which would about fit your case, and that is: ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... transcendental romancer could desire. He had his esoterical and his exoterical love. He could not endure the thought of losing either of them, but he trembled when he imagined the possibility that some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. The old proverb concerning two strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort; but that concerning two stools occurred to him more frequently, and covered his forehead with a cold perspiration. With Stella, he could indulge ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... strange voice from within the tent, 'they are born without tails. I bred them so; it hath taken many centuries and much trouble, but at last I have triumphed. Once, too, I reared a breed of dogs with two tails, but after a while they became a proverb for pride; Nature loathed them, and they perished. ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... animal plenty of time to eat and chew the fodder well. Then, during the day, let the beast have all the water he wanted, but no food till he reached his destination. Fortunately, his horse, being "lean," was the one foreordained in the proverb for the "long race." The young messenger lay down at night with his despatches within his bosom, his saddle under his head, and his horse near him. The bridle was fastened around his person, and all his property so secured that the only thing that could be stolen from him without his being awakened ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences, especially that one that says, 'Where one door shuts, another opens.' I say so because if last night fortune ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of a case which has and is now agitating this good County of Brome, that spirit of British fair play which has attained to the dignity of a proverb has been lost sight of to a marked degree. I refer to the alleged assault on Mr. W. W. Smith, at Sutton Junction, in July last. The Dominion Temperance Alliance and its friends are doing their best, by means of the press and ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... means of making your peace with the Cinq-Cygnes. It is now thirty years since the affair I am about to speak of took place; it is as old to the present day as the death of Henri IV. (which between ourselves and in spite of the proverb is still a mystery, like so many other historical catastrophes). I can, however, assure you that even if this affair did not concern Madame de Cinq-Cygne it would be none the less curious and interesting. Moreover, it throws light on a celebrated exploit in our modern annals,—I mean ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... enjoyment of them, what peculiar display of magnificence could there be, where the poor man went to the same refreshment with the rich? Hence the observation, that it was only at Sparta where Plutus (according to the proverb) was kept blind, and like an image, destitute of life or motion. It must further be observed, that they had not the privilege to eat at home, and so to come without appetite to the public repast: they made a point of it to observe any one that did not eat and drink with them, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... It is a favourite name for a slave in Morocco, the slave-girl being called Mubrakah; and the proverb being, "Blessed is the household which hath neither M'brk nor M'brkah" (as they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... There is an Arab proverb which runs: "When God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." The Kaiser was to be given power for his own destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... is female artifice, that, in spite of all my watchfulness in guarding her, it is probable my Lady would have given me the slip, had I not had quite as acute a person as herself as my ally: for, as the proverb says that 'the best way to catch one thief is to set another after him,' so the best way to get the better of a woman is to engage one of her own artful sex to guard her. One would have thought that, followed as she was, all her letters read, and all her ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his empty sacks stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job before he began it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come to his wit's end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb, printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers with debtors, and it just means that when folks have no money and are over head and ears in debt, as often as not they leave off being upright, and tumble over one way or another. He that has but four and spends five will soon ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... gentlemanliness and politeness always comes from within, and is born of a life of love, kindliness, and service. This is the universal language, known and understood everywhere, even when our words are not. There is, you know, a beautiful old proverb which says, "He who is kind and courteous to strangers thereby shows himself a citizen of the world." And there is nothing so remembered, and that so endears one to all mankind, as this universal language. Even dumb animals ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a sinister omen, or was it an exemplification of the old Turkish proverb, "The house completed, death enters"? Our hero's marriage proved to be the last of his illusions perdues, for only three months more were to be granted him. MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire have pertinently remarked that five years before his death, Balzac closed Les ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... it is known for a curse," he remarked, quoting a Tepoktan proverb often applied by the disgruntled scientists to the Dome ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... get their dues, everyone knows that proverb," interrupted Mr. Damon, again emerging from the cabin. "But bless my quotation marks, I should think you'd have something better to do than stand there ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... history, etc. The same earth, the same lands and oceans, furnish the outline in each case, and we travel over the same ground three or four times successively, each time adding new facts to the original nucleus. There is an old proverb that "repetition is the mother of studies," and here we have a systematic plan for repetition, extending through the school course, with the advantage of new and interesting facts to add to the grist each time it is ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... outside it, and strode with hasty steps down the village street. There was no occasion for hurry, the business I had on hand was not of a kind to demand it, and had been pending a reasonable time; nor would any more haste on my part be lively to advance it much, but would rather verify the old proverb, of 'less speed.' I therefore walked fast purely as a matter of principle, in the hope, that the village dames, who I knew were watching my progress from behind the green paper curtains of their 'sittin' room' windows, might possibly judge from my speed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The Governor knew enough. He summoned the young man and, being convinced of his guilt, had him put in prison, while awaiting further information. It is well said in a certain proverb: "Even while you are sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune falls ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... taken the oath, and kept it faithfully. But there is a wise Persian proverb which says: "If you would change an obedient and submissive wife into a proud rebel, you have only to forbid something! If you wish to keep a secret from the wife of your bosom, slay yourself, or tear out your tongue; if you live, she will discover your secret, even though hidden in the bottom ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... a queer way about it. I reckon you think with the old saw, [Proverb.] 'The nearer the church the further ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... conclusion is: A policy of consistent neutrality is the only proper one for the country. As the proverb well says: Beware the anger ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton
... only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and, indeed, the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbors at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say it was as true as if ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... first place, you are my guest, and also because there is a proverb that whoever drinks after another knows his thought." Then, he added, laughing: "I want to know your thought, Monsieur ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and will!' said he, lifting his head from the carved chimney-piece, where he had been resting it. 'I have been in will a murderer myself, and what right have I to repine like the Israelites, with their self-justifying proverb? No; let me be thankful that I was not given up even then, but have been able to repent, and do a little better next time. It will be a blessing as yet ungranted to any of us, if indeed I should bear to the full the doom of sorrow, so that it may be vouchsafed me only ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mind. Questions painful, if not foolish, haunted and tormented him. Would Miriam die? Had not the seven years of their past life been too happy to last? Did not his mother once reverse the old Hebrew proverb, and warn him that a night of weeping would follow a morning of joy? Would Heaven be avenged on his occasional fits of discontent, and grant him his wish for a child at the cost of the life of his wife? He had heard how the Almighty discounted His gifts; how selfish men had to pay dearly ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... in mind that the so-called gentlemen have a heavy score against them in the past. They have had their innings; and now that they are out, democracy is not disposed to let them off too easily. The sins of the forefathers being visited on the children is a proverb as stable as the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... When he had nothing else to do, and could find a genial companion, his delight was to play by the hour at micare digitis; but, in spite of his master's good opinion, not to Sagaris would have applied the proverb that you might play that game with him ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the Blue Posts cost thirty honest gentlemen their seats. One of the criminals, Tredenham, escaped with impunity. For the dominion of his family over the borough of St. Mawes was absolute even to a proverb. The other two had the fate which they deserved. Davenant ceased to sit for Bedwin. Hammond, who had lately stood high in the favour of the University of Cambridge, was defeated by a great majority, and was succeeded by the glory of the Whig party, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... effect that there are many sorrows in life more difficult to bear than that separation from our nearest brought by death. But those men—and especially the women—who have experienced sorrow of both varieties, do not use that proverb. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the shadow, watched the little torchlit company of English soldiery and Spanish officials cross his plane of vision. There was some talking and laughter; an Englishman made a jest, and a Spaniard answered with a proverb. The latter's voice struck some chord in Arden's memory, but struck it faintly. "Now where have I heard that voice?" he asked, but found no answer. The noise and the light passed onward to the citadel, and with a brief ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... old-fashioned Japanese, he goes round in a rickshaw to pay his complimentary calls, and to exchange o medet[o] (respectfully lucky!), the New Year wish. He has presents for his important patrons, and cards for his less influential acquaintances. For, as the Japanese proverb says, "Gifts preserve friendship." At each house, which he visits, he sips a cup of sake, so that his return home is often due to the rickshaw man's assistance, rather than to his own powers of self-direction. In fact, as Asako's maid confided to her mistress, "Japanese wife very happy when ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of medicine still more difficult—the classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "Where there are three physicians ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his mother awoke and had rubbed her eyes, Feeling less like a bird, and more like a mole, She saw him—fancy with what surprise— Dragging a huge worm out of a hole! 'Twas of this same hero the proverb took form: 'Tis the early bird that ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... to pick up during our exceedingly pleasant sojourn at La Guayra. 'Make hay whilst the sun shines!'—make the most of your opportunities—have all the fun you can during your enforced absence from the jurisdiction of the first luff—is a proverb which ought to command the most profound respect of every British midshipman; and I am surprised at you, Lascelles, and disappointed in you, that you so little endeavour to live up to it," remarked Courtenay. "However," he resumed, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... in the way of meat and flour at villages we pass through. Therefore, if we have enough tea, coffee, and sugar there will be really no occasion to buy anything more. We have still two or three bottles of spirits left, and you can buy pulque everywhere. There is a proverb two or three thousand years old, 'The empty traveller can sing before the robber'. We are reduced to that condition, except for our tents, bedding, and blankets, and they have done good service and would not cost much to replace. There remain, then, only the animals. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... One of these was Blackmore, at some distance from Shenfield. The manor-house of Blackmore is called Jericho; so when Harry chose to retire with his mistresses, the cant phrase among the courtiers was, "He was gone to Jericho." Hence this proverb or saying. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... settled in Bagdad, and, under the patronage of the Caliph Mamum, made many translations. He translated most of the old Greek medical writers, and also certain of the Greek philosophic and mathematical works. The accuracy of his translations became a proverb. His compendium of Galen was the text-book of medicine in the West for many centuries. It was known as the "Isagoge in Artem Parvam Galeni." His son, Ishac Ben Honein, and his nephew, Hobeisch, were also famous as medical practitioners ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption, and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. As an old Stoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and ingenuity ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... power of the king; nor could he confide in the friendship either of the duke or the Venetians, having no assurance of the sincerity of the latter, or the valor of the former. He concluded by quoting that trite proverb, "Meglio un magro accordo che una grassa vittoria."[*] On the other hand, Lorenzo de' Medici, thinking this an opportunity for exhibiting his prudence and wisdom, and being strenuously supported by ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb "Know thyself" come to be so ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... tragic enough one. We ought to change the old proverb, 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a poor man to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... shave for it this time, however," said Lawless; "there is more truth than I was aware of in the old proverb, 'If you are born to be hanged, you will never be drowned'; though, if it had not been for Frank Fairlegh, you would not have ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... have told me this long tale, doubtless in the belief that I should take his part. In all the folly about Charron with which he tormented me in the three days we were together, I found by bitter experience the truth of the Italian proverb: 'Guardati da colui che non ha letto che un libro solo'. By reading the work of the misguided priest he had become an Atheist, and of this he made his boast all the day long. In the afternoon Lawrence came to tell him to come and speak with the secretary. He dressed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... tail behind him? Amongst the lowest classes in France, and the gypsies in England, we poor rats are known as an article of food; and I have heard that in the islands of the South Seas we were held in so much esteem, that 'sweet as a rat' passed as a proverb." ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... meanwhile Waverley turned the instructions he had received while in Gardiner's dragoons to some account, and assisted the Baron in his command as a sort of adjutant. 'Parmi les aveugles un borgne est roi,' says the French proverb; and the cavalry, which consisted chiefly of Lowland gentlemen, their tenants and servants, formed a high opinion of Waverley's skill and a great attachment to his person. This was indeed partly owing to the satisfaction which they felt ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wishes are presentiments of our capabilities is a very true proverb, no doubt; but are we not most ignorant of what these are? It seems as though we are all unconsciously educated ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... there might have been to tell! Who will presume to point out the necessity by which these things were thus and not otherwise? "Regrets for what 'might have been' are proverbially idle," cries the historian from whom I have chiefly quoted. I do not recollect the proverb, unless he refers to "It is no use crying over spilt milk;" but in any case such regrets are far from being necessarily idle. "What might have been" is even generally "what ought to have been;" and no study has been or is likely to be so pregnant for us as the study of the contrast between "what ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... pride was at least equal to that of Gwenwyn himself, "you pervert the proverb of Taliessin—it is the flattering harp which never lacked ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... bitter, and the evening wind fitful. Bitter smoke on an empty stomach might be appropriately substituted for the last straw of the proverb—when the proverb has to do with hungry Mexicans. Most of the recumbent vaqueros merely cursed a little deeper and drew their serapes closer, but Jose Guiterrez grunted, threw off his blanket, and ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... quoted a proverb about island courage. Atta's wrath flared and he forgot himself. He had no wish to warn the Hellenes, but it irked his pride to be thought a liar. He began to tell his story hastily, angrily, confusedly; ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Bruin fasted for several days, eating only grasses, buds and roots. This satisfied him until the thick layers of fat, with which he had come forth from his winter sleep, disappeared and then he became ravenous, "as ravenous as a wolf," as the proverb says. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... housed, he was sure. And Patch was in clover. Anthony reflected that he had much to be thankful for. A dinner of herbs was infinitely better than none at all. He was, you observe, unconsciously converting the proverb to his own use. Stalled oxen, with or without hatred, were not nowadays in his line. He had quite forgotten what they were like, and cared as little. Indeed, but for Valerie, his Ambition would have been dead. Even now it lay very ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... has become a proverb: "Cruel as a step-mother." I am disposed, however, to think that, while there may be marked exceptions, step-mothers are the most self-sacrificing beings in all the world. They come into the family scrutinized by the household and the relatives of the one who used ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... to break and end our efforts at any moment, but the quickness with which I had seized upon Preblesham's information confirmed the proverb about the early bird; the threehour reprieve stretched to five and by the time Havas flashed the news I had liquefied almost all of my now worthless assets—and to potential financial rivals. Needless to say I had not ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 'From Rome' he says 'flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a 'good Christian,' or in their language, a fool. It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could.' If the German princes and nobles did not 'make short work of them in good earnest,' Germany would either be devastated or would ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... friends, instead of believing the carnal and selfish philosophy which cries, Every man for himself—I will not finish the proverb in this Holy place, awfully and literally true as the latter half of it is—instead of believing that, believe the message of Passion-week, which speaks rather thus: telling us that not selfishness, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... old proverb that "misfortunes never come alone." Thus it was with the expeditions planned by the "all talents" ministry—t was hoped that the reverses in the Mediterranean might be compensated in the South Atlantic Oceans; but this hope was illusive. In October 1806, a re-enforcement had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... who can use the least, we lay this book again; for "to the Mighty One," as the Tamil proverb says, "even the blade of grass is a weapon." May it be used for His Name's sake, to win more prayer for India—and all dark lands—the prayer ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... unhappy: it is the ill-treatment she endures. A kind word is seldom spoken to her: but a hard blow is often given. Her own boys are encouraged to insult her because she is only a woman. She is taught to worship her husband as a god, however bad he may be. There is a proverb which shows how much women are despised in India. "How can you place the black rice-pot beside the golden spice-box!" By the rice-box a woman is meant: by the spice-box a man: and the meaning of the proverb is that a wife is unworthy ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... sight. Alas! alas! and is it, then, a fact? If so 't is pitiful, 't is wondrous pitiful. Cupid, tear off your bandage, new string your bow and tip your arrows with harder adamant. Oh! shame upon you, only hear the words of your exultant votarist—'Even Love, which according to the proverb conquers all things, when put in competition with painting, must yield the palm and be a willing captive.' Oh! fie, fie, good master Cupid, you shoot but poorly if a victim so often wounded can talk in terms ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Early in the morning, I mounted a horse for the purpose of visiting the equally-renowned rock temples of Elora (ten miles from Roja). But, as it frequently happens in life that the proverb, "man proposes and God disposes," proves true, such was the case in the present instance—instead of the temples, I saw ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... that which he is under moral obligation or in duty bound to do. Ought is the stronger word, holding most closely to the sense of moral obligation, or sometimes of imperative logical necessity; should may have the sense of moral obligation or may apply merely to propriety or expediency, as in the proverb, "The liar should have a good memory," i. e., he will need it. Ought is sometimes used of abstractions or inanimate things as indicating what the mind deems to be imperative or logically necessary in view of all the conditions; as, these goods ought ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... very necessary for the little threadbare gownman, with his wife, his proctor and every child who can crawl, to watch the fields at harvest time, for fear of losing a single sheaf, which he could not afford under peril of a day's starving; for according to the Scotch proverb, a hungry louse bites sore. This would of necessity, breed an infinite number of brangles and litigious suits in the spiritual courts, and put the wretched pastor at perpetual variance with his whole parish. But, as they have hitherto stood, a clergyman established in a competent living ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... hungry, though when I went down below to have breakfast I didn't make a very hearty meal. After that the weather began to get bad, and continued getting bad for a long time. Then for some days, as sure as I went down below for a meal I did violence to the sentiment of the old proverb "wilful waste makes woeful want." However, in a few days I recovered sufficiently to withstand the noxious influences of the saloon long enough to satisfy my hunger. We had bad weather, more or less the whole way across to Belle Isle; not a gale exactly, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... had told the story, dialogue and all, like a machine. We did not doubt its correctness. The memory of Albert had passed into a proverb years before. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... this reserve, and she was doomed to hear stories of Richard which clouded and embittered her thoughts of him. And a still severer trial was in store. She accompanied her father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own desire, to the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has passed into a proverb, that the Friends, on these occasions, always bring rain with them; and the period of her visit was no exception to the rule. The showery days of "Yearly-Meeting Week" glided by, until the last, and she looked forward with relief to the morrow's return ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
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