Familiar Quotations by - (most read books in the world of all time .txt) 📕
Evangeline. Part i. 3.
And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
Evangeline. Part ii. 5.
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.[616-1]
The Courtship of Miles Standish. iv.
Into a world unknown,--the corner-stone of a nation![616-2]
The Courtship of Miles Standish. iv.
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame.[616-3]
The Ladder of Saint Augustine.
The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they while their companions slept Were toiling upward in the night.
The Ladder of Saint Augustine.
The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
The Herons of Elmwood.
He has singed the beard of the king of Spain.[616-4]
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Marry, because you have drank with the King,
And the King hath so graciously pledged you,
You shall no more be called shoemakers;
But you and yours, to the world's end,
Shall be called the trade of the gentle craft.
Gentlemen of the French guard, fire first.
Lord C. Hay at the battle of Fontenoy, 1745. To which the Comte d'Auteroches replied, "Sir, we never fire first; please to fire yourselves."—Fournier: L'Esprit dans l'histoire.
Good as a play.
An exclamation of Charles II. when in Parliament attending the discussion of Lord Ross's Divorce Bill.
The king remained in the House of Peers while his speech was taken into consideration,—a common practice with him; for the debates amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as good as a comedy.—Macaulay: Review of the Life and Writings of Sir William Temple.
Nullos his mallem ludos spectasse.—Horace: Satires, ii. 8, 79.
Greatest happiness of the greatest number.
That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.—Hutcheson: Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3. (1720.)
Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth,—that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.—Bentham: Works, vol. x. p. 142.
The expression is used by Beccaria in the introduction to his "Essay on Crimes and Punishments." (1764.)
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.
Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys (edition of 1805, p. 5).
[857] Hobson's choice.
Tobias Hobson (died 1630) was the first man in England that let out hackney horses. When a man came for a horse he was led into the stable, where there was a great choice, but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next to the stable-door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance,—from whence it became a proverb when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say, "Hobson's choice."—Spectator, No. 509.
Where to elect there is but one,
'T is Hobson's choice,—take that or none.
Thomas Ward (1577-1639): England's Reformation, chap. iv. p. 326.
Intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.
Lord Coleridge remarked that Maule told him what he said in the "black beetle" matter: "Creswell, who had been his pupil, was on the other side in a case where he was counsel, and was very lofty in his manner. Maule appealed to the court: 'My lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.'" (Repeated to a member of the legal profession in the United States.)
It is a far cry to Lochow.
Lochow and the adjacent districts formed the original seat of the Campbells. The expression of "a far cry to Lochow" was proverbial. (Note to Scott's "Rob Roy," chap. xxix.)
Lucid interval.
Bacon: Henry VII. Sidney: On Government, vol. i. chap. ii. sect. 24. Fuller: A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, book iv. chap. ii. South: Sermon, vol. viii. p. 403. Dryden: MacFlecknoe. Mathew Henry: Commentaries, Psalm lxxxviii. Johnson: Life of Lyttelton. Burke: On the French Revolution.
Nisi suadeat intervallis.
Bracton: Folio 1243 and folio 420 b. Register Original, 267 a.
Mince the matter.
Cervantes: Don Quixote, Author's Preface. Shakespeare: Othello, act ii. sc. 3. William King: Ulysses and Teresias.
Months without an R.
It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an R in their name to eat an oyster.—Butler: Dyet's Dry Dinner. (1599.)
[858] Nation of shopkeepers.
From an oration purporting to have been delivered by Samuel Adams at the State House in Philadelphia, Aug. 1, 1776. (Philadelphia, printed; London, reprinted for E. Johnson, No. 4 Ludgate Hill, 1776.) W. V. Wells, in his Life of Adams, says: "No such American edition has ever been seen, but at least four copies are known of the London issue. A German translation of this oration was printed in 1778, perhaps at Berne; the place of publication is not given."
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers.—Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. book iv. chap. vii. part 3. (1775.)
And what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.—Tucker (Dean of Gloucester): Tract. (1766.)
Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers.—Bertrand Barère. (June 11, 1794.)
New departure.
This new page opened in the book of our public expenditures, and this new departure taken, which leads into the bottomless gulf of civil pensions and family gratuities.—T. H. Benton: Speech in the U. S. Senate against a grant to President Harrison's widow, April, 1841.
Nothing succeeds like success.
(Rien ne réussit comme le succès.—Dumas: Ange Pitou, vol. i. p. 72. 1854.) A French proverb.
Orthodoxy is my doxy; Heterodoxy is another man's doxy.
"I have heard frequent use," said the late Lord Sandwich, in a debate on the Test Laws, "of the words 'orthodoxy' and 'heterodoxy;' but I confess myself at a loss to know precisely what they mean." "Orthodoxy, my Lord," said Bishop Warburton, in a whisper,—"orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy."—Priestley: Memoirs, vol. i. p. 572.
Paradise of fools; Fool's paradise.
The earliest instance of this expression is found in William Bullein's "Dialogue," p. 28 (1573). It is used by Shakespeare, Middleton, Milton, Pope, Fielding, Crabbe, and others.
Paying through the nose.
Grimm says that Odin had a poll-tax which was called in Sweden a nose-tax; it was a penny per nose, or poll.—Deutsche Rechts Alterthümer.
[859] Public trusts.
It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any till they are first proved, and found fit for the business they are to be intrusted with.—Mathew Henry: Commentaries, Timothy iii.
To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.—Burke: On the French Revolution.
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.—Thomas Jefferson ("Winter in Washington, 1807"), in a conversation with Baron Humboldt. See Rayner's "Life of Jefferson," p. 356 (Boston, 1834).
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.—John C. Calhoun: Speech, July 13, 1835.
The phrase, "public office is a public trust," has of late become common property.—Charles Sumner (May 31, 1872).
The appointing power of the pope is treated as a public trust.—W. W. Crapo (1881).
The public offices are a public trust.—Dorman B. Eaton (1881).
Public office is a public trust.—Abram S. Hewitt (1883).
He who regards office as a public trust.—Daniel S. Lamont (1884).
Rather your room as your company.
Marriage of Wit and Wisdom (circa 1570).
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
From an inscription on the cannon near which the ashes of President John Bradshaw were lodged, on the top of a high hill near Martha Bay in Jamaica.—Stiles: History of the Three Judges of King Charles I.
This supposititious epitaph was found among the papers of Mr. Jefferson, and in his handwriting. It was supposed to be one of Dr. Franklin's spirit-stirring inspirations.—Randall: Life of Jefferson, vol. iii. p. 585.
Rest and be thankful.
An inscription on a stone seat on the top of one of the Highlands in Scotland. It is also the title of one of Wordsworth's poems.
Rowland for an Oliver.
These were two of the most famous in the list of Charlemagne's twelve peers; and their exploits are rendered so ridiculously and equally extravagant by the old romancers, that from thence arose that saying amongst our plain and sensible ancestors of giving one a "Rowland for his Oliver," to signify the matching one incredible lie with another.—Thomas Warburton.
[860] Sardonic smile.
The island of Sardinia, consisting chiefly of marshes and mountains, has from the earliest period to the present been cursed with a noxious air, an ill-cultivated soil, and a scanty population. The convulsions produced by its poisonous plants gave rise to the expression of sardonic smile, which is as old as Homer (Odyssey, xx. 302).—Mahon: History of England, vol. i. p. 287.
The explanation given by Mahon of the meaning of "sardonic smile" is to be sure the traditional one, and was believed in by the late classical writers. But in the Homeric passage referred to, the word is "sardanion" (σαρδάνιον), not "sardonion." There is no evidence that Sardinia was known to the composers of what we call Homer. It looks as though the word was to be connected with the verb σαίρω, "show the teeth;" "grin like a dog;" hence that the "sardonic smile" was a "grim laugh."—M. H. Morgan.
Sister Anne, do you see any one coming?
The anxious question of one of the wives of Bluebeard.
Stone-wall Jackson.
This saying took its rise from the battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. Said General Bernard E. Bee, "See, there is Jackson, standing like a stone-wall."
The King is dead! Long live the King!
The death of Louis XIV. was announced by the captain of the bodyguard from a window of the state apartment. Raising his truncheon above his head, he broke it in the centre, and throwing the pieces among the crowd, exclaimed in a loud voice, "Le Roi est mort!" Then seizing another staff, he flourished it in the air as he shouted, "Vive le Roi!"—Pardoe: Life of Louis XIV., vol. iii. p. 457.
The woods are full of them!
Alexander Wilson, in the Preface to his "American Ornithology" (1808), quotes these words, and relates the story of a boy who had been gathering flowers. On bringing them to his mother, he said: "Look, my dear ma! What beautiful flowers I have found growing in our place! Why, all the woods are full of them!"
Thin red line.
The Russians dashed on towards that thin red-line streak tipped with a line of steel.—Russell: The British Expedition to the Crimea (revised edition), p. 187.
Soon the men of the column began to see that though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and exact.—Kinglake: Invasion of the Crimea, vol. iii. p. 455.
The spruce beauty of the slender red line.—Ibid. (sixth edition), vol. iii. p. 248.
[861] What you are pleased to call your mind.
A solicitor, after hearing Lord Westbury's opinion, ventured to say that he had turned the matter over in his mind, and thought that something might be said on the other side; to which he replied, "Then, sir, you will turn it over once more in what you are pleased to call your mind."—Nash: Life of Lord Westbury, vol. ii. 292.
When in doubt, win the trick.
Hoyle: Twenty-four Rules for Learners, Rule 12.
Wisdom of many and the wit of one.
A definition of a proverb which Lord John Russell gave one morning at breakfast at Mardock's,—"One man's wit, and all men's wisdom."—Memoirs of Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 473.
Wooden walls of England.
The credite of the Realme, by defending the same with our Wodden Walles, as Themistocles called the Ship of Athens.—Preface to the English translation of Linschoten (London).
But me no buts.
Fielding: Rape upon Rape, act ii. sc. 2. Aaron Hill: Snake in the Grass, sc. 1.
Cause me no causes.
Massinger: A New Way to Pay Old Debts, act
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