James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Respectable mediocrity to Sadness and gladness
Respectable mediocrity offends nobody.Brougham.
Respice finem—Look to the end.
Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo / Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces—I would recommend the learned imitator to study closely his model in life and manners, and thence to draw his expressions to the life.Horace.
Respondeat superior—Let the principal answer.Law.
Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.J. G. Holland.
Rest and be thankful.Inscription on a wayside-seat.
Rest and success are fellows.Proverb.
Rest and undisturbed content have now no place on earth, nor can the greatest affluence of worldly good procure them,… they are peculiar to the love and fruition of God alone.Thomas à Kempis.
Rest is for the dead.Carlyle.
Rest is good after the work is done.Danish Proverb.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labour.Plutarch.
Rest is won only by work.Proverb.
Rest not in an ovation, but in a triumph over thy passions.Sir Thomas Browne.
Rest not upon scattered counsels, for they will rather distract and mislead than settle and direct.Bacon.
Rest! rest! Shall I not have all eternity to rest in?Arnauld.
Rest thy unrest in England’s lawful earth.Richard III., iv. 4.
Restat iter cœlo: cœlo tentabimus ire; / Da veniam cœpto, Jupiter alte, meo—There remains a way through the heavens; through the heavens we will attempt to go. High Jupiter, pardon my bold design.Ovid, in the name of Dædalus when he escaped from the labyrinth on wings.
Restore to God his due in tithe and time: / A tithe purloined cankers the whole estate.George Herbert.
Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are what form the education of the world.Burke.
Restraint and obstruction (la gêne) constitute the principle of movement.Renan.
Résumé—Recapitulation; summary.French.
Resurgam—I shall rise again.Motto.
Retinens vestigia famæ—Retracing the footsteps of fame.Motto.
Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.Bible.
Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man’s hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame.Simms.
Revelation nowhere burns more purely and more beautifully than in the New Testament.Goethe.
Revenge, at first though sweet, bitter erelong back on itself recoils.Milton.
Revenge barketh only at the stars, and spite spurns at that she cannot reach.Socrates.
Revenge commonly hurts both the offerer and the sufferer; as we see in a foolish bee, which in her anger envenometh the flesh and loseth her sting, and so lives a drone ever after.Bp. Hall.
Revenge converts a little right into a great wrong.German Proverb.
Revenge has no limits, for sin has none.Fr. Hebbel.
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.Colton.
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice.” It is so, but without this wild austere stock there would be no justice in the world.Burke.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which, the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.Bacon.
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance, of justice.Johnson.
Revenge is an inheritance of weak souls.Körner.
Revenge is barren of itself; itself is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its satiety despair.Schiller.
Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.Joubert.
Revenge of a wrong only makes another wrong.Spurgeon.
Revenons à nos montons—Let us come back to our subject (lit. sheep).Pierre Blanchet.
Reverence for human worth, earnest devout search for it, and encouragement of it, loyal furtherance and obedience to it, is the outcome and essence of all true religions, and was and ever will be.Carlyle.
Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day’s performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet and from it learn the all.Margaret Fuller.
Reverence (Ehrfurcht) which no child brings into the world along with him, is the one thing on which all depends for making a man in every point a man.Goethe.
Reverie is the Sunday of thought.Amiel.
Reverie, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bordered as by a natural frontier.Victor Hugo.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.Coleridge.
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.Shelley.
Revocate animos, mœstumque timorem / Mittite—Resume your courage, and cast off desponding fear.Virgil.
Revolutions are like the most noxious dungheaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables.Napoleon.
Revolutions are not made, they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.Wendell Phillips.
Revolutions never go backward.Wendell Phillips.
Rex datur propter regnum, non regnum propter regem. Potentia non est nisi ad bonum—A king is given for the sake of the kingdom, not the kingdom for the sake of the king. His power is only for the public good.Law.
Rex est major singulis, minor universis—The king is greater than each singly, but less than all unitedly.Bracton.
Rex est qui metuit nihil; / Rex est qui cupit nihil—He is a king who fears nothing; he is a king who desires nothing.Seneca.
Rex non potest fallere nec falli—The king cannot deceive or be deceived.
Rex non potest peccare—The-king can do no wrong.
Rex nunquam moritur—The king never dies.Law.
Rex regnat, sed non gubernat—The king reigns, but does not govern.Jan Zamoiski.
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.Jeremy Collier.
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.Plato.
Rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures.Colton.
Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed; it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at.Carlyle.
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.Hamlet, iii. 1.
Rich men are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors.Burton.
Rich men without wisdom and learning are but sheep with golden fleeces.Solon.
Rich, not gaudy.Hamlet, i. 3.
Rich the treasure, / Sweet the pleasure; / Sweet is pleasure after pain.Dryden.
Rich with the spoils of time.Sir T. Browne.
Richard’s himself again!Colley Cibber.
Richer than rubies, / Dearer than gold, / Woman, true woman, / Glad we behold!Old love-song.
Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.Goethe.
Riches and favour go before wisdom and art.Danish Proverb.
Riches are as a stronghold in the imagination of the rich man.Solomon.
Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions.Bacon.
Riches are got wi’ pain, kept wi’ care, and tint (lost) wi’ grief.Scotch Proverb.
Riches are like bad servants, whose shoes are made of running leather, and will never tarry long with one master.Brooks.
Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.Cervantes.
Riches are often abused, never refused.Danish Proverb.
Riches breed care, poverty is safe.Danish Proverb.
Riches bring cares.Proverb.
Riches come better after poverty than poverty after riches.Chinese Proverb.
Riches do not consist in having more gold and silver, but in having more in proportion than our neighbours.Locke.
Riches do not exhilarate us so much by their possession as they torment us with their loss.Gregory.
Riches fineless is as poor as winter / To him that ever fears he shall be poor.Othello, iii. 3.
Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.Plutarch.
Riches have made mair men covetous than covetousness has made men rich.Scotch Proverb.
Riches have wings.Proverb.
Riches profit not in the day of wrath.Bible.
Riches take peace from the soul, but rarely, if ever, confer it.Petrarch.
Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is God.Lewis Wallace.
Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one.Feltham.
Richt wrangs nae man.Scotch Proverb.
Richter sollen zwel gleiche Ohren haben—Judges should have two ears, both alike.German Proverb.
Ride si sapis—Laugh, if you are wise.Martial.
Ridentem dicere verum / Quid vetat?—Why may a man not speak the truth in a jocular vein?Horace.
Ridere in stomacho—To laugh inwardly, i.e., in one’s sleeve.
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.Addison.
Ridet argento domus—The house is smiling with silver.Horace.
Ridetur chorda qui semper oberrat eadem—He is laughed at who is for ever harping away on the same string.Horace.
Ridicule has ever been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success.Goldsmith.
Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below.Carlyle.
Ridicule is a weak weapon when levelled at a strong mind; but common men are cowards, and dread an empty laugh.Tupper.
Ridicule, while it often checks what is absurd, fully as often smothers that which is noble.Scott.
Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance and adopted by folly.Smollett.
Ridiculum acri / Fortius ac melius magnas plerumque secat res—Ridicule often settles matters of importance better and more effectually than severity.Horace.
Ridiculus æque nullus est, quam quando esurit—No man is so facetious as when he is hungry.Plautus.
Rien de plus éloquent que l’argent comptant—Nothing is more eloquent than ready money.French Proverb.
Rien de plus hautain qu’un homme médiocre devenu puissant—Nothing is more haughty than a common-place man raised to power.French Proverb.
Rien n’a qui assez n’a—Who has nothing has not enough.French Proverb.
Rien n’arrive pour rien—Nothing happens for nothing.French Proverb.
Rien n’empêche tant d’être naturel que l’envie de la paraître—Nothing so much prevents one from being natural as the desire to appear so.La Rochefoucauld.
Rien n’est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable—Nothing is beautiful but the true; the true alone is lovely.Boileau.
Rien n’est plus estimable que la civilité; mais rien de plus ridicule, et de plus à charge, que la cérémonie—Nothing is more estimable then politeness, and nothing more ridiculous or tiresome than ceremony.French.
Rien n’est plus rare que la véritable bonté; ceux même qui croient en avoir n’ont d’ordinaire que de la complaisance ou de la faiblesse—Nothing is rarer than real goodness; those even who think they possess it are generally only good-natured and weak.La Rochefoucauld.
Rien n’est si dangereux qu’un indiscret ami; / Mieux vaudroit un sage ennemi—Nothing more dangerous than an imprudent friend; a prudent enemy would be better.
Rien ne déconcerte plus efficacement les desseins des pervers, que la tranquillité des grands cœurs—Nothing so effectively baffles the schemes of evil men so much as the calm composure of great souls.Mirabeau.
Rien ne m’est sûr que la chose incertaine—There is nothing certain but the uncertain.French.
Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manquait à la nôtre—Nothing is wanting to his glory; he was wanting to ours.Inscription on the bust of Molière, which was placed in the Academy in 1773.
Rien ne pése tant qu’un secret—Nothing presses so heavy on us as a secret.La Fontaine.
Rien ne peut arrêter sa vigilante audace. / L’été na point de feux, l’hiver n’a point de glace—Nothing can check his watchful daring. For him the summer has no heat, the winter no ice.Boileau of Louis XIV.
Rien ne ressemble plus à un honnête homme qu’un fripon—Nothing resembles an honest man more than a rogue.French Proverb.
Rien ne réussit mieux que le succès—Nothing succeeds like success.
Rien ne s’anéantit; non, rien, et la matière, / Comme un fleuve éternel, roule toujour entière—Nothing is annihilated, no, nothing; matter, like an ever-flowing stream, still rolls on undiminished.Boucher.
Rien ne s’arrête pour nous—Nothing anchors itself fast for us.Pascal.
Rien ne sert de courir: il faut partir à point—It’s no use running; only setting out betimes.La Fontaine.
Rien ne vaut poulain s’il ne rompt son lien—A colt is nothing worth if it does not break its halter.French Proverb.
Rien que s’entendre—Nothing but good understanding.Said of friendship.
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.T. Edwards.
Right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe.Emerson.
Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom.Emerson.
Right is right, since God is God.Faber.
Right wrongs no man.Proverb.
Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.Bible.
Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way.Bible.
Rightly, poetry is organic. We cannot know things by words and writing, but only by taking a central position in the universe and living in its forms.Emerson.
Rightly to be great / Is not to stir without great argument, / But greatly to find quarrel in a straw / When honour’s at the stake.Hamlet, iv. 4.
Rigour pushed too far is sure to miss its aim, however good; as the bow snaps that is bent too stiffly.Schiller.
Rinasce più gloriosa—It rises more glorious than ever.Motto.
Riñen las comadres y dicense las verdades—Gossips quarrel and tell the truth.Spanish Proverb.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, / Ring, happy bells, across the snow!Tennyson.
Ripening love is the stillest; the shady flowers in this spring, as in the other, shun sunlight.Jean Paul.
Rira bien qui rira le dernier—He laughs well who laughs the last.French Proverb.
Rire à gorge déployée—To laugh immoderately.French.
Rire dans sa barbe—To laugh in one’s sleeve.
Rise, Christopher! thou hast found thy King, and turn / Back to the earth, for I have need of thee. / Thou hast sustained the whole world, bearing me, / The Lord of earth and heaven.Lewis Morris.
Rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man.Bible.
Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapours, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre.Washington Irving.
Rising to great place is by a winding stair.Bacon.
Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est—Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.Catullus.
Risum teneatis, amici?—Can you refrain from laughter, my friends?Horace.
Risus abundat in ore stultorum—Laughter is common in the mouth of fools.
Rivalem patienter habe—Bear patiently with a rival.Ovid.
Rivers are roads which travel, and which carry us whither we wish to go.Pascal.
Rivers cannot fill the sea, that, drinking, thirsteth still.Christina Rossetti.
Rivers flow with sweet waters; but, having joined the ocean, they become undrinkable.Hitopadesa.
Rivers need a spring.Proverb.
Roads are many; authentic finger-posts are few.Carlyle.
Roast meat at three fires; as soon as you’ve basted one, another’s burnin’.George Eliot.
Rob not the poor, because he is poor.Bible.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul.Proverb.
Robespierre à pied et à cheval—Robespierre on foot and on horseback, i.e., Robespierre and Napoleon.Madame de Staël.
Rock of ages, cleft for me, / Let me hide myself in thee.Toplady.
Rock’d in the cradle of the deep, / I lay me down in peace to sleep.Emma Willard.
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck’d.Milton.
Rogner les ailes à quelqu’un—To clip one’s wings.French.
Rogues are always found out in some way. Whoever is a wolf will act as a wolf; that is the most certain of all things.La Fontaine.
Roi fainéant—A do-nothing king.French.
Roland for an Oliver—i.e., one audacity capped by a greater.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; / Man marks the earth with ruin,—his control / Stops with the shore.Byron.
Roma locuta est; causa finita est—Rome has spoken; the case is at an end.
Romæ rus optas, absentem rusticus urbem / Tollis ad astra levis—At Rome you pine unsettled for the country, in the country you laud the distant city to the skies.Horace.
Romæ Tibur amem, ventosus, Tibure Romam—Fickle as the wind, I love Tibur when at Rome, and Rome when at Tibur.Horace.
Romance and novel paint beauty in colours more charming than Nature, and describe a happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!Goldsmith.
Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.I. Disraeli.
Romance is the poetry of literature.Mme. Necker.
Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer’s horses clear the world at a bound. The child’s eye needs no horizon to its prospect…. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five.Willmott.
Romance, like a ghost, eludes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but is poetry in memory.G. W. Curtis.
Romam cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque—All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.Tacitus.
Rome (room) indeed, and room enough, / When there is in it but one only man.Julius Cæsar, i. 2.
Rome n’est plus dans Rome; elle est toute où je suis—Rome is no longer in Rome; it is all where I am.Corneille.
Rome was not built in one day.Heywood.
Root away / The noisome weeds, which without profit suck / The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.Richard II., iii. 4.
Rore vixit more cicadæ—He lived upon dew like a grasshopper.Proverb.
Roses fall, but the thorns remain.Dutch Proverb.
Roses fair on thorns do grow: / And they tell me even so / Sorrows into virtues grow.Dr. Walter Smith.
Roses grow among thorns.Proverb.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; / Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun.Shakespeare.
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for pebbles.Sir Thomas Browne.
Round numbers are always false.Johnson.
Round the world, but never in it.Proverb of sailors.
Rouge et noir—A game of cards (lit. red and black).See Nuttall.
Ruat cælum, fiat voluntas tua—Thy will be done though the heavens should fall.
Rude am I in my speech, / And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.Othello, i. 3.
Rudis indigestaque moles—A rude and unarranged mass.Ovid.
Ruh kommt aus Unruh, und wieder Unruh aus Ruh—Rest comes from unrest, and unrest again from rest.German Proverb.
Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht—Peace is the first duty of a citizen.Count Schulenburg-Kehnert after the battle of Jena.
Rühre die Laute nicht, wenn ringums Trommeln erschallen; / Führen Narren das Wort, schweiget der Weisere still—Touch not the lute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.Herder.
Ruin is most fatal when it begins from the bottom.Goldsmith.
Ruins are mile-stones on the road of time.Chamfort.
Ruins are the broken eggshell of a civilisation which time has hatched and devoured.Julia W. Howe.
Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; / Britons never shall be slaves.Thomson.
Rule youth weel and age will rule itsel’.Scotch Proverb.
Rules of society are nothing; one’s conscience is the umpire.Mme. Dudevant.
Rumour is a pipe / Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures; / And of so easy and so plain a stop / That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, / The still-discordant wavering multitude, / Can play upon it.2 Henry IV., Induc.
Run here or there, thou wilt find no rest, but in humble subjection to the government of a superior.Thomas à Kempis.
Rus in urbe—Country in town.Martial.
Ruse contre ruse—Diamond cut diamond.French.
Ruse de guerre—A stratagem.French.
Rust consumes iron, and envy consumes itself.Danish Proverb.
Rust wastes more than use.French Proverb.
Rustica veritas—Rustic veracity.
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille / Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum—The peasant waits until the river shall cease to flow; but still it glides on, and will glide on for all time to come.Horace.
S’abstenir pour jouir, c’est l’épicurisme de la raison—To abstain so as to enjoy is the epicurism of reason.Rousseau.
’S giebt kein schöner Leben als Student-leben—There is no more beautiful life than that of the student.Fr. Albrecht.
S’il est vrai, il peut être—It may be, if it is true.French Proverb.
S’il fait beau, prends ton manteau; s’il pleut, prends-le si tu veux—If the weather is fine, take your cloak; if it rains, do as you please.French Proverb.
S’il y a beaucoup d’art à savoir parler à propos, il n’y en a pas moins à savoir se taire—If it requires great tact to know how to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.La Rochefoucauld.
S’il y avait un peuple de dieux, il se gouvernerait démocratiquement. Un gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas des hommes—If there were a community of gods, the government would be democratic. A government so perfect is not suitable for men.Rousseau.
’S ist nichts so schlimm, als man wohl denkt / Wenn man’s nur recht erfasst und lenkt—There is nothing so bad as we think it if only we would apprehend and guide it aright.Friedrich-Flotow.
’S wird besser gehen! ’s wird besser gehen! / Die Welt ist rund und muss sich drehen—Things will mend! will mend! The world is round, and must needs spin round.Wohlbrück-Marschner.
Saat, dich säet der Herr dem grossen. Tage der Ernte—Seed, the Lord sows thee for the great day of harvest.Klopstock.
Saat, von Gott gesäet, dem Tage der Garben zu reifen—Seed sown by God, to ripen against the day of the sheaf-binding.Klopstock.
Sabbath-days, quiet islands on the tossing sea of life.S. W. Duffield.
Sabbath profaned, / Whate’er may be gained, / Is sure to be followed by sorrow.Proverb.
Sabbath well spent / Brings a week of content.Proverb.
Sacco pieno rizza l’orecchio—A full sack pricks up (lit. erects) its ear.Italian Proverb.
Sacred courage indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world; that he is aiming neither at self nor comfort, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought in his mind.Emerson.
Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself, in theological language, into the love of God.Froude.
Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.Amiel.
Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.Amiel.
Sacrificed his life to the delineating of life.Goethe, of Schiller.
Sacrificio dell’ intelletto—Sacrifice of intellect.Frederick the Great to D’Alembert.
Sad natures are most tolerant of gaiety.Amiel.
Sad souls are slain in merry company. / Grief best is pleased with grief’s society; / True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed / When with like semblance it is sympathised.Shakespeare.
Sad wise valour is the brave complexion / That leads the van and swallows up the cities.George Herbert.
Sad with the whole of pleasure.Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Sadness and gladness succeed each other.Proverb.