James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Does Homer to Each mind
Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because he wrote what passed in God’s world, which is the same after thirty centuries?Carlyle.
Do falta dicha, por demas es diligencia—Diligence is of no use where luck is wanting.Spanish Proverb.
Dogmatic jargon, learn’d by heart, / Trite sentences, hard terms of art, / To vulgar ears seem so profound, / They fancy learning in the sound.Gay.
Do good and throw it into the sea; if the fish know it not, the Lord will.Turkish Proverb.
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.Pope.
Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.Ben. Franklin.
Dogs should not be taught to eat leather (so indispensable for leashes and muzzles).German Proverb.
Dogs that bark at a distance ne’er bite at hand.Scotch Proverb.
Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man’s life.Sir P. Sidney.
Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.Henry V., iii. 7.
Doing is the great thing; for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.Ruskin.
Doing leads more surely to saying than saying to doing.Vinet.
Doing nothing is doing ill.Proverb.
Dolce far niente—Sweet idleness.Italian.
Dolci cose a vedere, e dolci inganni—Things sweet to see, and sweet deceptions.Ariosto.
Dolendi modus, timendi non autem—There is a limit to grief, but not to fear.Pliny.
Doli non doli sunt, nisi astu colas—Fraud is not fraud, unless craftily planned.Plautus.
Dolium volvitur—An empty vessel rolls easily.Proverb.
Dolori affici, sed resistere tamen—To be affected with grief, but still to resist it.Pliny.
Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?—Who inquires in an enemy whether it be stratagem or valour?Virgil.
Dolus versatur in generalibus—Fraud deals in generalities.Law.
Domandar chi nacque prima, l’uovo o la gallina—Ask which was first produced, the egg or the hen.Italian Proverb.
Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains.Fielding.
Domestic happiness! thou only bliss / Of happiness that has survived the Fall.Cowper.
Domi manere convenit felicibus—Those who are happy at home should remain at home.Proverb.
Domine, dirige nos—Lord, direct us!
Domini pudet, non servitutis—I am ashamed of my master, but not of my condition as a servant.Seneca.
Dominus illuminatio mea—The Lord is my light.Motto.
Dominus providebit—The Lord will provide.Motto.
Dominus videt plurimum in rebus suis—The master sees best in his own affairs.Phædrus.
Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo—The Lord be with you, and with thy spirit.
Domitæ naturæ—Of a tame nature.
Domus amica domus optima—The house of a friend is the best house.
Domus et placens uxor—Thy house and pleasing wife.
Domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium—The safest place of refuge for every man is his own home.Coke.
Dona præsentis cape lætus horæ, et / Linque severa—Gladly enjoy the gifts of the present hour, and banish serious thoughts.Horace.
Donatio mortis causa—A gift made in prospect of death.Law.
Don de plaire—The gift of pleasing.French.
Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos; / Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris—So long as you are prosperous you will reckon many friends; if fortune frowns on you, you will be alone.Ovid.
Done to death by slanderous tongues.Much Ado, v. 3.
Donna di finestra, uva di strada—A woman at the window is a bunch of grapes by the wayside.Italian Proverb.
Donna è mobile come plume in vento—Woman is as changeable as a feather in the wind.Verdi.
Donner de si mauvaise grâce qu’on n’a pas d’obligation—To give so ungraciously as to do away with any obligation.French.
Donner une chandelle à Dieu et une au diable—To give one candle to God and another to the devil.French Proverb.
Donnez, mais, si vous pouvez, épargnez au pauvre, la honte de tendre la main—Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of holding out the hand.Diderot.
Dono dedit—Gave as a gift.
Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or a St. Francis of Assisi. The saints are in heaven.Bp. Liguori.
Do not ask if a man has been through college. Ask if a college has been through him.Chapin.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, / Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, / And recks not his own rede.Hamlet, i. 3.
Do not flatter your benefactors.Buddhist Proverb.
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose / That you resolv’d to effect.Tempest, iii. 2.
Do not give dalliance / Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw / To the fire i’ the blood. Be more abstemious, / Or else good night your vow.Tempest, iv. 1.
Do not halloo till you are out of the wood.Proverb.
Do not lose the present in vain perplexities about the future. If fortune lours to-day, she may smile to-morrow.Sir T. Martin.
Do not refuse the employment which the hour brings you for one more ambitious.Emerson.
Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor.Spanish Proverb.
Do not tell a friend anything that you would conceal from an enemy.Arabian Proverb.
Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and one as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside; it is better our hearts should be swept clean of them.Ruskin.
Do not train boys to learning by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be the better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.Plato.
Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your statue; the light of the public square will test its value.Michael Angelo to a young sculptor.
Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.Emerson.
Don’t be “consistent,” but be simply true.Holmes.
Don’t budge, if you are at ease where you are.German Proverb.
Don’t despise a slight wound or a poor relative.Danish Proverb.
Don’t dissipate your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.Goethe.
Don terrible de la familiarité—The terrible gift of familiarity.Mirabeau.
Don’t fly till your wings are fledged.German Proverb.
Don’t hate; only pity and avoid those that follow lies.Carlyle.
Don’t put too fine a point to your wit, for fear it should get blunted.Cervantes.
Don’t quit the highway for a short cut.Portuguese Proverb.
Don’t reckon your chickens before they are hatched.Proverb.
Don’t throw away the old shoes till you’ve got new ones.Dutch Proverb.
Donum exitiale Minervæ—The fatal gift to Minerva, i.e., the wooden horse, by means of which the Greeks took Troy.Virgil.
Do on the hill as ye do in the ha’.Scotch Proverb.
Do right; though pain and anguish be thy lot, / Thy heart will cheer thee when the pain’s forgot; / Do wrong for pleasure’s sake, then count thy gains, / The pleasure soon departs, the sin remains.Bp. Shuttleworth.
Dormit aliquando jus, moritur nunquam—A right is sometimes in abeyance, but never abolished.Law.
Dormiunt aliquando leges, nunquam moriuntur—The law sleeps sometimes, but never dies.Law.
Dos d’âne—Saddleback (lit. ass’s back).French.
Dos est magna parentum / Virtus—The virtue of parents is a great dowry.Horace.
Dos est uxoria lites—Strife is the dowry of a wife.Ovid.
[Greek]—Gift both dainty and dear.Homer.
Dos linajes solo hay en el mundo, el “tener” y el “no tener”—There are but two families in the world, those who have, and those who have not.Cervantes.
[Greek]—Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.Archimedes.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.Ben. Franklin.
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say aye; / And I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear’st, / Thou may’st prove false; at lovers’ perjuries / They say Jove laughs.Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2.
Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight / Adonis painted by a running brook; / And Cytherea all in sedges hid; / Which seem to move and wanton with her breath; / Even as the waving sedges play with wind.Tam. of Shrew, Ind. 2.
Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there are to be no more cakes and ale?Twelfth Night, ii. 3.
Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.Emerson.
Do the duty that lies nearest to you. Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.Kingsley.
Do the duty which lies nearest to thee. Thy second duty will already have become clearer.Carlyle.
Do thine own task, and be therewith content.Goethe.
Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.Much Ado, ii. 3.
Doth the eagle know what is in the pit, / Or wilt thou go ask the mole?William Blake.
Do thy little well, and for thy comfort know, / Great men can do their greatest work no better than just so.Goethe.
Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn, and caldron bubble.Macbeth, iv. 1.
Double, double toil and trouble; that is the life of all governors that really govern; not the spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle can be theirs.Carlyle.
Double entendre—A double meaning.French.
Double entente—Double signification.French.
Doubting the reality of love leads to doubting everything.Amiel.
Doubting things go ill often hurts more / Than to be sure they do.Cymbeline, i. 7.
Doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.H. Ballou.
Doubt is the abettor of tyranny.Amiel.
Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.Colton.
Doubtless the pleasure is as great / Of being cheated as to cheat.Butler.
Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action.Goethe.
Doubt thou the stars are fire; / Doubt that the sun doth move; / Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt I love.Hamlet, ii. 2.
Douceur—A bribe.French.
Do ut des—I give that you may give.Maxim of Bismarck.
Doux yeux—Tender glances.French.
Dove bisognan rimedj, il sospirar non vale—Where remedies are needed, sighing is of no use.Italian Proverb.
Dove è grand’ amore, quivi è gran dolore—Where the love is great the pain is great.Italian Proverb.
Dove è il Papa, ivi è Roma—Where the Pope is, Rome is.Italian Proverb.
Dove è l’amore, là è l’occhio—Where love is, there the eye is.Italian Proverb.
Dove entra il vino, esce la vergogna—When wine enters modesty goes.Italian Proverb.
Dove la voglia è pronta, le gambe son leggiere—When the will is prompt, the legs are light.Italian Proverb.
Do weel and doubt nae man; do ill and doubt a’ men.Scotch Proverb.
Do we not all submit to death? The highest sentence of the law, sentence of death, is passed on all of us by the fact of birth; yet we live patiently under it, patiently undergo it when the hour comes.Carlyle.
Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, / The love of love.Tennyson, of the poet.
Do what he will, he cannot realise / Half he conceives—the glorious vision flies; / Go where he may, he cannot hope to find / The truth, the beauty pictured in the mind.Rogers.
Do what we can, summer will have its flies; if we go a-fishing, we must expect a wet coat.Emerson.
Down, thou climbing sorrow; / Thy element’s below.King Lear, ii. 4.
Downward to climb and backward to advance.Pope.
Downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.Macbeth, iii. 2.
Do you think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you?Emerson.
Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer.Napoleon.
Dramatis personæ—Characters represented.
Draw thyself from thyself.Goethe.
Dream after dream ensues, / And still they dream that they shall still succeed / And still are disappointed.Cowper.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.Emerson.
Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes. / When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; / Compounds a medley of disjointed things, / A mob of cobblers and a court of kings; / Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad; / Both are the reasonable soul run mad.Dryden.
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.Amiel.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on the earth in the night season, and melt away with the first beams of the sun.Dickens.
Dreams are the children of an idle brain, / Begot of nothing but vain phantasy; / Which are as thin of substance as the air, / And more inconstant than the wind.Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, / Are a substantial world, both pure and good; / Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, / Our pastime and our happiness will grow.Wordsworth.
Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.Hamlet, ii. 2.
Dreams, in general, take their rise from those incidents that have occurred during the day.Herodotus.
Dreams in their development have breath / And tears and torture and the touch of joy; / They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts; / They take a weight from off our waking toils; / They do divide our being; they become a portion of ourselves as of our time, / And look like heralds of eternity.Byron.
Dreigers vechten niet—Those who threaten don’t fight.Dutch Proverb.
Dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind.Sir J. Barrington.
Drinking water neither makes a man sick nor in debt, nor his wife a widow.John Neal.
Drink nothing without seeing it, sign nothing without reading it.Portuguese Proverb.
Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame / When once it is within thee; but before, / May’st rule it as thou list; and pour the shame, / Which it would pour on thee, upon the floor.George Herbert.
Drink to me only with thine eyes, / And I will pledge with mine; / Or leave a kiss but in the cup, / And I’ll not look for wine.Ben Jonson.
Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.Bible.
Drive a coach and six through an act of parliament.Baron S. Rice.
Drive a cow to the ha’, and she’ll run to the byre.Scotch Proverb.
Drive thy business, let not thy business drive thee.Franklin.
Droit d’aubaine—The right of escheat; windfall.
Droit des gens—Law of nations.French.
Droit et avant—Right and forward.French.
Droit et loyal—Right and loyal.French.
Drones hive not with me.Mer. of Ven., ii. 5.
Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.Bible.
Drudgery and knowledge are of kin, / And both descended from one parent sin.S. Butler.
Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory;—of a constitution so treacherously good than it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.Colton.
Drunkenness is voluntary madness.Seneca.
[Greek]—When an oak falls, every one gathers wood.Mencius.
Dry light is ever the best—i.e., from one who, as disinterested, can take a dispassionate view of a matter.Heraclitus.
Dry shoes won’t catch fish.Gaelic Proverb.
Duabus sedere sellis—To sit between two stools.
Du bist am Ende was du bist—Thou art in the end what thou art.Goethe.
Dubitando ad veritatem pervenimus—By way of doubting we arrive at the truth.Cicero.
Dubiam salutem qui dat afflictis, negat—He who offers to the wretched a dubious deliverance, denies all hope.Seneca.
Ducats are clipped, pennies are not.German Proverb.
Duce et auspice—Under his guidance and auspices.Motto.
Duces tecum—You must bring with you (certain documents).Law.
Duce tempus eget—The time calls for a leader.Lucan.
Du choc des esprits jaillissent les étincelles—When great spirits clash, sparks fly about.French Proverb.
Ducis ingenium, res / Adversæ nudare solent, celare secundæ—Disasters are wont to reveal the abilities of a general, good fortune to conceal them.Horace.
Ducit amor patriæ—The love of country leads me.Motto.
Du côté de la barbe est la toute-puissance—The male alone has been appointed to bear rule.Molière.
Ductor dubitantium—A guide to those in doubt.
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt—Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling.Seneca, from Cleanthes.
Du fort au faible—On an average (lit. from the strong to the weak).French.
Du glaubst zu schieben und du wirst geschoben—Thou thinkest thou art shoving and thou art shoved.Goethe.
Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst / Nicht mir—Thou art like to the spirit which thou comprehendest, not to me.Goethe.
Du hast das nicht, was andre haben, / Und andern mangeln deine Gabe; / Aus dieser Unvollkommenheit / Entspringt die Geselligkeit—Thou hast not what others have, and others want what has been given thee; out of such defect springs good-fellowship.Gellert.
Du haut de ces pyramides quarante siécles nous contemplent—From the height of these pyramids forty centuries look down on us.Napoleon to his troops in Egypt.
Dulce domum—Sweet home.A school song.
Dulce est desipere in loco—It is pleasant to play the fool (i.e., relax) sometimes.Horace.
Dulce est miseris socios habuisse doloris—It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misfortune.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country.Horace.
Dulce periculum—Sweet danger.Motto.
Dulce sodalitium—A pleasant association of friends.
Dulcibus est verbis alliciendus amor—Love is to be won by affectionate words.Proverb.
Dulcique animos novitate tenebo—And I will hold your mind captive with sweet novelty.Ovid.
Dulcis amor patriæ, dulce videre suos—Sweet is the love of country, sweet to see one’s kindred.Ovid.
Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici; / Expertus metuit—The cultivation of friendship with the great is pleasant to the inexperienced, but he who has experienced it dreads it.Horace.
Dull, conceited hashes, / Confuse their brains in college classes; / They gang in stirks, and come oot asses, / Plain truth to speak.Burns.
Dull not device by coldness and delay.Othello, ii. 3.
Dumb dogs and still waters are dangerous.German Proverb.
Dumbie winna lee.Scotch Proverb.
Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind, / More than quick words do move a woman’s mind.Two Gent. of Verona, iii. 1.
Dum deliberamus quando incipiendum incipere jam serum est—While we are deliberating to begin, the time to begin is past.Quintilian.
Dum fata fugimus, fata stulti incurrimus—While we flee from our fate, we like fools rush on it.Buchanan.
Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc illuc impellitur—While the mind is in suspense, a very little sways it one way or other.Terence.
Dum lego, assentior—Whilst I read, I assent.Cicero.
Dum loquor, hora fugit—While I am speaking, time flies.Ovid.
Dummodo morata recte veniat, dotata est satis—Provided she come with virtuous principles, a woman brings dowry enough.Plautus.
Dummodo sit dives, barbarus ipse placet—If he be only rich, a very barbarian pleases us.Ovid.
Dum ne ob malefacta peream, parvi æstimo—So be I do not die for evil-doing, I care little for dying.Plautus.
Du moment qu’on aime, on devient si doux—From the moment one falls in love, one becomes sweet in the temper.Marmontel.
Dum se bene gesserit—So long as his behaviour is good.Law.
Dum singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur—While they fight separately, the whole are conquered.Tacitus.
Dum spiro, spero—While I breathe, I hope.Motto.
Dum tacent, clamant—While silent, they cry aloud, i.e., their silence bespeaks discontent.Cicero.
Du musst steigen oder sinken, / Du musst herrschen und gewinnen, / Oder dienen und verlieren, / Leiden oder triumphiren, / Amboss oder Hammer sein—Thou must mount up or sink down, must rule and win or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be anvil or hammer.Goethe.
Dum vires annique sinunt, tolerate labores: / Jam veniet tacito curva senecta pede—While your strength and years permit, you should endure labour; bowed old age will soon come on with silent foot.Ovid.
Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt—While fools shun one set of faults, they run into the opposite one.Horace.
Dum vivimus, vivamus—While we live, let us live.Motto.
D’une vache perdue, c’est quelque chose de recouvrer la queue—When a cow is lost, it is something to recover the tail.French Proverb.
Duo quum faciunt idem non est idem—When two do the same thing, it is not the same.Terence.
Duos qui sequitur lepores neutrum capit—He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither.Proverb.
Dupes indeed are many; but of all dupes there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.Carlyle.
Durante beneplacito—During good pleasure.
Durante vita—During life.
Dura più incudine che il martello—The anvil lasts longer than the hammer.Italian Proverb.
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis—Be patient, and preserve yourself for better times.Virgil.
Durch Vernünfteln wird Poesie vertrieben / Aber sie mag das Vernüftige lieben—Poetry loves what is true in reason, but is scared away (dispersed) by subtlety in reasoning.Goethe.
Durum et durum non faciunt murum—Hard and hard (i.e., without mortar) do not make a wall.
Durum! Sed levius fit patientia / Quicquid corrigere est nefas—’Tis hard! But that which we are not permitted to correct is rendered lighter by patience.Horace.
Durum telum necessitas—Necessity is a hard weapon.Proverb.
Du sollst mit dem Tode zufrieden sein. / Warum machst du dir das Leben zur Pein?—Thou shouldst make peace (lit. be content) with death. Why then make thy life a torture to thee?Goethe.
Dusting, darning, drudging, nothing is great or small, / Nothing is mean or irksome: love will hallow it all.Dr. Walter Smith.
Dust long outlasts the storied stone.Byron.
Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.Bible.
Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas—There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.Napoleon.
Dutchmen must have wide breeches.Frisian Proverb.
Duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.Mrs. Jameson.
Duties are ours; events are God’s.Cecil.
Duty by habit is to pleasure turn’d; / He is content who to obey has learn’d.Sir E. Brydges.
Duty demands the parent’s voice / Should sanctify the daughter’s choice, / In that is due obedience shown; / To choose belongs to her alone.Moore.
Duty, especially out of the domain of love, is the veriest slavery in the world.J. G. Holland.
Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world, while at the same time it detaches us from it.Amiel.
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and goes to bed with us in the evening.Gladstone.
Duty is the demand of the passing hour.Goethe.
Duty scorns prudence, and criticism has few terrors for a man with a great purpose.Disraeli.
Duty—the command of Heaven, the eldest voice of God.Kingsley.
Dux fœmina facti—A woman the leader in the deed.Virgil.
Each animal out of its habitat would starve.Emerson.
Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, / Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.Johnson.
Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.Emerson.
Each creature seeks its perfection in another.Luther.
Each day still better other’s happiness, / Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap, / Add an immortal title to your crown.Richard II., i. 1.
Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world, and the old man lives among graves.Jean Paul.
Each good thought or action moves / The dark world nearer to the sun.Whittier.
Each heart is a world. You find all within yourself that you find without. The world that surrounds you is the magic glass of the world within you.Lavater.
Each human heart can properly exhibit but one love, if even one; the “first love, which is infinite,” can be followed by no second like unto it.Carlyle.
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, / The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.Gray.
Each man begins the world afresh, and the last man repeats the blunders of the first.Amiel.
Each man can learn something from his neighbour: at least he can learn to have patience with him—to live and let live.Kingsley.
Each man has his fortune in his own hands, as the artist has a piece of rude matter, which he is to fashion into a certain shape.Goethe.
Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.Emerson.
Each man sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal.Emerson.
Each man’s chimney is his golden milestone, is the central point from which he measures every distance through the gateways of the world around him.Longfellow.
Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.Emerson.