James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Ez for war to Fate steals
Ez for war, I call it murder; / There you hev it plain and flat; / I don’t want to go no furder / Than my Testyment for that.Lowell.
Fa bene, e non guardare a chi—Do good, no matter to whom.Italian Proverb.
Faber suæ fortunæ—The maker of his own fortune.Sallust.
Fabricando fabri fimus—We become workmen by working.Proverb.
Fabula, nec sentis, tota jactaris in urbe—You are the talk, though you don’t know it, of the whole town.Ovid.
Faces are as legible as books, only they are read in much less time, and are much less likely to deceive us.Lavater.
Faces are as paper money, for which, on demand, there frequently proves to be no gold in the coffer.F. G. Trafford.
Faces are but a gallery of portraits.Bacon.
Faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.Scott.
Fac et excusa—Do it and so justify yourself.Proverb.
Facetiarum apud præpotentes in longum memoria est—It is long before men in power forget the jest they have been the subject of.Tacitus.
Fach—Department.German.
Facienda—Things to be done.
Facies non omnibus una, / Nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum—The features were not the same in them all, nor yet are they quite different, but such as we would expect in sisters.Ovid.
Facies tua computat annos—Your face records your age.Juvenal.
Facile est imperium in bonis—It is easy to rule over the good.Plautus.
Facile est inventis addere—It is easy to add to or improve on what has been already invented.Proverb.
Facile largiri de alieno—It is easy to be generous with what is another’s.Proverb.
Facile omnes cum valemus recta consilia / Ægrotis damus—We can all, when we are well, easily give good advice to the sick.Terence.
Facile princeps—The admitted chief; with ease at the top.
Facilis descensus Averno est, / Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; / Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, / Hoc opus, hic labor est—The descent to hell is easy; night and day the gate of gloomy Dis stands open; but to retrace your steps and escape to the upper air, this is a work, this is a toil.Virgil.
Facilius crescit quam inchoatur dignitas—It is more easy to obtain an accession of dignity than to acquire it in the first instance.Labertius.
Facilius sit Nili caput invenire—It would he easier to discover the source of the Nile.Old Proverb.
Facinus audax incipit, / Qui cum opulento pauper homine cœpit rem habere aut negotium—The poor man who enters into partnership with a rich makes a risky venture.Plautus.
Facinus majoris abollæ—A crime of a very deep dye (lit. one committed by a man who wears the garb of a philosopher).Juvenal.
Facinus quos inquinat æquat—Those whom guilt stains it equals, i.e., it puts on even terms.Lucan.
Facit indignatio versum—Indignation gives inspiration to verse.
Facito aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum—Keep doing something, so that the devil may always find you occupied.St. Jerome.
Faciunt næ intelligendo, ut nihil intelligant—They are so knowing that they know nothing.Terence.
Façon de parler—A manner of speaking.French.
Facsimile—An engraved resemblance of a man’s handwriting; an exact copy of anything (lit. do the like).
Facta canam; sed erunt qui me finxisse loquantur—I am about to sing of facts; but some will say I have invented them.Ovid.
Facta ejus cum dictis discrepant—His actions do not harmonise with his words.Cicero.
Facta, non verba—Deeds, not words.
Fact is better than fiction, if only we could get it pure.Emerson.
Facts are apt to alarm us more than the most dangerous principles.Junius.
Facts are chiels that winna ding, / And downa be disputed.Burns.
Facts are stubborn things.Le Sage.
Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body.Burke.
Facts—historical facts, still more biographical—are sacred hierograms, for which the fewest have the key.Carlyle.
Factis ignoscite nostris / Si scelus ingenio scitis abesse meo—Forgive what I have done, since you know all evil intention was far from me.Ovid.
Factotum—A man of all work (lit. do everything).
Factum abiit; monumenta manent—The event is an affair of the past; the memorial of it is still with us.Ovid.
Factum est—It is done.Motto.
Factum est illud; fieri infectum non potest—It is done and cannot be undone.Plautus.
Fader og Moder ere gode, end er Gud bedre—Father and mother are kind, but God is kinder.Danish Proverb.
Fæx populi—The dregs of the people.
Fagerhed uden Tugt, Rose uden Hugt—Beauty without virtue is a rose without scent.Danish Proverb.
Fähigkeiten werden vorausgesetzt; sie sollen zu Fertigkeiten werden—Capacities are presupposed: they are meant to develop into capabilities, or skilled dexterities.Goethe.
Failures are with heroic minds the stepping-stones to success.Haliburton.
Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not; / I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.Raleigh.
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear a fall.”Raleigh on a pane of glass, to which Queen Elizabeth added, “It thy heart fail thee, then why climb at all?”
Fainéant—Do nothing.French.
Faint heart never won fair lady.Proverb.
Faint not; the miles to heaven are but few and short.S. Rutherford.
Fair and softly goes far in a day.Proverb.
Fair enough, if good enough.Proverb.
Fair fa’ guid drink, for it gars (makes) folk speak as they think.Scotch Proverb.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, / Great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race! / Abune them a’ ye tak’ your place, / Paunch, tripe, or thairm; / Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace / As lang’s my airm.Burns to a Haggis.
Fair flowers don’t remain lying by the highway.German Proverb.
Fair folk are aye fusionless (pithless).Scotch Proverb.
Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.Proverb.
Fair maidens wear nae purses—(the lads always paying their share).Scotch Proverb.
Fair play’s a jewel.Proverb.
Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare, / And beauty draws us with a single hair.Pope.
Fair words butter no parsnips.Proverb.
Faire bonne mine à mauvaise jeu—To put a good face on the matter.French.
Faire le chien couchant—To play the spaniel; to cringe.French.
Faire le diable à quatre—To play the devil or deuce.French.
Faire le pendant—To be the fellow.French.
Faire mon devoir—To do my duty.French.
Faire patte de velours—To coax (lit. make a velvet paw).French.
Faire prose sans le savoir—To speak prose without knowing it.Molière.
Faire sans dire—To act without talking.French.
Faire un trou pour en boucher un autre—To make one hole in order to stop another.French Proverb.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, / If better thou belong not to the dawn.Milton.
Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra—Do your duty, come what may.French Proverb.
Fait accompli—A thing already done.French.
Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent; but nothing that they deny.Pascal.
Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favour of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief, of large ones.Holmes.
Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.Stedman.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death, / To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun, / And lands thought smoothly on the farther shore.Young.
Faith builds a bridge from the old world to the next.Young.
Faith doth not lie dead in the breast, but is lovely and fruitful in bringing forth good works.Cranmer.
Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast, / To save dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.Moore.
Faith has given man an inward willingness, a world of strength wherewith to front a world of difficulty.Carlyle.
Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than religion.John Stirling.
Faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called weakest.Madame de Staël.
Faith is letting down our nets into the untransparent deeps at the Divine command, not knowing what we shall take.Faber.
Faith is like love; it does not admit of being forced.Schopenhauer.
Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.Channing.
Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some spiritual hero.Carlyle.
Faith is necessary to victory.Hazlitt.
Faith is nothing but spiritualised imagination.Ward Beecher.
Faith is nothing more than obedience.Voltaire.
Faith is not reason’s labour, but repose.Young.
Faith is not the beginning, but the end of all knowledge.Goethe.
Faith is our largest manufacturer of good works, and wherever her furnaces are blown out, morality suffers.Birrell.
Faith is required at thy hands, and a sincere life, not loftiness of intellect or inquiry into the deep mysteries of God.Thomas à Kempis.
Faith is taking God at His word.Evans.
Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good to God.Luther.
Faith is the creator of the Godhead; not that it creates anything in the Divine Eternal Being, but that it creates that Being in us.Luther.
Faith is the heroism of intellect.C. H. Parkhurst.
Faith is the soul of religion, and works the body.Colton.
Faith loves to lean on Time’s destroying arm.Holmes.
Faith makes us, and not we it; and faith makes its own forms.Emerson.
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, / And looks to that alone; / Laughs at impossibilities, / And cries—“It shall be done.”C. Wesley.
Faith opens a way for the understanding; unbelief closes it.St. Augustine.
Faith without works is like a bird without wings.J. Beaumont.
Faith’s abode / Is mystery for evermore, / Its life, to worship and adore, / And meekly bow beneath the rod, / When the day is dark and the burden sore.Dr. Walter Smith.
Faiths that are different in their roots, / Where the will is right and the heart is sound, / Are much the same in their fruits.J. B. Selkirk.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.Bible.
Faithful found / Among the faithless; faithful only he.Milton.
Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things.Confucius.
Falla pouco, e bem, ter-te-haô por alguem—Speak little and well; they will take you for somebody.Portuguese Proverb.
Fallacia / Alia aliam trudit—One falsehood begets another (lit. thrusts aside another).Terence.
Fallacies we are apt to put upon ourselves by taking words for things.Locke.
Fallentis semita vitæ—The pathway of deceptive or unnoticed life.Horace.
Fallit enim vitium, specie virtutis et umbra, / Cum sit triste habitu, vultuque et veste severum—For vice deceives under an appearance and shadow of virtue when it is subdued in manner and severe in countenance and dress.Juvenal.
Fallitur, egregio quisquis sub principe credit / Servitium. Nunquam libertas gratior extat / Quam sub rege pio—Whoso thinks it slavery to serve under an eminent prince is mistaken. Liberty is never sweeter than under a pious king.Claudianus.
Falls have their risings, wanings have their primes, / And desperate sorrows wait for better times.Quarles.
Falsch ist das Geschlecht der Menschen—False is the race of men.Schiller.
False as dicers’ oaths.Hamlet, iii. 4.
False by degrees and exquisitely wrong.Canning.
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.Macbeth, i. 7.
False folk should hae mony witnesses.Scotch Proverb.
False freends are waur than bitter enemies.Scotch Proverb.
False friends are like our shadow, close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.Bovee.
False glory is the rock of vanity.La Bruyère.
False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity.La Bruyère.
False modesty is the most decent of all falsehood.Chamfort.
False shame is the parent of many crimes.Fox.
Falsehood and death are synonymous.Bancroft.
Falsehood borders so closely upon truth, that a wise man should not trust himself too near the precipice. (?)
Falsehood is cowardice; truth is courage.H. Ballou.
Falsehood is easy, truth is difficult.George Eliot.
Falsehood is folly.Homer.
Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth.Colton.
Falsehood is our one enemy in this world.Carlyle.
Falsehood is so much the more commendable, by how much more it resembles truth, and is the more pleasing the more it is doubtful and possible.Cervantes.
Falsehood is the devil’s daughter, and speaks her father’s tongue.Danish Proverb.
Falsehood is the essence of all sin.Carlyle.
Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients may be swallowed unperceived.Whately.
Falsehood, like the dry rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.Whately.
Falso damnati crimine mortis—Condemned to die on a false charge.Virgil.
Falsum in uno, falsum in omni—False in one thing, false in everything.
Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret / Quem nisi mendosum et medicandum—Undeserved honour delights, and lying calumny alarms no one but him who is full of falsehood and needs to be reformed.Horace.
Fama clamosa—A current scandal.
Fama crescit eundo—Rumour grows as it goes.Virgil.
Fama nihil est celerius—Nothing circulates more swiftly than scandal.Livy.
Famæ damna majora sunt, quam quæ æstimari possint—The loss of reputation is greater than can be possibly estimated.Livy.
Famæ laboranti non facile succurritur—It is not easy to repair a damaged character.Proverb.
Famam extendere factis.—To extend one’s fame by valiant feats.Virgil.
Fame and censure with a tether / By fate are always linked together.Swift.
Fame at its best is but a poor compensation for all the ills of existence.Mrs. Oliphant.
Fame comes only when deserved, and then it is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.Longfellow.
Fame is a fancied life in others’ breath.Pope.
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.Colton.
Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts.Mackenzie.
Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of a room, it will soon fall to the floor. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.Johnson.
Fame is but the breath of the people, and that often unwholesome.Proverb.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.Milton.
Fame is not won on downy plumes nor under canopies.Dante.
Fame is the advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.Stanislaus.
Fame is the breath of popular applause.Herrick.
Fame is the perfume of noble deeds.Socrates.
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, / (That last infirmity of noble minds,) / To scorn delights and live laborious days.Milton.
Fame may be compared to a scold; the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet.Fuller.
Fame only reflects the estimate in which a man is held in comparison with others.Schopenhauer.
Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.Fuller.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else; very rarely to those who say to themselves, “Go to now, let us be a celebrated individual.”Holmes.
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value.Carlyle.
Fame with men, / Being but ampler means to serve mankind, / Should have small rest or pleasure in herself, / But work as vassal to the larger love, / That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.Tennyson.
Fames et mora bilem in nasum conciunt—Hunger and delay stir up one’s bile (lit. in the nostrils).Proverb.
Fames, pestis, et bellum, populi sunt pernicies—Famine, pestilence, and war are the destruction of a people.
Familiare est hominibus omnia sibi ignoscere—It is common to man to pardon all his own faults.
Familiarity breeds contempt.Proverb.
Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.La Rochefoucauld.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.George Eliot.
Famine hath a sharp and meagre face.Dryden.
Fammi indovino, e ti farò ricco—Make me a prophet, and I will make you rich.Italian Proverb.
Fanaticism is a fire which heats the mind indeed, but heats without purifying.Warburton.
Fanaticism is such an overwhelming impression of the ideas relating to the future world as disqualifies for the duties of this.R. Hall.
Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever and rage to anger.Voltaire.
Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.Gibbon.
Fanaticism, soberly defined, / Is the false fire of an o’erheated mind.Cowper.
Fancy is capricious; wit must not be searched for, and pleasantry will not come in at a call.Sterne.
Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence.Landor.
Fancy kills and fancy cures.Scotch Proverb.
Fancy requires much, necessity but little.German Proverb.
Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.Goldsmith.
Fancy rules over two-thirds of the universe, the past and the future, while reality is confined to the present.Jean Paul.
Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience drives it.Fuller.
Fancy surpasses beauty.Proverb.
Fancy, when once brought into religion, knows not where to stop.Whately.
Fanfaronnade—Boasting.French.
Fanned fires and forced love ne’er did weel.Scotch Proverb.
Fantastic tyrant of the amorous heart, / How hard thy yoke! how cruel is thy dart! / Those ’scape thy anger who refuse thy sway, / And those are punished most who most obey.Prior.
Fantasy is of royal blood; the senses, of noble descent; and reason, of civic (bürgerlichen) origin.Feuerbach.
Fantasy is the true heaven-gate and hell-gate of man.Carlyle.
Far ahint maun follow the faster.Scotch Proverb.
Far-awa fowls hae aye fair feathers.Scotch Proverb.
Far better it is to know everything of a little than a little of everything.Pickering.
Far frae court, far frae care.Scotch Proverb.
Far from all resort of mirth / Save the cricket on the hearth.Milton.
Far from home is near to harm.Frisian Proverb.
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, / Their sober wishes never learned to stray; / Along the cool sequester’d vale of life / They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.Gray.
Far greater numbers have been lost by hopes / Than all the magazines of daggers, ropes, / And other ammunitions of despair, / Were ever able to despatch by fear.Butler.
Far niente—A do-nothing.
Far-off cows have long horns.Gaelic Proverb.
Far-off fowls hae feathers fair, / And aye until ye try them; / Though they seem fair, still have a care, / They may prove waur than I am.Burns.
Far or forgot to me is near; / Shadow and sunlight are the same; / The vanished gods to me appear; / And one to me are shame and fear.Emerson.
Fare, fac—Speak, do.
Fare thee well! and if for ever, / Still for ever fare thee well! / E’en though unforgiving, never / ’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.Byron.
Fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! / O wad ye tak’ a thocht and men’! / Ye aiblins micht—I dinna ken— / Still hae a stake: / I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, / E’en for your sake.Burns.
Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! / This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth / The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, / And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: / The third day comes a frost, a killing frost: / And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely / His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, / And then he falls, as I do.Henry VIII., iii. 2.
Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. / I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, / That almost freezes up the heat of life.Romeo and Juliet, iv. 3.
Farewell, happy fields, / Where joy for ever dwells; hail, horror, hail!Milton.
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! / Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars / That make ambition virtue! oh, farewell! / Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, / The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, / The royal banner, and all quality, / Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!Othello, iii. 3.
Farewell to Lochaber, farewell to my Jean, / Where heartsome wi’ thee I hae mony days been; / For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more, / We’ll maybe return to Lochaber no more.Allan Ramsay.
Fari quæ sentiat—To speak what he thinks.Motto.
Farmers are the founders of civilisation.Daniel Webster.
Farrago libelli—The medley of that book of mine.Juvenal.
Fas est et ab hoste doceri—It is right to derive instruction even from an enemy.Ovid.
Fashionability is a kind of elevated vulgarity.G. Darley.
Fashion, a word which fools use, / Their knavery and folly to excuse.Churchill.
Fashion begins and ends in two things it abhors most—singularity and vulgarity.Hazlitt.
Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.Stedman.
Fashion is aristocratic-autocratic.J. G. Holland.
Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches.Locke.
Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid to be overtaken by it. It is a sign that the two things are not far asunder.Hazlitt.
Fashion is the great governor of the world.Fielding.
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.Locke.
Fashion seldom interferes with Nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency.Tuckerman.
Fashion wears out more apparel than the man.Much Ado, iii. 3.
Fast and loose.Love’s L’s. Lost, i. 1.
Fast bind, fast find.Proverb.
Faster than his tongue / Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.As You Like It, iii. 5.
Fastidientis est stomachi multa degustare—Tasting so many dishes shows a dainty stomach.Seneca.
Fasti et nefasti dies—Lucky and unlucky days.
Fat hens are aye ill layers.Scotch Proverb.
Fat paunches make lean pates, and dainty bits / Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.Love’s L’s. Lost, i. 1.
Fata obstant—The fates oppose it.
Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt—Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling.
Fate follows and limits power; power attends and antagonises fate; we must respect fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history.Emerson.
Fate hath no voice but the heart’s impulses.Schiller.
Fate is a distinguished but an expensive tutor.Goethe.
Fate is character.W. Winter.
Fate is ever better than design.Thos. Doubleday.
Fate is known to us as limitations.Emerson.
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a former state of existence.Hindu saying.
Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.W. R. Alger.
Fate is impenetrated causes.Emerson.
Fate leads the willing, but drives the stubborn.Proverb.
Fate made me what I am, may make me nothing; / But either that or nothing must I be; / I will not live degraded.Byron.
Fate steals along with silent tread, / Found oftenest in what least we dread; / Frowns in the storm with angry brow, / But in the sunshine strikes the blow.Cowper.