James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Fatetur facinus to Flagrante delicto
Fatetur facinus is qui judicium fugit—He who shuns a trial confesses his guilt.Law.
Father of all! in every age, / In every clime adored, / By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.Pope.
Fathers alone a father’s heart can know, / What secret tides of sweet enjoyment flow / When brothers love! But if their hate succeeds, / They wage the war, but ’tis the father bleeds.Young.
Fathers first enter bonds to Nature’s ends; / And are her sureties ere they are a friend’s.George Herbert.
Fathers that wear rags / Do make their children blind; / But fathers that wear bags / Do make their children kind.King Lear, ii. 4.
Fathers their children and themselves abuse / That wealth a husband for their daughters choose.Shirley.
Fatigatis humus cubile est—To the weary the bare ground is a bed.Curtius.
Fatta la legge, trovata la malizia—As soon as a law is made its evasion is found out.Italian Proverb.
Faulheit ist der Schlüssel zur Armuth—Sloth is the key to poverty.German Proverb.
Faulheit ist Dummheit des Körpers, und Dummheit Faulheit des Geistes—Sluggishness is stupidity of body, and stupidity sluggishness of spirit.Seume.
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.Tennyson.
Faults are beauties in lover’s eyes.Theocritus.
Faults are thick when love is thin.Proverb.
Faute de grives le diable mange des merles—For want of thrushes the devil eats blackbirds.French Proverb.
Faux pas—A false step.French.
Favete linguis—Favour with words of good omen (lit. by your tongues).Ovid.
Favourable chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.George Eliot.
Favour and gifts disturb justice.Danish Proverb.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.Bible.
Favours, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to friendship.Hor. Smith.
Favours unused are favours abused.Scotch Proverb.
Fax mentis honestæ gloria—Glory is the torch of an honourable mind.Motto.
Fax mentis incendium gloriæ—The flame of glory is the torch of the mind.Motto.
Fay ce que voudras—Do as your please.Motto.
Fear always springs from ignorance.Emerson.
Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy.Burton.
Fear can keep a man out of danger, but courage only can support him in it.Proverb.
Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.Bible.
Fear God; honour the king.St. Peter.
Fear guards the vineyard.Italian Proverb.
Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude.Goldsmith.
Fear has many eyes.Cervantes.
Fear hath torment.St. John.
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. It has boded, and mowed, and gibbered for ages over government and property.Emerson.
Fear is described by Spenser to ride in armour, at the clashing whereof he looks afeared of himself.Peacham.
Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage.Sir P. Sidney.
Fear is the underminer of all determinations; and necessity, the victorious rebel of all laws.Sir P. Sidney.
Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing.Longfellow.
Fear is worse than fighting.Gaelic Proverb.
Fear not that tyrants shall rule for ever, / Or the priests of the bloody faith; / They stand on the brink of that mighty river / Whose waves they have tainted with death.Shelley.
Fear not the confusion (Verwirrung) outside of thee, but that within thee; strive after unity, but seek it not in uniformity; strive after repose, but through the equipoise, not through the stagnation (Stillstand), of thy activity.Schiller.
Fear not the future; weep not for the past.Shelley.
Fear not, then, thou child infirm; / There’s no god dare wrong a worm.Emerson.
Fear not where Heaven bids come; / Heaven’s never deaf but when man’s heart is dumb.Quarles.
Fear of change / Perplexes monarchs.Milton.
Fear oftentimes restraineth words, but makes not thought to cease.Lord Vaux.
Fear sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground and fetters them from moving.Montaigne.
Fear to do base, unworthy things is valour; / If they be done to us, to surfer them / Is valour too.Ben Jonson.
Fear’s a fine spur.Samuel Lover.
Fear’s a large promiser; who subject live / To that base passion, know not what they give.Dryden.
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.Johnson.
Fearfully and wonderfully made.Bible.
Fearless minds climb soonest into crowns.3 Henry VI., iv. 7.
Feasting makes no friendship.Proverb.
Feast-won, fast-lost.Timon of Athens, ii. 2.
Feather by feather the goose is plucked.Proverb.
Fecisti enim nos ad te, et cor inquietum donec requiescat in te—Thou hast made us for Thee, and the heart knows no rest until it rests in Thee.St. Augustine.
Fecit—He did it.
Fecundi calices quem non fecere disertum?—Whom have not flowing cups made eloquent?Horace.
Fede ed innocenzia son reperte / Solo ne’ pargoletti—Faith and innocence are only to be found in little children.Dante.
Feeble souls always set to work at the wrong time.Cardinal de Retz.
Feebleness is sometimes the best security.Proverb.
Feed a cold and starve a fever.Proverb.
Feed no man in his sins; for adulation / Doth make thee parcel-devil in damnation.George Herbert.
Feeling comes before reflection.H. R. Haweis.
Feeling should be stirred only when it can be sent to labour for worthy ends.Brooke.
Feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and farewell; like the glaciers, which are transparent and rose-hued only at sunrise and sunset, but throughout the day grey and cold.Jean Paul.
Feelings are like chemicals; the more you analyse them, the worse they smell.Kingsley.
Feelings come and go like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.Jean Paul.
Feelings, like flowers and butterflies, last longer the later they are delayed.Jean Paul.
Fehlst du, lass dich’s nicht betrüben; Denn der Mangel führt zum Lieben; / Kannst dich nicht vom Fehl befrein, / Wirst du Andern gern verzeihn—Shouldst thou fail, let it not trouble thee, for failure (lit. defect) leads to love. If thou canst not free thyself from failure, thou wilt never forgive others.Goethe.
Feindlich ist die Welt / Und falsch gesinnt; Es liebt ein jeder nur / Sich selbst—Hostile is the world, and falsely disposed. In it each one loves himself alone.Schiller.
Felices errore suo—Happy in their error.Lucan.
Felices ter et amplius / Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec, malis / Divulsus quærimoniis, / Suprema citius solvet amor die—Thrice happy they, and more than thrice, whom an unbroken link binds together, and whom love, unimpaired by evil rancour, will not sunder before their last day.Horace.
Felicitas nutrix est iracundiæ—Prosperity is the nurse of hasty temper.Proverb.
Feliciter is sapit, qui periculo alieno sapit—He is happily wise who is wise at the expense of another.Motto.
Felicity lies much in fancy.Proverb.
Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit.Whipple.
Felix, heu nimium felix—Happy, alas! too happy!Virgil.
Felix qui nihil debet—Happy is he who owes nothing.
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas—Happy he who has succeeded in learning the causes of things.Virgil.
Felix, qui quod amat, defendere fortiter andet—Happy he who dares courageously to defend what he loves.Ovid.
Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.Hannah Mare.
Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more / Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore.Richard II., i. 3.
Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.Burke.
Felo de se—A suicide.Law.
Female friendships are of rapid growth.Disraeli.
Feme covert—A married woman.Law.
Feme sole—An unmarried woman.Law.
Femme, argent et vin ont leur bien et leur venin—Women, money, and wine have their blessing and their bane.French Proverb.
Femme de chambre—A chambermaid.French.
Femme de charge—A housekeeper.French.
Femme rit quand elle peut, et pleure quand elle veut—A woman laughs when she can, and weeps when she likes.French Proverb.
Feræ naturæ—Of a wild nature.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt—Men in general are fain to believe that which they wish to be true.Cæsar.
Feriis caret necessitas—Necessity knows no holiday.
Ferme fugiendo in media fata ruitur—How often it happens that men fall into the very evils they are striving to avoid.Livy.
Ferme modèle—A model farm.French.
Fern von Menschen wachsen Grundsätze; unter ihnen Handlungen—Principles develop themselves far from men; conduct develops among them.Jean Paul.
Ferreus assiduo consumitur annulus usu—By constant use an iron ring is consumed.Ovid.
Ferro, non gladio—By iron, not by my sword.Motto.
Fervet olla, vivit amicitia—As long as the pot boils, friendship lasts.Proverb.
Fervet opus—The work goes on with spirit.Virgil.
Festina lente—Hasten slowly.Proverb.
Festinare nocet, nocet et cunctatio sæpe; / Tempore quæque suo qui facit, ille sapit—It is bad to hurry, and delay is often as bad; he is wise who does everything in its proper time.Ovid.
Festinatione nil tutius in discordiis civilibus—Nothing is safer than despatch in civil quarrels.Tacitus.
Festinatio tarda est—Haste is tardy.Proverb.
Fetch a spray from the wood and place it on your mantel-shelf, and your household ornaments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used to a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute and response to all your enthusiasm and heroism.Thoreau.
Fête champêtre—A rural feast.French.
Fêtes des mœurs—Feasts of morals.French.
Fette Küche, magere Erbschaft—A fat kitchen, a lean legacy.German Proverb.
Feu de joie—Firing of guns in token of joy.French.
Few are fit to be entrusted with themselves.Proverb.
Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men to persuasion.Goethe.
Few, few shall part where many meet; The snow shall be their winding-sheet, / And every turf beneath their feet / Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre.Campbell.
Few have all they need, none all they wish.R. Southwell.
Few have borne unconsciously the spell of loveliness.Whittier.
Few have the gift of discerning when to have done.Swift.
Few have wealth, but all must have a home.Emerson.
Few love to hear the sins they love to act.Pericles, i. 1.
Few may play with the devil and win.Proverb.
Few men are much worth loving in whom there is not something well worth laughing at.Hare.
Few men have been admired by their domestics.Montaigne.
Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best.Byron.
Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth without plan, and are ever at the end of their line.Emerson.
Few men have imagination enough for the truth of reality.Goethe.
Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.Washington.
Few minds wear out; more rust out.Bovee.
Few mortals are so insensible that their affections cannot be gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect.Zimmermann.
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered, from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action.Macaulay.
Few people know how to be old.La Rochefoucauld.
Few persons have courage to appear as good as they really are.Hare.
Few spirits are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints.Thomas à Kempis.
Few take wives for God’s sake, or for fair looks.Proverb.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.Johnson.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is from want of application rather than want of means that men fail of success.La Rochefoucauld.
Few things are more unpleasant than the transaction of business with men who are above knowing or caring what they have to do.Johnson.
Fiandeira, fiai manso, que me estorvais, que estou rezando—Spinner, spin quietly, so as not to disturb me; I am praying.Portuguese Proverb.
Fiar de Dios sobre buena prenda—Trust in God upon good security.Spanish Proverb.
Fiat experimentum in corpore vili—Let the experiment be made on some worthless body.
Fiat justitiam, pereat mundus—Let justice be done, and the world perish.Proverb.
Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum—Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall in.Proverb.
Fiat lux—Let there be light.
Fickleness has its rise in the experience of the deceptiveness of present pleasures, and in ignorance of the vanity of absent ones.Pascal.
Ficta voluptatis causa sit proxima veris—Fictions meant to please should have as much resemblance as possible to truth.Horace.
Fiction is a potent agent for good in the hands of the good.Madame Necker.
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.Burke.
Fiction, while the feigner of it knows that he is feigning, partakes, more than we suspect, of the nature of lying; and has ever an, in some degree, unsatisfactory character.Carlyle.
Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis—Be it remembered that we are amusing you with tales of fiction.Phædrus.
Fidarsi è bene, ma non fidarsi è meglio—To trust one’s self is good, but not to trust one’s self is better.Italian Proverb.
Fidati era un buon uomo, Nontifidare era meglio—Trust was a good man, Trust Not was a better.Italian Proverb.
Fide abrogata, omnis humana societas tollitur—If good faith be abolished, all human society is dissolved.Livy.
Fide et amore—By faith and love.Motto.
Fide et fiducia—By faith and confidence.Motto.
Fide et fortitudine—By faith and fortitude.Motto.
Fide et literis—By faith and learning.Motto.
Fide, non armis—By good faith, not by arms.Motto.
Fidei coticula crux—The cross is the touchstone of faith.Motto.
Fidei defensor—Defender of the faith.
Fideli certa merces—The faithful are certain of their reward.Motto.
Fidelis ad urnam—Faithful to death (lit. the ashes-urn).Motto.
Fidelis et audax—Faithful and intrepid.Motto.
Fidélité est de Dieu—Fidelity is of God.Motto.
Fideliter et constanter—Faithfully and firmly.Motto.
Fidelity, diligence, decency, are good and indispensable; yet, without faculty, without light, they will not do the work.Carlyle.
Fidelity is the sister of justice.Horace.
Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.Seneca.
Fidelius rident tiguria—The laughter of the cottage is more hearty and sincere than that of the court.Proverb.
Fidem qui perdit perdere ultra nil potest—He who loses his honour has nothing else he can lose.Publius Syrus.
Fidem qui perdit, quo se servet relicuo?—Who loses his good name, with what can he support himself in future?Publius Syrus.
Fides facit fidem—Confidence awakens confidence.Proverb.
Fides probata coronat—Approved faith confers a crown.Motto.
Fides Punica—Punic faith; treachery.
Fides servanda est—Faith must be kept.Plautus.
Fides sit penes auctorem—Credit this to the author.
Fides ut anima, unde abiit, eo nunquam redit—Honour, like life, when once it is lost, is never recovered.Publius Syrus.
Fidus Achates—A faithful companion (of Æneas).Virgil.
Fidus et audax—Faithful and intrepid.Motto.
Fie! fie! how wayward is this foolish love, / That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse, / And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod.Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2.
Fiel pero desdichado—True though unfortunate.Spanish.
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds, / In ranks and squadrons, and right form of war, / Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.Julius Cæsar, ii. 2.
Fieri facias—See it be done.A writ empowering a sheriff to levy the amount of a debt or damages.
Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright, the cause thou lightest for, so far as it is true, is very sure of victory.Carlyle.
Fight the good fight.St. Paul.
Filii non plus possessionum quam morborum hæredes sumus—We sons are heirs no less to diseases than to estates.
Filius nullius—The son of no one; a bastard.Law.
Filius terræ—A son of the earth; one low-born.
Fille de chambre—A chambermaid.French.
Fille de joie—A woman of pleasure; a prostitute.French.
Fin contre fin—Diamond cut diamond.French.
Fin de siècle—Up to date.French.
Find earth where grows no weed, and you may find a heart where no error grows.Knowles.
Find employment for the body, and the mind will find enjoyment for itself.Proverb.
Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible, and some time after the offence, rather than at the time.Sydney Smith.
Find mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower; the phœnix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.Carlyle.
Find out men’s wants and will, / And meet them there. All worldly joys go less / To the one joy of doing kindnesses.Herbert.
Finding your able man, and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world.Carlyle.
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together; the head inferior to the heart, and the hand inferior to both heart and head.Ruskin.
Fine by defect and delicately weak.Pope.
Fine by degrees and beautifully less.Prior.
Fine feathers make fine birds.Proverb.
Fine feelings, without vigour of reason, are in the situation of the extreme feathers of a peacock’s tail—dragging in the mud.John Foster.
Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.A. B. Alcott.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.Emerson.
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense.Pope.
Fine speeches are the instruments of knaves / Or fools, that use them when they want good sense; / Honesty needs no disguise or ornament.Otway.
Fine words without deeds go not far.Danish Proverb.
Finem respice—Have regard to the end.
Finge datos currus, quid agas?—Suppose the chariot (of the sun) committed to you, what would you do?Apollo to Phaethon in Ovid.
Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.Swift.
Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Judæus, monachus, histrio, rasor, anus—Any untrained person, priest, Jew, monk, playactor, barber, or old wife is ready to prescribe for you in sickness.Proverb.
Finis coronat opus—The end crowns the work, i.e., first enables us to determine its merits.Proverb.
Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the tongue of the babbler.Steele.
Fire and water are good servants but bad masters.Proverb.
Fire in the heart sends smoke into the head.German Proverb.
Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!Carlyle.
Fire maks an auld wife nimble.Scotch Proverb.
Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2.
Fire trieth iron, and temptation a just man.Thomas à Kempis.
Firmior quo paratior—The stronger the better prepared.Motto.
Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and the cowardly feeble resolve.Burns.
First assay / To stuff thy mind with solid bravery; / Then march on gallant: get substantial worth: / Boldness gilds finely, and will set it forth.George Herbert.
First cast the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.Jesus.
First catch your hare.Mrs. Glass’s advice to the housewife.
First come, first served.Proverb.
First deserve and then desire.Scotch Proverb.
First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.Moore.
First keep thyself in peace, and then thou shalt be able to keep peace among others.Thomas à Kempis.
First must the dead letter of religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living spirit of religion, freed from its charnel-house, is to arise in us, new-born of heaven, and with new healing under its wings.Carlyle.
First resolutions are not always the wisest, but they are usually the most honest.Lessing.
First worship God; he that forgets to pray / Bids not himself good-morrow nor good-day.T. Randolph.
Fishes live in the sea,… as men do on land—the great ones eat up the little ones.Pericles, ii. 1.
Fit cito per multas præda petita manus—The spoil that is sought by many hands quickly accumulates.Ovid.
Fit erranti medicina confessio—Confession is as healing medicine to him who has erred.
Fit fabricando faber—A smith becomes a smith by working at the forge.Proverb.
Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus—In the master there is the servant, and in the servant the master (lit. in masterhood is servanthood, in servanthood masterhood).Cicero.
Fit scelus indulgens per nubila sæcula virtus—In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.
Fit the foot to the shoe, not the shoe to the foot.Portuguese Proverb.
Fit words are fine, but often fine words are not fit.Proverb.
Five great intellectual professions have hitherto existed in every civilised nation: the soldier’s, to defend it; the pastor’s, to teach it; the physician’s, to keep it in health; the lawyer’s, to enforce justice in it; and the merchant’s, to provide for it; and the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it.Ruskin.
Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium.Emerson.
Fix’d to no spot is happiness sincere; / ’Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere.Pope.
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, / To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.Pope.
Flagrante bello—During the war.
Flagrante delicto—In the very act.