James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Gottlob! to Greatness
Gottlob! wir haben das Original—God be praised, we have still the original.Lessing.
Gott macht gesund, und der Doktor kriegt das Geld—God cures us, and the doctor gets the fee.German Proverb.
Gott mit uns—God with us.German.
Gott müsst ihr im Herzen suchen und finden—Ye must seek and find God in the heart.Jean Paul.
Gott schuf ja aus Erden den Ritter und Knecht. / Ein hoher Sinn adelt auch niedres Geschlecht—God created out of the clay the knight and his squire. A higher sense ennobles even a humble race.Bürger.
Gott-trunkener Mensch—A god-intoxicated man.Novalis, of Spinoza.
Gott verlässt den Mutigen nimmer—God never forsakes the stout of heart.Körner.
Göttern kann man nicht vergelten; / Schön ist’s, ihnen gleich zu sein—We cannot recompense the gods; beautiful it is to be like them.Schiller.
Gottes Freund, der Pfaffen Feind—God’s friend, priest’s foe.German Proverb.
Gottes ist der Orient, Gottes ist der Occident, / Nord- und Sudliches Gelände / Ruht im Friede seiner Hände—God’s is the east, God’s is the west; north region and south rests in the peace of his hands.Goethe.
Gottes Mühle geht langsam, aber sie mahlt fein—God’s mill goes slow, but it grinds fine.German Proverb.
Göttliche Apathie und thierische Indifferenz werden nur zu oft verwechselt—Divine indifference and brutish indifference are too often confounded.Feuchtersleben.
Goutte à goutte—Drop by drop.French.
Govern the lips as they were palace-doors, the king within; / Tranquil and fair and courteous be all words which from that presence win.Sir Edwin Arnold.
Government and co-operation are in all things the laws of life; anarchy and competition, the laws of death.Ruskin.
Government arrogates to itself that it alone forms men…. Everybody knows that Government never began anything. It is the whole world that thinks and governs.Wendell Phillips.
Government began in tyranny and force, in the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way like a thunderstorm against the organised selfishness of human nature.Wendell Phillips.
Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant.Emerson.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.Burke.
Government is a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing over much kills the self-help and energy of the governed.Wendell Phillips.
Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.H. Clay.
Government is the greatest combination of forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined.D. D. Field.
Government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement (Bewegung).Count Arnim.
Government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Abraham Lincoln.
Government of the will is better than increase of knowledge.Proverb.
Government should direct poor men what to do.Emerson.
Governments exist only for the good of the people.Macaulay.
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities.Wendell Phillips.
Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.Emerson.
Gowd (gold) gets in at ilka (every) gate except heaven.Scotch Proverb.
Gowd is gude only in the hand o’ virtue.Scotch Proverb.
Goza tû de tu poco, mientras busca mas el loco—Enjoy your little while the fool is in search of more.Spanish Proverb.
Grace abused brings forth the foulest deeds, / As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds.Cowper.
Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.Hazlitt.
Grace in women has more effect than beauty.Hazlitt.
Grace is a light superior to Nature, which should direct and preside over it.Thomas à Kempis.
Grace is a plant, where’er it grows! / Of pure and heavenly root; / But fairest in the youngest shows, / And yields the sweetest fruit.Cowper.
Grace is in garments, in movements, and manners; beauty in the nude and in forms.Joubert.
Grace is more beautiful than beauty.Emerson.
Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.Schiller.
Grace is the proper relation of the acting person to the action.Winckelmann.
Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.La Rochefoucauld.
Grace pays its respects to true intrinsic worth, not to the mere signs and trappings of it, which often only show where it ought to be, not where it really is.Thomas à Kempis.
Grace was in all her steps, heav’n in her eye, / In every gesture dignity and love.Milton.
Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease.Rousseau.
Gradatim—Step by step; by degrees.
Gradu diverso, via una—By different steps but the same way.
Gradus ad Parnassum—A help to the composition of classic poetry.
Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes / Intulit agresti Latio—Greece, conquered herself, in turn conquered her uncivilised conqueror, and imported her arts into rusticated Latium.Horace.
Gram. loquitur; Dia. vera docet; Rhe. verba colorat; Mu. canit; Ar. numerat; Geo. ponderat; As. docet astra—Grammar speaks; dialectics teaches us truth; rhetoric gives colouring to our speech; music sings; arithmetic reckons; geometry measures; astronomy teaches us the stars.
Grammar knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hand make them obey.Molière.
Grammaticus Rhetor Geometres Pictor Aliptes / Augur Schœnobates Medicus Magus—omnia novit—Grammarian, rhetorician, geometrician, painter, anointer, augur, tight-rope dancer, physician, magician—he knows everything.Juvenal.
Grain of glory mixt with humbleness / Cures both a fever and lethargicness.Herbert.
Grand besoin a de fol qui de soi-même le fait—He has great need of a fool who makes himself one.French Proverb.
Grand bien ne vient pas en peu d’heures—Great wealth is not gotten in a few hours.French.
Grande parure—Full dress.French.
Grandescunt aucta labore—They grow with increase of toil.Motto.
Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other.Shenstone.
Grandeur has a heavy tax to pay.Alexander Smith.
Grand parleur, grand menteur—Great talker, great liar.French Proverb.
Grand venteur, petit faiseur—Great boaster, little doer.French Proverb.
Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.Whittier.
Granted the ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful; but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the globe or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.Carlyle.
Gran victoria es la que sin sangre se alcanza—Great is the victory that is gained without bloodshed.Spanish Proverb.
Grasp all, lose all.Proverb.
Grass grows not on the highway.Proverb.
Grata naturam vincit—Grace overcomes Nature.
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora—The hour of happiness will come the more welcome when it is not expected.Horace.
Gratiæ expectativæ—Expected benefits.
Gratia gratiam parit—Kindness produces kindness.Proverb.
Gratia, Musa, tibi. Nam tu solatia præbes; / Tu curæ requies, tu medicina mali—Thanks to thee, my Muse. For thou dost afford me comfort; thou art a rest from my cares, a cure for my woes.Ovid.
Gratia placendi—The satisfaction of pleasing.
Gratia pro rebus merito debetur inemtis—Thanks are justly due for things we have not to pay for.Ovid.
Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus—Even virtue appears more lovely when enshrined in a beautiful form.Virgil.
Gratis—For nothing.
Gratis anhelans, multa agendo nihil agens—Out of breath for nothing, making much ado about nothing.Phædrus.
Gratis asseritur—It is asserted but not proved.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.Rousseau.
Gratitude is a keen sense of favours to come.Talleyrand.
Gratitude is a species of justice.Johnson.
Gratitude is memory of the heart. (?)
Gratitude is never conferred but where there have been previous endeavours to excite it; we consider it as a debt, and our spirits wear a load till we have discharged the obligation.Goldsmith.
Gratitude is one of the rarest of virtues.Theodore Parker.
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the heart of man knoweth none more fragrant.H. Ballou.
Gratitude is the least of virtues, ingratitude the worst of vices.Proverb.
Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire for greater benefits to come.La Rochefoucauld.
Gratitude once refused can never after be recovered.Goldsmith.
Gratitude which consists in good wishes may be said to be dead, as faith without good works is dead.Cervantes.
Gratis dictum—Said to no purpose; irrelevant to the question at issue.
Gratum hominem semper beneficium delectat; ingratum semel—A kindness is always delightful to a grateful man; to an ungrateful, only at the time of its receipt.Seneca.
Grau’ Haare sind Kirchhofsblumen—Gray hairs are churchyard flowers.German Proverb.
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, / Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum—Gray, dear friend, is all theory, and green life’s golden tree.Goethe.
Grave nihil est homini quod fert necessitas—No burden is really heavy to a man which necessity lays on him.
Grave paupertas malum est, et intolerabile, quæ magnum domat populum—The poverty which oppresses a great people is a grievous and intolerable evil.
Grave pondus illum magna nobilitas premit—His exalted rank weighs heavy on him as a grievous burden.Seneca.
Grave senectus est hominibus pondus—Old age is a heavy burden to man.
Graves, the dashes in the punctuation of our lives.S. W. Duffield.
Grave virus / Munditiæ pepulere—More elegant manners expelled this offensive style.Horace.
Graviora quædam sunt remedia periculis—Some remedies are worse than the disease.Publius Syrus.
Gravis ira regum semper—The anger of kings is always heavy.Seneca.
Gravissimum est imperium consuetudinis—The empire of custom is most mighty.Publius Syrus.
Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body, invented to cover the defects of the mind.La Rochefoucauld.
Gravity is a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man is worth.Sterne.
Gravity is only the bark of wisdom, but it preserves it.Confucius.
Gravity is the ballast of the soul, which keeps the mind steady.Fuller.
Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.Fielding.
Gravity is the inseparable companion of pride.Goldsmith.
Gravity is twin brother to stupidity.Bovee.
Gravity, with all its pretensions, was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.Sterne.
Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the light of a soft moon, silvering over the evening of life.Jean Paul.
Gray is all theory, and green the while is the golden tree of life.Goethe.
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing…. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you will seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search.Mer. of Ven., i. 1.
Great actions crown themselves with lasting bays; / Who well deserves needs not another’s praise.Heath.
Great acts grow out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from great principles, working changes in society and tearing it up by the roots.Hazlitt.
Great ambition is the passion of a great character. He who is endowed with it may perform very good or very bad actions; all depends upon the principles which direct him.Napoleon.
Great art dwells in all that is beautiful; but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or altering whatever is objectionable.Ruskin.
Great attention to what is said and sweetness of speech, a great degree of kindness and the appearance of awe, are always tokens of a man’s attachment.Hitopadesa.
Great barkers are nae biters.Scotch Proverb.
Great boast, small roast.Proverb.
Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it.H. Mann.
Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters.Emerson.
Great countries are those that produce great men.Disraeli.
Great cowardice is hidden by a bluster of daring.Lucan.
Great cry but little wool, as the devil said when he shear’d his hogs.Proverb.
Great deeds cannot die; / They with the sun and moon renew their light, / For ever blessing those that look on them.Tennyson.
Great deeds immortal are—they cannot die, / Unscathed by envious blight or withering frost, / They live, and bud, and bloom; and men partake / Still of their freshness, and are strong thereby.Aytoun.
Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.Joseph Roux.
Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages.Victor Hugo.
Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.Goethe.
Great, ever fruitful; profitable for reproof, for encouragement, for building up in manful purposes and works, are the words of those that in their day were men.Carlyle.
Great evils one triumphs over bravely, but the little eat away one’s heart.Mrs. Carlyle.
Great fleas have little fleas / Upon their backs to bite ’em; / And little fleas have lesser fleas, / And so ad infinitum.Lowell.
Great folks have five hundred friends because they have no occasion for them.Goldsmith.
Great fools have great bells.Dutch Proverb.
Great genial power consists in being altogether receptive.Emerson.
Great geniuses have always the shortest biographies.Emerson.
Great gifts are for great men.Proverb.
Great God, I had rather be / A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn; / So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.Wordsworth.
Great grief makes those sacred upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate.H. Greeley.
Great griefs medicine the less.Cymbeline, iv. 2.
Great haste makes great waste.Ben. Franklin.
Great honours are great burdens; but on whom / They’re cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.Ben Jonson.
Great joy is only earned by great exertion.Goethe.
Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthenware.Seneca.
Great is not great to the greater.Sir P. Sidney.
Great is self-denial! Life goes all to ravels and tatters where that enters not.Carlyle.
Great is song used to great ends.Tennyson.
Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself.Emerson.
Great is the strength of an individual soul true to its high trust; mighty is it, even to the redemption of a world.Mrs. Child.
Great is truth, and mighty above all things.Apocrypha.
Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.Carlyle.
Great joy, especially after a sudden change and revolution of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.Fielding.
Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue.Jeremy Taylor.
Great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly and day after day.Thackeray.
Great lords have great hands, but they do not reach to heaven.Danish Proverb.
Great Mammon!—greatest god below the sky.Spenser.
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.Aristotle.
Great men are among the best gifts which God bestows upon a people.G. S. Hillard.
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.Schopenhauer.
Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.Emerson.
Great men are never sufficiently known but in struggles.Burke.
Great men are not always wise.Bible.
Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.T. W. Higginson.
Great men are sincere.Emerson.
Great men are the fire-pillars in this dark pilgrimage of mankind; they stand as heavenly signs, ever-living witnesses of what has been, prophetic tokens of what may still be, the revealed, embodied possibilities of human nature.Carlyle.
Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that Divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.Carlyle.
Great men are the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain.Carlyle.
Great men are the true men, the men in whom Nature has succeeded.Amiel.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.Emerson.
Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.Emerson.
Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death; only little men do that.Ruskin.
Great men essay enterprises because they think them great, and fools because they think them easy.Vauvenargues.
Great men get more by obliging inferiors than by disdaining them.South.
Great men, great nations have ever been perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.Emerson.
Great men have their parasites.Sydney Smith.
Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.Landor.
Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them, / But in the less, foul profanation.Meas. for Meas., ii. 2.
Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds; that is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.Hawthorne.
Great men not only know their business, but they usually know that they know it, and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them.Ruskin.
Great men oft die by vile Bezonians.2 Henry IV., iv. 1.
Great men often rejoice at crosses of fortune, just as brave soldiers do at wars.Seneca.
Great men or men of great gifts you will easily find, but symmetrical men never.Emerson.
Great men, said Themistocles, are like the oaks, under the branches of which men are happy in finding a refuge in the time of storm and rain; but when they have to pass a sunny day under them, they take pleasure in cutting the bark and breaking the branches.Goethe.
Great men should drink with harness on their throats.Timon of Athens, i. 2.
Great men should think of opportunity, and not of time. Time is the excuse of feeble and puzzled spirits.Disraeli.
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external Nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the labourers on the surface do not even dream.Longfellow.
Great men, though far above us, are felt to be our brothers; and their elevation shows us what vast possibilities are wrapped up in our common humanity. They beckon us up the gleaming heights to whose summits they have climbed. Their deeds are the woof of this world’s history.Moses Harvey.
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.Landor.
Great men will always pay deference to greater.Landor.
Great minds erect their never-failing trophies on the firm base of mercy.Massinger.
Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it.Colton.
Great minds, like Heaven, are pleased in doing good, / Though the ungrateful subjects of their favours / Are barren in return.Rowe.
Great minds seek to labour for eternity. All other men are captivated by immediate advantages; great minds are excited by the prospect of distant good.Schiller.
Great names stand not alone for great deeds; they stand also for great virtues, and, doing them worship, we elevate ourselves.H. Giles.
Great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.Lowell.
Great passions are incurable diseases; the very remedies make them worse.Goethe.
Great patriots must be men of great excellence; this alone can secure to them lasting admiration.H. Giles.
Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God.Luther.
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.Hume.
Great poets are no sudden prodigies, but slow results.Lowell.
Great poets try to describe what all men see and to express what all men feel; if they cannot describe it, they let it alone.Ruskin.
Great profits, great risks.Chinese Proverb.
Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.S. Smiles.
Great revolutions, whatever may be their causes, are not lightly commenced, and are not concluded with precipitation.Disraeli.
Great souls are always royally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small, mean souls are otherwise.Carlyle.
Great souls are not cast down by adversity.Proverb.
Great souls are not those which have less passion and more virtue than common souls, but only those which have greater designs.La Rochefoucauld.
Great souls attract sorrows as mountains do storms. But the thunder-clouds break upon them, and they thus form a shelter for the plains around.Jean Paul.
Great souls care only for what is great.Amiel.
Great souls endure in silence.Schiller.
Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own.Dryden.
Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion (love).Bacon.
Great talents are rare, and they rarely recognise themselves.Goethe.
Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.Niebuhr.
Great talkers are like leaky pitchers, everything runs out of them.Proverb.
Great talkers are little doers.Proverb.
Great thieves hang little ones.German.
Great things are done when men and mountains meet; / These are not done by jostling in the street.William Blake.
Great things through greatest hazards are achiev’d, / And then they shine.Beaumont.
Great thoughts and a pure heart are the things we should beg for ourselves from God.Goethe.
Great thoughts come from the heart.Vauvenargues.
Great thoughts, great feelings come to them, / Like instincts, unawares.M. Milnes.
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.Hazlitt.
Great towns are but a large sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds or pounds to beasts.Charron.
Great warmth at first is the certain ruin of every great achievement. Doth not water, although ever so cool, moisten the earth?Hitopadesa.
Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.Bovee.
Great wealth, great care.Dutch Proverb.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, / And thin partitions do their bounds divide.Dryden.
Great wits to madness nearly are allied; / Both serve to make our poverty our pride.Emerson.
Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice.Leigh Hunt.
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.Johnson.
Great writers and orators are commonly economists in the use of words.Whipple.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.Jesus.
Greater than man, less than woman.Essex, of Queen Elizabeth.
Greatest scandal waits on greatest state.Shakespeare.
Greatly to find quarrel in a straw, / When honour’s at the stake.Hamlet, iv. 4.
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.Coleridge.
Greatness appeals to the future.Emerson.
Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.Landor.
Greatness can only be rightly estimated when minuteness is justly reverenced. Greatness is the aggregation of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the affectionate watching of what is least.Ruskin.
Greatness doth not approach him who is for ever looking down.Hitopadesa.
Greatness envy not; for thou mak’st thereby / Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater.Herbert.
Greatness, in any period and under any circumstances, has always been rare. It is of elemental birth, and is independent alike of its time and its circumstances.W. Winter.
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.Matthew Arnold.
Greatness is its own torment.Theodore Parker.
Greatness is like a laced coat from Monmouth Street, which fortune lends us for a day to wear, to-morrow puts it on another’s back.Fielding.
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man’s capacity and another’s; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another…. And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal.Ruskin.
Greatness is nothing unless it be lasting.Napoleon.
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.Ward Beecher.
Greatness may be present in lives whose range is very small.Phillips Brooks.
Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.Ruskin.
Greatness, once and for ever, has done with opinion.Emerson.
Greatness, once fallen out with fortune, / Must fall out with men too; what the declined is, / He shall as soon read in the eyes of others / As feel in his own fall.Troil. and Cress., iii. 3.
Greatness stands upon a precipice; and if prosperity carry a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.Colton.
Greatness, thou gaudy torment of our souls, / The wise man’s fetter and the rage of fools.Otway.
Greatness, with private men / Esteem’d a blessing, is to me a curse; / And we, whom from our high births they conclude / The only free men, are the only slaves: / Happy the golden mean.Massinger.