Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Let justice to Lies that are half true

Let justice guide your feet.Hipparchus.

Let knowledge grow from more to more, / But more of reverence in us dwell.Tennyson.

Let man be noble, helpful, and good, for that alone distinguishes him from every other creature we know.Goethe.

Let man’s own sphere confine his view.Beattie.

Let May be oot (out) before you cast a cloot (a piece of clothing).Scotch Proverb.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural; / I will speak daggers to her, but use none. / My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.Hamlet, iii. 2.

Let me die to the sounds of the delicious music.Last words of Mirabeau.

Let me have men about me that are fat; / Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights; / Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look; / He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.Julius Cæsar, i. 2.

Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen.Winter’s Tale, iv. 3.

Let me keep from vice myself, and pity it in others.Goldsmith.

Let me make the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes the laws.Quoted by Fletcher of Saltoun.

Let me play the fool; / With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, / And let my liver rather heat with wine / Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.Mer. of Ven., i. 1.

Let me say amen betimes, lest the devil cross my prayers.Mer. of Ven., iii. 1.

Let me still take away the harms I fear, / Not fear still to be taken.King Lear, i. 4.

Let me tell the adventurous stranger, / In our calmness lies our danger; / Like a river’s silent running, / Stillness shows our depth and cunning.Durfey.

Let me warn you very earnestly against scruples.Johnson.

Let men know that they are men, created by God, responsible to God, who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity.Carlyle’s version of John Knox’s gospel to the Scotch.

Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, If they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.Theodore Parker.

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.Marcus Aurelius.

Let never day nor night unhallow’d pass, / But still remember what the Lord hath done.2 Henry VI., ii. 1.

Let never maiden think, however fair, / She is not finer in new clothes than old.Tennyson.

Let no complaisance, no gentleness of temper, no weak desire of pleasing on your part, no wheedling, coaxing, nor flattery on other people’s, make you recede one jot from any point that reason and prudence have bid you pursue.Chesterfield.

Let no man be called happy before his death.Solon.

Let no man doubt the omnipotence of nature, doubt the majesty of man’s soul; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair. If he have the will, the right will, then the power also has not been denied him.Carlyle.

Let no man measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality.Schiller.

Let no man think he is loved by any man, when he loves no man.Epictetus.

Let no man trust the first false step of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, whose steep descent in last perdition ends.Young.

Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman’s counsel.George Chapman.

Let no mean spirit of revenge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicious celebrity to obscurity crowned with piety and virtue.Sydney Smith.

Let no one so conceive of himself as if he were the Messiah the world was praying for.Goethe.

Let no one think that he can conquer the first impressions of his youth.Goethe.

Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy; even love unreturned has its rainbow.J. M. Barrie.

Let nobility and virtue keep company, for they are nearest of kin.William Penn.

Let none admire / That riches grow in hell; that soil may best / Deserve the precious bane.Milton.

Let none henceforth seek needless cause t’ approve / The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek / Such proof, conclude they then begin to fail.Milton.

Let none presume / To wear an undeserved dignity.Mer. of Ven., ii. 9.

Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.Bible.

Let not man tempt the gods, or ever desire to pry into what they graciously conceal under a veil of darkness or terror.Schiller.

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee.Bible.

Let not mirth turn to mischief.Proverb.

Let not my bark in calm abide, / But win her cheerless way against the chafing tide.Keble.

Let not one enemy be few, nor a thousand friends many, in thy sight.Hebrew Proverb.

Let not one look of fortune cast you down; / She were not fortune if she did not frown; / Such as do braveliest bear her scorns awhile / Are those on whom at last she most will smile.Orrery.

Let not plenty make you dainty.Proverb.

Let not poverty part good company.Proverb.

Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honour and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.Emerson.

Let not the grass grow on the path of friendship.American-Indian Proverb.

Let not the remembrance of thy former trials discourage thee.Thomas à Kempis.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath—i.e., let it set with the sun, or, as Ruskin suggests, let it never go down so long as the wrong is there.St. Paul.

Let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few.Bible.

Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.Jesus.

Let not your money become your master.Proverb.

Let not your mouth swallow you.Proverb.

Let not your sail be bigger than your boat.Ben Jonson.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory.St. Paul.

Let nothing in excess be done; with this let all comply.Anonymous.

Let observation, with extensive view, / Survey mankind, from China to Peru; / Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, / And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.Johnson.

Let our finger ache, and it endues / Our other healthful members ev’n to that sense / Of pain.Othello, iii. 4.

Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal.St. Evremond.

Let present rapture, comfort, ease, / As heaven shall bid them, come and go; / The secret this of rest below.Keble.

Let pride go afore, shame will follow after.Chapman, Jonson, and Marston.

Let prideful priests do battle about creeds, / The Church is mine that does most Christlike deeds.Prof. Blackie.

Let prudence number o’er each sturdy son, / Who life and wisdom at one race begun.Burns.

Let rumours be, when did not rumours fly?Tennyson.

Let sleeping dogs lie.Scotch Proverb.

Let still the woman take / An elder than herself; so wears she to him, / So sways she level in her husband’s heart; / For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, / Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, / More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn / Than women’s are.Twelfth Night, ii. 4.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, / And censure freely who have written well.Pope.

Let that which is lost be for God.Spanish Proverb.

Let the angry person always have the quarrel to himself.Rev. John Clark.

Let the best horse leap the hedge first.Proverb.

Let the cobbler stick to his last.Proverb.

Let the dainty rose awhile / Her bashful fragrance hide; / Rend not her silken veil too soon, / But leave her, in her own soft noon. / To flourish and abide.Keble.

Let the dead bury their dead—i.e., let the spiritually dead bury the bodily dead.Jesus.

Let the devil catch you by a hair, and you are his for ever.Lessing.

Let the devil get into the church, and he will soon be on the altar.German Proverb.

Let the foibles of the great rest in peace.Goldsmith.

Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.Hamlet, iii. 2.

Let the great book of the world be your principal study.Chesterfield.

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.Tennyson.

Let the matter be good, and let the manner befit it.Spurgeon.

Let the night come before we praise the day.Proverb.

Let the path be open to talent.Napoleon. See La Carrière.

Let the reader have seen before he attempts to oversee.Carlyle.

Let the road be rough and dreary, / And its end far out of sight, / Foot it bravely! strong or weary, / “Trust in God, and do the right.”Dr. Norman Macleod.

Let the shoemaker stick to his last, the peasant to his plough, and let the prince understand how to rule.Goethe.

Let the thing we do be what it will, it is the principle upon which we do it that must recommend it.Thomas à Kempis.

Let the tow (rope) gang wi’ the bucket.Scotch Proverb.

Let the world slide, let the world go; / A fig for care, and a fig for woe! / If I can’t pay, why, I can owe, / And death makes equal the high and low.Heywood.

Let the world wag.Proverb.

Let the young people mind what the old people say, / And where there is danger keep out of the way.Proverb.

Let them call it mischief; / When it is past and prosper’d it will be virtue.Ben Jonson.

Let them obey that know not how to rule.2 Henry VI., v. 1.

Let there be thistles, there are grapes; / If old things, there are new; / Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, / Yet glimpses of the true.Tennyson.

Let thine eyes look right on.Bible.

Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled.Hitopadesa.

Let those have night that love the night.Quarles.

Let those who believe in immortality enjoy their belief in silence, and give themselves no airs about it.Goethe.

Let those who hope for brighter shores no more, / Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek / What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore.Eugene Lee Hamilton.

Let thy alms go before, and keep heaven’s gate / Open for thee, or both may come too late.George Herbert.

Let thy child’s first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.Ben. Franklin.

Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway.Twelfth Night, iv. 1.

Let thy great deeds force fate to change her mind; / He that courts fortune boldly, makes her kind.Dryden.

Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where, / And when, and how thy business may be done, / Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller, / Though he alights sometimes, still goeth on.George Herbert.

Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operation / Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation.George Herbert.

Let thy words be few.Bible.

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.Montaigne.

Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.Emerson.

Let us be back’d with God, and with the seas, / Which He hath given for fence impregnable, / And with these helps only defend ourselves; / In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies.3 Henry VI., iv. 1.

Let us be content in work / To do the thing we can, and not presume / To fret because it’s little.Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Let us be men with men, and always children before God.Joubert.

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own to-day.Emerson.

Let us be silent, for so are the gods.Emerson.

Let us beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which, so long as they are torrent-tossed and thunder-stricken, maintain their majesty; but when the stream is silent and the storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them and the lichen to feed upon them, and are ploughed down into dust.Ruskin.

Let us do the work of men while we bear the form of them.Ruskin.

Let us endeavour to see things as they are, and then inquire whether we ought to complain.Johnson.

Let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls.Emerson.

Let us fear the worst, but work with faith; the best will always take care of itself.Victor Hugo.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.Abraham Lincoln.

Let us have the crisis; we shall either have death or the cure.Carlyle.

Let us know what to love, and we shall know also what to reject; what to affirm, and we shall know also what to deny; but it is dangerous to begin with denial and fatal to end with it.Carlyle.

Let us learn upon earth those things that can call us to heaven.St. Jerome.

Let us leave the question of origins to those who busy themselves with insoluble problems, and have nothing better to do.Goethe.

Let us make haste to live, since every day to a wise man is a new life.Seneca.

Let us march intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what coasts soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers.Bolingbroke.

Let us not burden our remembrances with / A heaviness that’s gone.Tempest, v. 1.

Let us not make imaginary evils when we have so many real ones to encounter.Goldsmith.

Let us not strive to rise too high, that we may not fall too low.Schiller.

Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity.Johnson.

Let us th’ important “now” employ, / And live as those who never die.Burns.

Let us, then, be up and doing, / With a heart for every fate; / Still achieving, still pursuing, / Learn to labour and to wait.Longfellow.

Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things / Keep ourselves loyal to truth and the sacred professions of friendship.Longfellow.

Let us try what esteem and kindness can effect.Johnson.

Let vain men pursue vanity; leave them to their own methods.Thomas à Kempis.

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, / But leave us still our old nobility.Lord J. Manners.

Let wealth shelter and cherish unprotected merit, and the gratitude and celebrity of that merit will richly repay it.Burns.

Let whatever you are and whatever you do, grow out of a firm root of truth and a strong soil of reality.Prof. Blackie.

Let Whig and Tory stir their blood; / There must be stormy weather; / But for some true result of good, / All parties work together.Tennyson.

Let woman learn betimes to serve according to her destination, for only by serving will she at last learn to rule, and attain the influence that belongs to her in the household.Goethe.

Let your daily wisdom of life be in making a good use of the opportunities given you.Prof. Blackie.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but let them feel, at the same time, the steadiness of your just resentment.Chesterfield.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.Horace.

Let your pen fall, begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task.G. H. Lewes.

Let your purse be your master.Proverb.

Let your reason with your choler question…. To climb steep hills / Requires slow pace at first.Henry VIII., i. 1.

Let your rule in reference to your social sentiments be simply this; pray for the bad, pity the weak, enjoy the good, and reverence both the great and the small, as playing each his part aptly in the divine symphony of the universe.Prof. Blackie.

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how to answer every man.St. Paul.

Let your trouble tarry till its own day comes.Proverb.

Let’s live with that small pittance which we have; / Who covets more is evermore a slave.Herrick.

Let’s not unman each other—part at once; / All farewells should be sudden when for ever, / Else they make an eternity of moments, / And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.Byron.

Let’s take the instant by the forward top; / For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees / Th’ inaudible and noiseless foot of time / Steals ere we can effect them.All’s Well, v. 3.

Let’s teach ourselves that honourable stop, not to out-sport discretion.Othello, ii. 3.

Letters may be always made out of the books of the morning or talk of the evening.Johnson.

Letters of mere compliment, congratulation, or affected condolence, which have cost the authors most labour in composing, never fail of being the most disagreeable and insipid to the readers.Blair.

Letters that are warmly sealed are often coldly opened.Jean Paul.

Letters without virtue are like pearls in a dunghill.Cervantes.

Letting down buckets into empty wells, and growing old with drawing nothing up.Cowper.

Lettres de cachet—Warrants of imprisonment under royal seal, liberally issued in France before the Revolution.

Leuk twice or ye loup ance—i.e., look twice before you leap once.Scotch Proverb.

Leve æs alienum debitorem facit, grave inimicum—A small debt makes a man your debtor, a large one your enemy.Seneca.

Leve fit quod bene fertur onus—The burden which is cheerfully borne becomes light.Ovid.

Leve incommodum tolerandum est—A slight inconvenience must be endured.Motto.

Leve (trust) none better than thyself.Hazlitt’s Poems.

Level roads run out from music to every side.Goethe.

Leves homines futuri sunt improvidi—Light-minded men are improvident of the future.Tacitus.

Levia perpessi sumus, / Si flenda patimur—Our sufferings are light, if they are merely such as we should weep for.

Leviores sunt injuriæ, quæ repentino aliquo motu accidunt, quam eæ quæ meditate præparata inferuntur—The injuries which befall us unexpectedly are less severe than those which we are deliberately anticipating.Cicero.

Levis est dolor qui capere consilium potest—Grief is light which can take advice.Seneca.

Levis sit tibi terra—May the earth lie light on thee.

Levity is a prettiness in a child, a disgraceful defect in men, and a monstrous folly in old age.La Rochefoucauld.

Levity is often less foolish, and gravity less wise, than each of them appears.Colton.

Levity of behaviour is the bane of all that is good and virtuous.Seneca.

Levius fit patientia / Quicquid corrigere est nefas—Whatever cannot be amended becomes easier to bear if we exercise patience.Horace.

Levius solet timere qui propius timet—A man’s fears are lighter when the danger is near at hand.Seneca.

Lex aliquando sequitur æquitatem—Law is sometimes according to equity.Law.

Lex citius tolerare vult privatum damnum quam publicum malum—The law will sooner tolerate a private loss than a public evil.Coke.

Lex neminem cogit ad impossibilia—The law compels no one to do what is impossible.Law.

Lex non scripta—The common law.

Lex prospicit non respicit—The law is prospective, not retrospective.Law.

Lex scripta—The statute law.

Lex talionis—The law of retaliation.

Lex terræ—The law of the land.

Lex universa est quæ jubet nasci et mori—There is a universal law which commands that we shall be born and shall die.Publius Syrus.

Liars act like the salt-miners; they undermine the truth, but leave just so much standing as is necessary to support the edifice.Jean Paul.

Liars are always ready to take oath.Alfieri.

Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.Epictetus.

Liars ought to have good memories.Sidney.

Libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt—Men are fain to believe what they wish.Cæsar.

Libera chiesa in libero stato—A free church in a free state.Cavour.

Libera Fortunæ mors est: capit omnia tellus / Quæ genuit—Death is not subject to fortune; the earth contains everything which she ever brought forth.Lucan.

Libera me ab homine malo, a meipso—Deliver me from the evil man, from myself.St. Augustine.

Libera te metu mortis—Deliver thyself from the fear of death.Seneca.

Liberality consists less in giving profusely than in giving judiciously.La Bruyère.

Liberality is not giving largely but wisely.Proverb.

Libertas—Liberty.Motto.

Libertas est potestas faciendi id quod jure licet—Liberty consists in the power of doing what the law permits.Law.

Libertas in legibus—Liberty under the laws.Motto.

Libertas, quæ sera, tamen respexit inertem—Liberty, which, though late, regarded me in my helpless state.Virgil.

Libertas sub rege pio—Liberty under a pious king.Motto.

Libertas ultima mundi / Quo steterit ferienda loco—In the spot where liberty has made her last stand she was fated to be smitten.Lucan.

Liberté toute entière—Liberty perfectly entire.Motto.

Liberty, and not theology, is the enthusiasm of the nineteenth century. The very men who would once have been conspicuous saints are now conspicuous revolutionists, for while their heroism and disinterestedness are their own, the direction which these qualities take is determined by the pressure of the age.H. W. Lecky.

Liberty comes with Christianity, because Christianity develops and strengthens the mass of men.Ward Beecher.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.Webster.

Liberty has no actual rights which are not grafted upon justice.Mme. Swetchine.

Liberty has no crueller enemy than license.French Proverb.

Liberty is a principle; its community is its security; exclusiveness is its doom.Kossuth.

Liberty is a slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.Emerson.

Liberty is an old fact; it has had its heroes and its martyrs in almost every age.Chapin.

Liberty is God’s gift; liberties are the devil’s.German Proverb.

Liberty is not idleness; it is an unconstrained use of time. To be free is not to be doing nothing; it is to be one’s own master as to what one ought to do or not to do.La Bruyère.

Liberty is of more value than any gifts; and to receive gifts is to lose it. Be assured that men most commonly seek to oblige thee only that they may engage thee to serve them.Saadi.

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts that Heaven has bestowed on man, and captivity is the greatest evil that can befall him.Cervantes.

Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth, the result of free individual action, energy, and independence.S. Smiles.

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.Montesquieu.

Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society.Bolingbroke.

Liberty is to the lowest rank of every nation little more than the choice of working or starving.Johnson.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty as well as by the abuse of power.Madison.

Liberty must be a mighty thing, for by it God punishes and rewards nations.Mme. Swetchine.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.Burke.

Liberty of thinking and expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.Hume.

Liberty raises us to the gods; holiness prostrates us on the ground.Amiel.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.Washington.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.Colton.

Liberty, with all its drawbacks, is everywhere vastly more attractive to a noble soul than good social order without it, than society like a flock of sheep, or a machine working like a watch. This mechanism makes of man only a product; liberty makes him the citizen of a better world.Schiller.

Liberum arbitrium—Free will.

Libidinosa et intemperans adolescentia effœtum corpus tradit senectuti—A sensual and intemperate youth transmits to old age a worn-out body.Cicero.

Libido effrenata effrenatam appetentiam efficit—Unbridled gratification produces unbridled desire.Proverb.

Libito fè licito—What pleased her she made law.Dante.

Libra justa justitiam servat—A just balance preserves justice.

Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of saints full of true virtue, and that without delusion and imposture, are preserved and reposed.Bacon.

Libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.J. Dyer.

License they mean when they cry liberty.Milton.

Liceat concedere veris—We are free to yield to truth.Horace.

Licet superbus ambules pecunia, / Fortuna non mutat genus—Although you strut insolent in your wealth, your fortune does not change your low birth.Horace.

Licht und Geist, jenes im Phyischen, dieses im Sittlichen herrschend, sind die höchsten denkbaren untheilbaren Energien—Light and spirit, the one sovereign in the physical, the other in the moral, are the highest conceivable indivisible potences at work in the universe.Goethe.

Licuit, semperque licebit / Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis—It ever has been, and ever will be, lawful to spare the individual but to censure the vice.

Lie not in the mire, and say, “God help!”Proverb.

Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.George Herbert.

Liebe bleibt die goldne Leiter / Darauf das Herz zum Himmel steigt—Love is ever the golden ladder whereby the heart ascends to heaven.Geibel.

Liebe ist die ältest-neuste / Einz’ge Weltbegebenheit—Love is the oldest-newest sole world-event.Rückert.

Liebe kann nicht untergehen; / Was verwest, muss auferstehen—Love cannot perish; what decays must come to life again.J. G. Jacobi.

Liebe kann viel, Geld kann alles—Love cannot do much; money everything.German Proverb.

Liebe kennt der allein, der ohne Hoffnung liebt—He alone knows what love is who loves without hope.Schiller.

Liebe ohne Gegenliebe ist wie eine Frage ohne Antwort—Love unreciprocated is like a question without an answer.German Proverb.

Liebe schwärmet auf allen Wegen; / Treue wohnt für sich allein; / Liebe kommt euch rasch entgegen; / Aufgesucht will Treue sein—Love ranges about in all thoroughfares; fidelity dwells by herself alone. Love comes to meet you with quick footstep; fidelity will be sought out.Goethe.

Liebe ward der Welt von Gott verliehen, / Um zu Gott die Seele zu erziehen—Love was bestowed on the world by God, in order to train the soul for God.Rückert.

Lieber Neid denn Mitleid—Better envy than pity.German Proverb.

Lies are like nitro-glycerine—the best of judges can’t tell where they are going to burst and scatter confusion.Billings.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.Bacon.

Lies are the ghosts of truths, the masks of faces.J. Sterling.

Lies have short legs.Italian and German Proverb.

Lies hunt in packs.Proverb.

Lies may be acted as well as spoken.Proverb.

Lies, mere show and sham, and hollow superficiality of all kinds, which is at the best a painted lie, avoid.Prof. Blackie to young men.

Lies need a great deal of killing.Proverb.

Lies that are half true are the worst of lies.Proverb.