James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Nil desperandum to No man lives
Nil desperandum—There is no ground for despair.
Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro—Let us despair of nothing while Teucer is our leader and we under his auspices.Horace.
Nil dicit—He says nothing, i.e., he has no defence to make.Law.
Nil dictu fœdum visuque hæc limina tangat, / Intra quæ puer est—Let nothing filthy to be said or seen touch this threshold, within which there is a boy.Juvenal.
Nil dictum quod non dictum prius—There can be nothing said now which has not been said before.Law.
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico—As long as I have my senses, there is nothing I would prefer to an agreeable friend.Horace.
Nil erit ulterius quod nostris moribus addat / Posteritas; eadem cupient facientque minores: Omne in præcipiti vitium stetit—There will be nothing left for posterity to add to our manners; our descendants will wish for and do the same things as we do; every vice has reached its culminating point.Juvenal.
Nil feret ad manes divitis umbra suos—The ghost of the rich man will carry nothing to the shades below.Ovid.
Nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi—Never was such an inconsistent creature seen before.Horace.
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, / Quam quod ridiculos homines facit—Unhappy poverty has nothing in it more galling than this, that it makes men ridiculous.Juvenal.
Nil homini certum est—There is nothing assured to mortals.Ovid.
Nil me officit unquam, / Ditior hic, aut est quia doctior; est locus uni / Cuique suus—It never the least annoys me that another is richer or more learned than I; every one has his own place assigned him.Horace.
Nil mortalibus arduum est—Nothing is too arduous for mortals.Horace.
Nil nisi cruce—No hope but in the cross.Motto.
Nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes—Confessing that none like you has arisen before, none will ever arise.Horace.
Nil peccant oculi, si oculis animus imperet—The eyes don’t err if the mind governs them.Publius Syrus.
Nil proprium ducas quod mutari potest—Never deem that your own which can be changed.Publius Syrus.
Nil rectum nisi quod placuit sibi ducunt—They deem nothing right except what seems good to themselves.Horace.
Nil sine magno / Vita labore dedit mortalibus—Life has granted nothing to mankind save through great labour.Horace.
Nil sine te mei prosunt honores—The honours I obtain are nothing without thee.Horace to the Muse.
Nil sole et sale utilius—Nothing so useful as the sun and salt.Proverb.
Nil spernat auris, nec tamen credat statim—Let the ear despise nothing, nor yet be too ready to believe.Phædrus.
Nil tam difficile est quod non solertia vincat—There is nothing so difficult but skill will surmount it.Proverb.
Nil tam inæstimable est quam animi multitudinis—Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.Seneca.
Nil temere novandum—Make no rash innovations.Law.
Nil unquam longum est, quod sine fine placet—Nothing is ever long which never ceases to please.
Nimia cura deterit magis quam emendat—Too much pains may injure rather than improve your work.Proverb.
Nimia est voluntas, si diu abfueris a domo / Domum si redieris, si tibi nulla est ægritudo animo obviam—It is a very great pleasure if, on your return home after a long absence, you are not confronted with anything to vex you.Plautus.
Nimia illæc licentia / Profecto evadet in aliquod magnum malum—This extreme licentiousness will assuredly develop into some dire disaster.Terence.
Nimia subtilitas in jure reprobatur, et talis certitudo certitudinem confundit—Too much subtlety in law is condemned, and such certainty destroys certainty.Law.
Nimirum insanus paucis videatur, eo quod / Maxima pars hominum morbo jactatur eodem—There are few, I say, to whom this fellow should appear insane, since by far the majority of people are infected with the same malady.Horace.
Nimis uncis / Naribus indulges—You indulge in swearing (lit. upturned nostrils) too much.
Nimium altercando veritas amittitur—In too eager disputation the truth is lost sight of.Proverb.
Nimium ne crede colori—Trust not too much to appearances.Virgil.
Nimius in veritate, et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior—Too fastidious as regards truth, and with a greater liking for exactness than beauty.Quintilian.
Nimm alles leicht! das Träumen lass und Grübeln! / So bleibst du wohlbewahrt vor tausend Uebeln—Take everything easily; leave off dreaming and brooding; then wilt thou be safe-shielded from a thousand ills.Uhland.
Nimm die Welt, wie sie ist, nicht wie sie seyn sollte—Take the world as it is, not as it should be.German Proverb.
Nimm wahr die Zeit; sie eilet sich, / Und kommt nicht wieder ewiglich—Take thou good note of time; it hurries past thee, and comes not back again for ever.Claudius.
Nine tailors cannot make a man.Proverb.
Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.Disraeli.
Nine-tenths of our critics have told us little more of Shakespeare than what honest Franz Horn says his neighbours used to tell of him, “he was a great spirit, and stept majestically along.”Carlyle.
Nine things to sight required are: / The power to see, the light, the visible thing, / Being not too small, too thin, too nigh, too far; / Clear space, and time, the form distinct to bring.Sir John Davies.
Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually occupied by an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.Bulwer Lytton.
Nine tithes of times / Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.Tennyson.
Nineteen nay-says are half a grant.Allan Ramsay.
Nisi caste, saltem caute—If not chastely, at least cautiously.
Nisi Dominus, frustra—Unless the Lord be with us, all is vain.Motto.
Nisi prius—Unless before. A judicial writ.
Nisi utile est quod facias, stulta est gloria—Unless what we do is useful, our glorying is vain.Phædrus.
Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata—We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.Ovid.
Nitor in adversum, nec me, qui cætera vincit / Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi—I struggle against an opposing current; the torrent which sweeps away others does not overpower me, and I make head against the on-rushing stream.Ovid.
“No,” a monosyllable, the easiest learned by the child, but the most difficult to practise by the man, contains within it the import of a life, the weal or woe of an eternity.Johnson.
No accidents are so unlucky that the prudent may not draw some advantage from them.La Rochefoucauld.
No affections and a great brain; these are the men to command the world.Disraeli.
No age ever seemed the age of Romance to itself.Carlyle.
No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man.Barton.
No answer is also an answer.Proverb.
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.Ruskin.
No artist-work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character in a child.Charlotte Cushman.
No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.Landor.
No atheist denies a divinity, but only some name of a divinity; the God is still present there, working in that benighted heart, were it only as a god of darkness.Carlyle.
No author can be as moral as his works, as no preacher is as pious as his sermons.Jean Paul.
No author ever spared a brother; / Wits are gamecocks to one another.Gay.
No author is a man of genius to his publisher.Heine.
No autumn fruit without spring blossoms.Proverb.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.Richard III., i. 2.
No bees, no honey; / No work, no money.Proverb.
No belief of ours will change the facts or reverse the laws of the spiritual universe; and it is our first business to discover the laws and to learn how the facts stand.Dr. Dale.
No belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful.J. S. Mill.
No bird ever flew so high but it had to come to the ground for food.Dutch Proverb.
No blank, no trifle, Nature made or meant.Young.
No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again.Ruskin.
No book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.Carlyle.
No book was ever written down by any but itself.Bentley.
No ceremony that to great one ’longs, / Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword, / The marshal’s truncheon nor the judge’s robe, / Become them with one half so good a grace / As mercy does.Meas. for Meas., ii. 2.
No chair is so much wanted (in our colleges) as that of a professor of books.Emerson.
No chaos can continue chaotic with a soul in it.Carlyle.
No character was ever rightly understood until it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance only, but of sympathy.Carlyle.
No cheerfulness can ever be produced by effort which is itself painful.Goldsmith.
No cloth is too fine for moth to devour.Proverb.
No compound of this earthly ball / Is like another all in all.Tennyson.
No conflict is so severe as his who labours to subdue himself.Thomas à Kempis.
No conquest can ever become permanent which does not withal show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors.Carlyle.
No corn without chaff.Dutch Proverb.
No: creation, one would think, cannot be easy; your Jove has severe pains and fire-flames in the head out of which an armed Pallas is struggling!Carlyle.
No creature smarts so little as a fool.Pope.
No crime is so great as daring to excel.Churchill.
No cross, no crown.Quarles.
No diga la lengua par do pague la cabeza—The tongue talks at the head’s cost.Spanish Proverb.
No distance breaks the tie of blood: / Brothers are brothers evermore; / Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood, / That magic may o’erpower.Keble.
No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.Job, in Bible.
No doubt every person is entitled to make and to think as much of himself as possible, only he ought not to worry others about this, for they have enough to do with and in themselves, if they too are to be of some account, both now and hereafter.Goethe.
No dynamite will ever be invented that can rule; it can but dissolve and destroy. Only the word of God and the heart of man can govern.Ruskin.
No earnest man, in any time, ever spoke what was wholly meaningless.Carlyle.
No earnest thinker is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself.C. Kingsley.
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.Lady Montagu.
No errors are so mischievous as those of great men.Proverb.
No evil can touch him who looks on human beauty; he feels himself at one with himself and with the world.Goethe.
No evil dies so soon as that which has been patiently sustained.W. Secker.
No evil is felt till it comes, and when it comes no counsel helps. Wisdom is always too early and too late.Rückert.
No evil is without its compensation.Seneca.
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.Seneca.
No experiment is dangerous the result of which we have the courage to meet.Goethe.
No expression of politeness but has its root in the moral nature of man.Goethe.
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, / All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.Moore.
No fact in nature but carries the whole sense of nature.Emerson.
No falsehood can endure / Touch of celestial temper.Milton.
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.Cervantes.
No fishing like fishing in the sea.Proverb.
No flattery, boy; an honest man can’t live by ’t; / It is a little sneaking art, which knaves / Use to cajole and soften fools withal.Otway.
No fool was ever so foolish, but some one thought him clever.Proverb.
No fountain so small but that heaven may be imaged in its bosom.Hawthorne.
No friend a friend until he shall prove a friend.Beaumont and Fletcher.
No frost can freeze Providence.Proverb.
No gains without pains.Proverb.
No ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes.Carlyle.
No girl who is well bred, kind, and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want of manners or of heart.Ruskin.
No golden age ever called itself golden, but only expected one.Jean Paul.
No good book or good thing of any sort shows its best face at first; nay, the commonest quality in a true work of art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment.Carlyle.
No good doctor ever takes physic.Italian Proverb.
No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.Ruskin.
No good lawyer ever goes to law himself.Italian Proverb.
No good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left.Ruskin.
No good work whatever can be perfect; and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.Ruskin.
No government is safe unless fortified by good-will.Cornelius Nepos.
No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.Ward Beecher.
No grain of sand / But moves a bright and million-peopled land, / And hath its Eden and its Eves, I deem.Blanchard.
No grand doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings.Carlyle.
No great composition was ever produced but with the same heavenly involuntariness in which a bird builds her nest.Ruskin.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.Ruskin.
No great man was ever other than a genuine man.Carlyle.
No great truth is allowed by Nature to be demonstrable to any person who, foreseeing its consequences, desires to refuse it.Ruskin.
No greater hell than to be a slave to fear.Ben Jonson.
No greater men are now than ever were.Emerson.
No greater misfortune can befall a man than to be the victim of an idea which has no hold on his life, still more which detaches him from it.Goethe.
No greater promisers than those who have nothing to give.Proverb.
No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are past.Byron.
No hay dulzura sin sudor—No sweetness without sweat.Spanish Proverb.
No hay tal razon como la del baston—There is no argument like that of a stick.Spanish Proverb.
No heart opens to sympathy without letting in delicacy.J. M. Barrie.
No Hecuba, by aid of rouge and ceruse, is a Helen made.Cowper.
No herb will cure love.Proverb.
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she may give birth to one.Jean Paul.
No honestly exerted force can be utterly lost.Carlyle.
No horse so blind as the blind mare.Proverb.
No house without mouse; no throne without thorn.Proverb.
No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look.Ruskin.
No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.Ruskin.
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifices; no one ever escapes without a stain from the struggle of life.Renan.
No intellectual images are without use.Johnson.
No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve.Carlyle.
“No” is a surly, honest fellow—speaks his mind rough and round at once. “But” is a sneaking, evasive, half-bred, exceptuous sort of conjunction, which comes to pull away the cup just when it is at your lips.Scott.
No joy so great but runneth to an end; / No hap so hard but may in time amend.Robert Southwell.
No joy without alloy.Proverb.
No knowledge is lost, but perfected, and changed for much nobler, sweeter, greater knowledge.Baxter.
No labour is hard, no time is long, wherein the glory of eternity is the mark we level at.S. Hieron.
No law can be finally sacred to me but the law of my own nature.Emerson.
No leaf moves but as God wills it.Spanish Proverb.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.All’s Well, iii. 5.
No lie you can speak or act, but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a bill drawn on Nature’s reality, and be presented there for payment, with the answer: “No effects.”Carlyle.
No literature is complete until the language in which it is written is dead.Longfellow.
No longer pipe, no longer dance.Proverb.
No lover should have the insolence to think of being accepted at once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to refuse at once, without severe reasons.Ruskin.
No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following openly-declared purposes, and preaching candidly-beloved and trusted creeds.Ruskin.
No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends.Carlyle.
No man at the head of affairs always wishes to be explicit.Macaulay.
No man bathes twice in the same river.Heraclitus.
No man beholdeth prosperity who doth not encounter danger; but having encountered danger, if he surviveth, he beholdeth it.Hitopadesa.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.Johnson.
No man can antedate his experience.Emerson.
No man can answer for his courage who has never been in danger.La Rochefoucauld.
No man can be a good poet without first being a good man.Ben Jonson.
No man can be a poet / That is not a good cook, to know the palates / and several tastes of the time.Ben Jonson.
No man can be a hero in anything who is not first of all a hero in faith.Jacobi.
No man can be brave who considers pain to be the greatest evil of life; nor temperate, who considers pleasure to be the highest good.Cicero.
No man can be good, or great, or happy, except through inward efforts of his own.F. W. Robertson.
No man can be said to have the spirit who does not walk in it, or to be born of the spirit until the spirit is born of him.James Wood.
No man can be so entirely a devil as to extinguish in himself the last ray of light.Th. Körner.
No man can become largely rich by his personal toil, but only by discovery of some method of taxing the labour of others.Ruskin.
No man can buy anything in the market with gentility.Lord Burleigh.
No man can, for a length of time, be wholly wretched, if there is not a disharmony (a folly and wickedness) within himself; neither can the richest Crœsus, and never so eupeptic, be other than discontented, perplexed, unhappy, if he be a fool.Carlyle.
No man can force the harp of his own individuality into the people’s heart; but every man may play upon the chords of the people’s heart, who draws his inspiration from the people’s instinct.Kossuth.
No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas.Proverb.
No man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they disagree with that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.Colton.
No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes the object may be.Emerson.
No man can live half a life when he has genuinely learned that it is only half a life. The other half, the higher half, must haunt him.Phillips Brooks.
No man can lose what he never had.Walton.
No man can make a good coat with bad cloth.Proverb.
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.Lowell.
No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, the usages, and the arts of his times shall have no share.Emerson.
No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.Noah Porter.
No man can say in what degree any other person, besides himself, can be, with strict justice, called wicked.Burns.
No man can see over his own height.Proverb.
No man can serve two masters.Jesus.
No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.Hazlitt.
No man can transcend his own individuality.Schopenhauer.
No man doth safely appear abroad but he who can abide at home.Thomas à Kempis.
No man doth safely rule but he that hath learned gladly to obey.Thomas à Kempis.
No man doth safely speak but he who is glad to hold his peace.Thomas à Kempis.
No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labour and economy.Ruskin.
No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.Fisher Ames.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.Emerson.
No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might.Emerson.
No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.John Neale.
No man flatters the woman he truly loves.Tuckerman.
No man had ever a point of pride but was injurious to him.Burke.
No man has a claim to credit upon his own word, when better evidence, if he had it, may be easily produced.Johnson.
No man has a prosperity so high and firm but two or three words can dishearten it.Emerson.
No man has a right to say to his own generation, turning quite away from it, “Be damned.”Carlyle to Emerson.
No man has a worse friend than he brings with him from home.Proverb.
No man has any data for estimating, far less right of judging, the results of a life of resolute self-denial, until he has had the courage to try it himself.Ruskin.
No man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him he gives him for mankind.Phillips Brooks.
No man has worked, or can work, except religiously.Carlyle.
No man hath a thorough taste of prosperity to whom adversity never happened. (?)
No man hath a velvet cross.Proverb.
No man hath a virtue that he has not a glimpse of; nor any man an attaint, but he carries some stain of it.Troil. and Cress., i. 2.
No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.Jesus.
No man is a good physician who has never been sick.Arabian Proverb.
No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre.Prince de Condé, from Plutarch.
No man is always wise except a fool.Proverb.
No man is born into this world whose work is not born with him; there is always work, and tools to work withal, for those who will; and blessed are the horny hands of toil.Lowell.
No man is born wise or learned.Proverb.
No man is either worthy of a good home here or a heaven hereafter that is not willing to be in peril for a good cause.Capt. John Brown.
No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women.Sir W. Raleigh.
No man is ever good for much who has not been carried off his feet by enthusiasm between twenty and thirty.Froude.
No man is ever hurt but by himself.Diogenes.
No man is ever paid for his real work, or should ever expect or demand angrily to be paid; all work properly so called is an appeal from the seen to the unseen—a devout calling upon higher powers; and unless they stand by us, it will not be a work, but a quackery.Carlyle.
No man is free who cannot command himself.Pythagoras.
No man is good but as he wishes the good of others.Johnson.
No man is justified in resisting by word or deed the authority he lives under for a light cause, be such authority what it may.Carlyle.
No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.Seneca.
No man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.Jeremy Taylor.
No man is quite sane; each has a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.Emerson.
No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.Haliburton.
No man is so free as a beggar, and no man more solemnly a servant than an honest land-owner.Ruskin.
No man is so happy as never to give offence.Thomas à Kempis.
No man is so old but thinks he may live another day.Pythagoras.
No man is so sufficient as never to need assistance.Thomas à Kempis.
No man is so tall that he need never stretch, nor so small that he need never stoop.Danish Proverb.
No man is so worthy of envy as he that can be cheerful in want.Bp. Hall.
No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself.Ward Beecher.
No man is the wiser for his learning…. Wit and wisdom are born with a man.Selden.
No man is the worse for knowing the worst of himself.Proverb.
No man is to be deemed free who has not perfect self-command.Pythagoras.
No man is wise enough or good enough to be intrusted with unlimited power.Colton.
No man is wise or safe but he that is honest.Sir W. Raleigh.
No man is without enemies.Arabian Proverb.
No man is without his load of trouble.Thomas à Kempis.
No man lives so poor as he was born.Proverb.