James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
On perd tout to Only they who
On perd tout le temps qu’on peut mieux employer—All the time is lost which might be better employed. (?)
On peut attirer les cœurs par les qualités qu’on montre, mais on ne les fixe que par celles qu’on a—People’s affections may be attracted by the qualities which we affect, but they can only be won by those which we really possess.French.
On peut dire que son esprit brille aux dépens de sa mémoire—We may say his wit shines at the expense of his memory.Le Sage.
On peut dominer par la force, mais jamais par la seule adresse—We may lord it by force, but never by adroitness alone.Vauvenargues.
On peut être plus fin qu’un autre, mais non pas plus fin que tous les autres—A man may be sharper than another, but not than all others.La Rochefoucauld.
On peut mépriser le monde, mais on ne peut pas s’en passer—We may despise the world, but we cannot do without it.French Proverb.
On prend le peuple par les oreilles, comme on fait un pot par les anses—The public are to be caught by the ears, as one takes a pot by the handles.Proverb.
On prend son bien où on le trouve—One takes what is his own wherever he finds it.French Proverb.
On prend souvent l’indolence pour la patience—Indolence is often taken for patience.French Proverb.
On Reason build Resolve! / That column of true majesty in man.Young.
On respecte un moulin, on vole une province!—They (obliged by law) spare a mill, but steal a province!
On revient toujours à ses premiers amours—We always come back to our first loves.Etienne.
On se heurte tonjours où l’on a mal—One always knocks himself on the spot where the sore is.French Proverb.
On se persuade mieux pour l’ordinaire par les raisons qu’on a trouvées soi-même, que par celles qui sont venues dans l’esprit des autres—We are ordinarily more easily satisfied with reasons that we have discovered ourselves, than by those which have occurred to others.Pascal.
On some men’s bread butter will not stick.Proverb.
On spécule sur tout, même sur la famine—People speculate on everything, even on famine.Armand Charlemagne.
On termine de longs procès / Par un peu de guerre civile—We end protracted law-suits by a little civil war.
On the beaten road there is tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a way through the impassable.Carlyle.
On the brink of the waters of life and truth we are miserably dying.Emerson.
On the day of the resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when they reach it.Mahomet.
On the field of foughten battle still, / Woe knows no limits save the victor’s will.The Gaulliad.
On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise.Hafiz.
On the pinnacle of fortune man does not stand long firm.Goethe.
On the sea sail, on the land settle.Proverb.
On the soft bed of luxury most kingdoms have expired.Young.
On the stage man should stand a step higher than in life.Börne.
On this account is the Bible a book of eternally effective power, because, as long as the world lasts, no one will step forward and say: I comprehend it in the whole and understand it in the particular; but we modestly say: In the whole it is venerable, and in the particular practicable (anwendar).Goethe.
On veut avoir ce qu’on n’a pas, / Et ce qu’on a cesse de deplaire—We wish to have what we have not, and what we have ceases to please.Monvel.
On voit mourir et renaître les roses; il n’en est pas ainsi de nos beaux jours—We see roses die and revive again; it is not so with our fine days.Charleval.
On wrong / Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong.Pope.
Once a knave, always a knave.Proverb.
Once a man and twice a child.Proverb.
Once for all, beauty remains undemonstrable; it appears to us as in a dream, when we behold the works of the great poets and painters, and, in short, of all feeling artists.Goethe.
Once is no custom.Proverb.
Once is no rule.Proverb.
Once resolved, the trouble is over.Italian Proverb.
Once sufficiently enforce the eighth commandment, the whole “rights of man” are well cared for; I know no better definition of the rights of man: “Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not be stolen from.” What a society were that! Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia mere emblems of it.Carlyle.
Once thoroughly our own, knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.Ruskin.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.Lowell.
Once true, still more twice true, in the life of the spirit is always true.James Wood.
Ond Gierning har Vidne i Barmen—There is a witness of the evil deed in one’s own bosom.Danish Proverb.
Ondt bliver aldrig godt för halv værre kommer—Bad is never good till worse befall.Danish Proverb.
One abides not long on the summit of fortune.Proverb.
One, although not possessed of a mine of gold, may find the offspring of his own nature, that noble ardour, which hath for its object the accomplishment of the whole assemblage of virtues.Hitopadesa.
One always has time enough if one will apply it well.Goethe.
One and God make a majority.Fred. Douglas.
One anecdote is worth a volume of biography.Channing.
One barking dog sets all the street a-barking.Proverb.
One beats the bush, and another catches the bird.Proverb.
One Bible I know, of whose plenary inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay, with my own eyes I saw the God’s hand writing it; whereof all other Bibles are but leaves, say, in picture-writing, to assist the weaker faculty.Carlyle.
One born on the glebe comes by habit to belong to it; the two grow together, and the fairest ties are spun from the union.Goethe.
One can be very happy without demanding that others should agree with one.Goethe.
One can bear to be rebuked, but not to be laughed at.Molière.
One can live in true freedom, and yet not be unbound.Goethe.
One can live on little, but not on nothing.Proverb.
One can never know at the first moment what may, at a future time, separate itself from the rough experience as true substance.Goethe.
One cannot help doing a good office when it comes in one’s way.Le Sage.
One cannot say that the rational is always beautiful; but the beautiful is always rational, or at least ought to be so.Goethe.
One cannot speak the truth with false words.Goethe.
One can’t shoe a runaway horse.Dutch Proverb.
One chick keeps a hen busy.Proverb.
One cloud is enough to eclipse all the sun.Proverb.
One could not commit a greater crime against public interests than to show indulgence to those who violate them.Richelieu.
One could not wish any man to fall into a fault; yet it is often precisely after a fault, or a crime even, that the morality which is in a man first unfolds itself, and what of strength he as a man possesses, now when all else is gone from him.Goethe.
One could take down a book from a shelf ten times more wise and witty than almost any man’s conversation.Campbell.
One crime is everything; two, nothing.Mme. Deluzy.
One crow never pulls out another’s eyes.Proverb.
One crowded hour of glorious life / Is worth an age without a name.Scott.
One does not love the heaven’s lightning (seen in a great man) in the way of caresses altogether.Carlyle.
One dog can drive a flock of sheep.Proverb.
One doth not know / How much an ill word may empoison liking.Much Ado, iii. 1.
One drop of hatred left in the cup of joy turns the most blissful draught into poison.Schiller.
One enemy is too many, and a hundred friends too few.Proverb.
One enemy may do us more harm than a hundred friends can do us good.Proverb.
One eye of the master does more than both his hands.Proverb.
One eye-witness is better than ten hearsays.Proverb.
One false move may lose the game.Proverb.
One feels clearly that it is a kindly spirit which actually constitutes the human element in man.Schiller.
One finds human nature everywhere great and little, beautiful and ugly…. Go on bravely working.Goethe.
One fire burns out another’s burning; / One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish.Romeo and Juliet, i. 1.
One fool makes many.Proverb.
One futile person, that maketh it his glory to tell, will do more hurt than many that know it their duty to conceal.Bacon.
One gets easier accustomed to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves.Auerbach.
One God, one law, one element, / And one far-off divine event, / To which the whole creation moves.Tennyson.
One good deed dying tongueless / Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.Winter’s Tale, i. 2.
One good head is better than a hundred strong hands.Proverb.
One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.Proverb.
One good turn deserves another.Proverb.
One good way I know of to find happiness is not by boring a hole to fit the plug.Billings.
One grain fills not a sack, but helps his fellows.Proverb.
One hair of a woman draws more than a team of horses.
One half of the world knows not how the other half lives.Rabelais.
One half of the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.Longfellow.
One half the world laughs at the other.French and German Proverb.
One hand full of money is more persuasive than two full of truth.Danish Proverb.
One hand washes another.Proverb.
One hard word brings on another.Proverb.
One head cannot hold all wisdom.Proverb.
One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.Mahometan Proverb.
One hour’s sleep before midnight is worth two after.Proverb.
One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.Wordsworth.
One is always making good use of one’s time when engaged with a subject that daily forces one to make advances in self-culture.Goethe.
One is not a whit the happier when he attains what he has wished for.Goethe.
One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music.Carlyle.
One jeer seldom goeth forth but it bringeth back its equal.Proverb.
One keep-clean is better than ten make-cleans.Proverb.
One learns taciturnity best among those people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn.Jean Paul.
One lie makes many.Proverb.
One lie needs seven lies to wait upon it.Proverb.
One life—a little gleam of time between two eternities.Carlyle.
One link broken, the whole chain is broken.Proverb.
One loss brings another.Proverb.
One man is born to money, and another to the purse.Danish Proverb.
One man makes a chair, and another man sits in it.Proverb.
One man may lead a horse to the water, but twenty cannot make him drink.Proverb.
One man may steal a horse more safely than another may look at him over a hedge.Proverb.
One man receives crucifixion as the reward of his villainy; another a regal crown.Juvenal.
One man that has a higher wisdom in him is not stronger than ten men, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not.Carlyle.
One man’s eyes are spectacles to another to read his heart with.Johnson.
One man’s justice is another man’s injustice; one man’s beauty, another’s ugliness; one man’s wisdom, another’s folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point.Emerson.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.Proverb.
One man’s opinion is no man’s opinion.Proverb.
One may forsake a person to save a family; one may desert a whole family for the sake of a village; and sacrifice a village for the safety of the community; but for one’s self one may abandon the whole world.Hitopadesa.
One may give him a hundred instances from Holy Writ that he should not dispute; still, it is the character of a fool to make a disturbance without a cause.Hitopadesa.
One may make the house a palace of sham, or he can make it a home—a refuge.Mark Twain.
One may often find as much thought on the reverse of a medal as in a canto of Spenser.Addison.
One may see that with half an eye.Proverb.
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.Hamlet, i. 5.
One may summon his philosophy when he is beaten in battle, not till then.John Burroughs.
One misfortune is the vigil of another.Italian Proverb.
One monster there is in this world: the idle man.Carlyle.
One mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers.Manu.
One murder made a villain; / Millions, a hero.Bp. Porteous.
One must be careful in announcing great happiness.Schopenhauer.
One must be somebody in order to have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.Mme. Swetchine.
One must be something in order to do something.Goethe.
One must believe in simplicity, in what is simple, in what is originally productive, if one wants to go the right way. This, however, is not granted to every one; we are born in an artificial state, and it is far easier to make it more artificial still than to return to what is simple.Goethe.
One must have lived greatly whose record would bear the full light of day from its beginning to its close.A. B. Alcott.
One must not look a gift horse in the mouth.Proverb.
One must not swerve in one’s self, not even a hair’s breadth from the highest maxims of art and life; but in empiricism, in the movement of the day, I would rather allow what is mediocre to pass than mistake the good, or even find fault with it.Goethe.
One must take a pleasure in the shell till one has the happiness to arrive at the kernel.Goethe.
One must weigh men by avoirdupois weight, and not by the jeweller’s scales.Goethe.
One need only take a thing properly in hand for it to be done.Goethe.
One need only utter something that flatters indolence and conceit to be sure of plenty of adherents among commonplace people.Goethe.
One never goes farther than when he does not know whither he is going.Goethe.
One never needs his wit so much as when he argues with a fool.Chinese Proverb.
One of the best rules in conversation is, never say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had left unsaid.Swift.
One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.Voltaire.
One of the most fatal sources of the prevailing misery and crime lies in the generally accepted quiet assumption that because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right.Ruskin.
One of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind, is its power of persuading itself to see whatever it chooses; a great gift if directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a great weakness if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging.Ruskin.
One of the noblest qualities in our nature is that we are able so easily to dispense with greater perfection.Vauvenargues.
One of the old man’s miseries is that he cannot easily find a companion able to partake with him of the past.Johnson.
One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.Bulwer Lytton.
One of the worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease of thinking. If it would only just look at a thing instead of thinking what it must be like, or do a thing instead of thinking it cannot be done, we should all get on far better.Ruskin.
One of these days is none of these days.Proverb.
One on God’s side is a majority.Wendell Phillips.
One ought not to praise a great man unless he is as great as he.Goethe.
One pair of heels is often worth two pair of hands. (?)
One pirate gets nothing of another but his cask.Proverb.
One ploughs, another sows; / Who will reap, no one knows.Proverb.
One power rules another, but no power can cultivate another; in each endowment, and not elsewhere, lies the force that must complete it.Goethe.
One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures; and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy.Junius.
One rarely sees how deeply one is in debt till one comes to settle one’s accounts.Goethe.
One really gains nothing from such interests (as occupy the newspaper).Goethe.
One religion after another fades away; but the religious sense, which created them all, can never become dead to humanity.Jean Paul.
One says more, and with more heart, in an hour than is written in years.Goethe.
One science only can one genius fit, / So vast is art, so narrow human wit.Pope.
One scream of fear from a mother may resound through the whole life of her daughter.Jean Paul.
One sheep follows another.Proverb.
One should abandon that country wherein there is neither respect, nor employment, nor connections, nor the advancement of science.Hitopadesa.
One should never ask anybody if one means to write anything.Goethe.
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptionable character, except among people of culture and wit.La Bruyère.
One should never think of death. One should think of life: that is real piety.Disraeli.
One should not lift the rod against our enemies upon the private information of another.Hitopadesa.
One should not neglect from time to time to renew friendly relations by personal intercourse.Goethe.
One shriek of hate would jar all the hymns of heaven: / True Devils with no ear, they howl in tune / With nothing but the Devil!Tennyson.
One sickly sheep infects the flock.Proverb.
One sin opens the door to another.Proverb.
One single moment is decisive both of man’s life and his whole future. However he may reflect, each resolution he forms is but the work of a moment; the prudent alone seize the right one.Goethe.
One sinner destroyeth much good.Bible.
One solitary philosopher may be great, virtuous, and happy in the depth of poverty, but not a whole people.L. Iselin.
One soul may have a decided influence upon another merely by means of its silent presence.Goethe.
One soweth and another reapeth.Hebrew Proverb.
One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.Paine.
One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honourable life.L’Estrange.
One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine.Young.
One swallow does not make a summer.Proverb.
One sword keeps another in the scabbard.Proverb.
One “Take this” is better than two “I will give you.”Spanish Proverb.
“One thing above all others,” says Goethe, “I have never thought about thinking.” What a thrift of thinking-faculty there; thrift almost of itself equal to a fortune in these days.Carlyle.
One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.J. G. Holland.
One thing is needful.Jesus.
One thing there is which no child brings into the world with him; and yet it is on this one thing that all depends for making man in every point a man;—and that is Reverence (Ehrfurcht).Goethe.
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.Lowell.
One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.Coleridge.
One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.Thackeray.
One to another cannot be a perfect physician.George Herbert.
One to-day is worth two to-morrows.Ben. Franklin.
One tongue is sufficient for a woman.Milton, in reference to foreign languages.
One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.Troil. and Cress., iii. 3.
One ’ud think, an’ hear some folk talk, as the men war cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’ only smelling at it.George Eliot.
One who, either in conversation or in letters, affects to shine and to sparkle always, will not please long.Blair.
One who has nothing to admire, nothing to love, except his own poor self, may be reckoned a completed character; (but) he is in the minimum state of moral perfection—no more can be made of him.Carlyle.
One who is master of ever so little art may be able, on a great occasion, to root up trees with as much ease as the current of a river the reeds and grass.Hitopadesa.
One who is out of his own country is defeated by a very trifling enemy.Hitopadesa.
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, / So fast they follow.Hamlet, iv. 7.
One word with two meanings is the traitor’s shield and shaft.Caucasian Proverb.
One wrong step may give you a great fall.Proverb.
One’s morning indolence is soon gone when one has once persuaded one’s self to put a foot out of bed.Goethe.
One’s piety is best displayed in his pursuits.A. B. Alcott.
One’s too few, three’s too many.Proverb.
Oneness and otherness. It is impossible to speak or think without embracing both.Emerson.
Only a Christ could have conceived a Christ.Joseph Parker.
Only a great pride, that is, a great and reverential repose in one’s own being, renders possible a noble humility.D. A. Wassou.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul, / Like seasoned timber, never gives; / But when the whole world turns to coal, / Then chiefly lives.George Herbert.
Only action gives life strength; only moderation gives it a charm.Jean Paul.
Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.Novalis.
Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is, or should be, an inventor.Emerson.
Only by joy and sorrow does a man know anything about himself and his destiny, learn what he ought to seek and what to shun.Goethe.
Only by pride cometh contention; but with the well-advised is wisdom.Bible.
Only great men have any business with great defects.La Rochefoucauld.
Only great souls know the grandeur there is in charity.Bossuet.
Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to expectations.Thoreau.
Only he deserves freedom who has day by day to fight for it.Goethe.
Only he helps who unites with many at the proper hour; a single individual helps not.Goethe.
Only I discern / Infinite passion, and the pain / Of finite hearts that yearn.Browning.
Only in complicated critical cases do men find out what is within them.Goethe.
Only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we call union, mutual love, society, begin to be possible.Carlyle.
Only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.As You Like It, i. 2.
Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.Goethe.
Only lofty character is worth describing at all.Ruskin.
Only people who possess firmness can possess true gentleness.La Rochefoucauld.
Only regard for law can give us freedom.Goethe.
Only so far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life generally.Novalis.
Only such persons interest us, Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English, Americans, who have stood in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit and might extricated themselves, and made man victorious.Emerson.
Only suffering draws / The inner heart of song, and can elicit / The perfumes of the soul.Lewis Morris.
Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.Emerson.
Only that is poetry which purifies and mans me.Emerson.
Only the actions of the just / Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.Shirley.
Only the idle among the poor revolt against their state; the brave workers die passively, and give no sign.Ruskin.
Only the man of worth can recognise worth in men.Carlyle.
Only the person should give advice in a matter where he himself will co-operate.Goethe.
Only the word of God and the heart of man can govern.Ruskin.
Only they who have hope live.Halm.