James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Sors tua mortalis to Sub rosa
Sors tua mortalis; non est mortale quod optas—Thy lot is mortal, and thou wishest what no mortal may.Ovid.
Sort thy heart to patience; / These few days’ wonder will be quickly worn.2 Henry VI., ii. 4.
Sotto voce—In an undertone.Italian.
Souffrir est la première chose qu’il doit apprendre, et celle qu’il aura le plus grand besoin de savoir—To be able to endure is the first lesson which a child ought to learn, and the one which it will have the most need to know.Rousseau.
Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue.Young.
Souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature’s grandeur before they can first comprehend the greatness of man.Heine.
Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.Goethe.
Sound maxims are the germs of good; strongly imprinted on the memory, they nourish the will.Joubert.
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! / To all the sensual world proclaim, / One crowded hour of glorious life / Is worth an age without a name.Scott.
Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea! / Jehovah has triumph’d, His people are free.Moore.
Sound trumpets!—let our bloody colours wave; / And either victory or else a grave.3 Henry VI., ii. 2.
Soupçon est d’amitié poison—Suspicion is the poison of friendship.French Proverb.
Sour woe delights in fellowship, / And needly will be rank’d with other griefs.Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2.
Souvent la perfidie retourne sur son auteur—Treachery often recoils on the head of its author.French.
Sow good works and you will reap gladness.Proverb.
Soyez comme l’oiseau, posé pour un instant / Sur des rameaux trop frêles, / Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant, / Sachant qu’il a des ailes—He as the bird perched for an instant on the too frail branch which she feels bending beneath, but sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.Victor Hugo.
Soyez ferme—Be firm.Motto.
Soyons doux, si nous voulons être regrettés. La hauteur du génie et les qualités supérieures ne sont pleurées que des anges—Let us be gentle if we would be regretted. The pride of genius and high talents are lamented only by angels.Chateaubriand.
Space is the statue of God.Joubert.
Spare but to spend, and only spend to spare.Proverb.
Spare the rod and spoil the child.Proverb.
Sparen ist grössere Kunst als erwerben—Saving is a greater art than gaining.German Proverb.
Sparing or spending, be thy wisdom seen / In keeping ever to the golden mean.Lucian.
Speak every man truth with his neighbour.St. Paul.
Speak gently!—’tis a little thing, / Dropped in the heart’s deep well.Anonymous.
Speak in such a manner between two enemies, that, should they afterwards become friends, you may not be put to the blush.Saadi.
Speak little and to the purpose.Proverb.
Speak little, but speak the truth.Proverb.
Speak no evil of a man if you know it not of him for certain, and if you do know it, then ask yourself, “Why do I tell it?”Lavater.
Speak not at all till you have somewhat to speak; and care simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.Carlyle.
Speak not peace to thyself when beset on every side with numerous and restless enemies.Thomas à Kempis.
Speak o’ the deil and he’ll appear.Scotch Proverb.
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak / Of one who loved not wisely but too well.Othello, v. 2.
Speak that I may see thee.Addison.
Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance; all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.Emerson.
Speak the truth and shame the devil.Proverb.
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.Bible.
Speak well of the absent whenever you have a suitable opportunity.Judge Hale.
Speak well of your friend; of your enemy say nothing.Proverb.
Speak when you are spoken to, and come when you are called for.Proverb.
Speak your sincerest, think your wisest; there is still a great gulf between you and the fact.Carlyle.
Speaking comes by nature, silence by understanding.German Proverb.
Speaking much is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deed.Sir W. Raleigh.
Speaking without thinking is shooting without aim.Proverb.
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ—The ladies come to see, they come also to be seen.Ovid.
Spectemur agendo—Let us be tried by our actions.Motto.
Spectres exist for those only who wish to see them.Holtei.
Speculation should have free course and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listeth.Carlyle.
Speech, even the commonest, has something of song in it.Carlyle.
Speech has been given to man to disguise his thought.Talleyrand.
Speech is a laggard and a sloth, but the eyes shoot forth an electric fluid that condenses all the elements of sentiment and passion in one single emanation.Horace Smith.
Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.Rivarol.
Speech is like tapestry unfolded, where the imagery appears distinct; but thoughts, like tapestry in the bale, where the figures are rolled up together.Themistocles, quoted by Bacon.
Speech is morning to the mind; it spreads the beauteous images abroad, which else lie furled or clouded in the soul.Nathaniel Lee.
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.Emerson.
Speech is the gift of all, but thought of few.Cato.
Speech is too often, not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling or suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.Carlyle.
Speech of a man’s self ought to be seldom and well chosen.Bacon.
Speech that leads not to action, still more that hinders it, is a nuisance on the earth.Carlyle.
Speedy execution is the mother of good fortune.Proverb.
Spem gregis—The hope of the flock.Virgil.
Spem pretio non emo—I do not give money for mere hopes.Terence.
Spend not on hopes.George Herbert.
Sperat infestis, metuit secundis / Alteram sortem bene præparatum / Pectus—A heart well prepared in adversity hopes for, and in prosperity fears, a change of fortune.Horace.
Sperate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis—Hope on, and reserve yourselves for prosperous times.Virgil.
Speravi—I have hoped.Motto.
Speravimus ista / Dum fortuna fuit—I hoped that once, while fortune was favourable.Virgil.
Spero meliora—I hope for better things.Motto.
Spes bona dat vires, animum quoque spes bona firmat; / Vivere spe vidi qui moriturus erat—Good hope gives strength, good hope also confirms resolution; him who was on the point of death, I have seen revive by hope.
Spes mea Christus—Christ is my hope.Motto.
Spes mea in Deo—My hope is in God.Motto.
Spes sibi quisque—Each man must hope in himself alone.Virgil.
Spes tutissima cœlis—The safest hope is in heaven.Motto.
Spesso chi troppo fa, poco fa—Often he who does too much does little.Italian Proverb.
Spesso d’un gran male nasce un gran bene—Out of a great evil there springs a great good.Italian Proverb.
Spesso i doni sono danni—Gifts are oftentimes losses.Italian Proverb.
Spesso la tardità ti toglie l’occasione et la celerità le forze—Tardiness often robs us of opportunity, and too great despatch of our force.Machiavelli.
Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation, for sleep itself is a recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauce.Fuller.
Spinner, spin softly, you disturb me. I am praying.Portuguese Proverb.
Spinoza was a God-intoxicated man (Gott-getrunkener Mensch).Novalis.
Spirit is the creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries embodies it in his language as the Father.Emerson.
Spirit of Nature! / The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs / Alike in every human heart. / Thou aye erectest there / Thy throne of power unappealable; / Thou art the judge beneath whose nod / Man’s brief and frail authority / Is powerless as the wind / That passeth idly by. / Thine the tribunal which surpasseth / The show of human justice, / As God surpasseth man.Schelling.
Spirit-power begins in directing animal power to other than egoistic ends.Ruskin.
Spirits are not finely touch’d / But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends / The smallest scruple of her excellence / But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines / Herself the glory of a creditor, / Both thanks and use.Meas. for Meas., i. 1.
Spirits, when they please, / Can either sex assume, or both.Milton.
Spiritual music can only spring from discords set in unison; but for evil there were no good, as victory is only possible by battle.Carlyle.
Spite of all the criticising elves, / Those who would make us feel must feel themselves.Burke.
Spite of cormorant devouring Time, / The endeavour of this present breath may buy / That honour which will bate his scythe’s keen edge, / And make us heirs of all eternity.Love’s L’s. Lost, i. 1.
Splendida vitia—Splendid vices.Tertullian, of Pagan virtues.
Splendide mendax—Nobly false or disloyal.Horace.
Spolia opima—The richest of the spoil.
Sport is the bloom and glow of perfect health.Emerson.
Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden—Speech is silvern, silence golden.Swiss Motto.
Sprich nicht von Zeit, sprich nicht von Raum, / Denn Raum und Zeit sind nur ein Traum, / Ein schwerer Traum, den nur vergisst, / Wer durch die Liebe glücklich ist—Speak not of time, speak not of space, for space and time are but a dream, a heavy dream, which he who is happy in love only forgets.Bodenstedt.
Sprich vom Geheimniss nicht geheimnissvoll—Speak not mysteriously of what is a mystery.Goethe.
St. Theresa right well defines the devil as an unfortunate who knows not what it is to love.C. J. Weber.
Stab at thee who will, / No stab the soul can kill.Raleigh.
Stabat mater dolorosa / Juxta crucem lacrymosa / Qua pendebat Filius—She stood a sorrow-stricken mother, weeping by the Cross where her son hung dying.
Stabit quocunque jeceris—It will stand, whichever way you throw it.Legend on the three-legged crest of the Isle of Man.
Stagnation is something more than death, it is corruption also.Simms.
Stain (blemish) not thy innocence by too deep resentment, nor take off from the brightness of thy crown by anger and impatience and eagerness to right thyself.Thomas à Kempis.
Stand fast! to stand or fall, / Free in thine own arbitrament it stands.Milton.
Stand not upon the order of your going, / But go at once.Macbeth, iii. 4.
“Stand out of the sun.”Diogenes to Alexander the Great, and which made Alexander remark, “If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes.”
Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.Bible.
Stand up bravely to afflictions, and quit thyself like a man.Thomas à Kempis.
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.Bible.
Standing on what too long we bore / With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, / We may discern—unseen before— / A path to higher destinies.Longfellow.
Stant cætera tigno—The rest stand on a beam.Motto.
Stare super vias antiquas—To stand upon the old ways.
Stark est des Menschen Arm, wenn ihn Götter stützen—Strong is the arm of man if the gods uphold it.Schiller.
Stars look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent places, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar!Carlyle.
Stat sua cuique dies; breve et irreparabile tempus / Omnibus est vitæ; sed famam extendere factis, / Hoc virtutis opus—Each man has his appointed day; short and irreparable is the brief life of all; but to extend our fame by our deeds, this is manhood’s work.Virgil.
States are to be called happy and noble in so far as they settle rightly who is slave and who free.Carlyle.
Statesmen that are wise / Shape a necessity, as sculptor clay, / To their own model.Tennyson.
Statio bene fida carinis—A safe harbourage for ships.Motto.
Status quo ante bellum—The state in which the belligerents stood before war began.
Status quo, or Statu quo, or In statu quo—The state in which a matter was.
Stay awhile to make an end the sooner.Sir Amyas Paulet.
Steady, durable good cannot be derived from an external cause, by reason all derived from externals must fluctuate as they fluctuate. What then remains but the cause internal; in rectitude of conduct?James Harris.
Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use.Emerson.
Steckenpferde sind theurer als arabische Hengste—Hobby-horses are more expensive than Arab ones.German Proverb.
Steep and craggy is the path of the gods.Porphyry.
Steep regions cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.Goethe.
Stemmata quid faciunt? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo / Sanguine censeri?—What do pedigrees avail? Of what advantage, Ponticus, is it to be rated by the antiquity of your race?Juvenal.
Step by step one goes far.Proverb.
Steps vary as much as the human face.J. M. Barrie.
Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in expounding and filling up, these are the two pinions on which history soars—or flutters and wabbles.Carlyle.
Stern daughter of the voice of God.Wordsworth, of Duty.
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives elate / Full on thy bloom.Burns.
Stet—Let it stand.
Stet fortuna domus—May the fortune of the house stand.Motto.
Stets ist die Sprache kecker als die That—Speech is always bolder than action.Schiller.
Stets liegt, wo das Banner der Wahrheit wallt, / Der Aberglaube im Hinterhalt—Where the banner of truth waves unfurled, there you will always find superstition lying in ambush.Platen.
Stets zu spät kommt gute Kunde, / Schlechte Kunde zu frühe—Good news comes always too late; bad, always too soon.Bodenstedt.
Steward or deputy may do well: but the lord himself is obliged to stir in the administration of justice.Cervantes.
Stiff (a) and laboured manner is as bad in a letter as it is in conversation…. Sprightliness and wit are graceful in letters, just as they are in conversation.Blair.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, / Was everything by starts, and nothing long; / But in the course of one revolving moon / Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.Dryden.
Still humanity grows dearer; / Being learned the more.Jean Ingelow.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, / To silence envious tongues.Henry VIII., iii. 2.
Still people are dangerous.La Fontaine.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice, / But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.Johnson.
Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live for ever? Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all? This is a miracle; and that no more.Young.
Still swine eat all the draff.Proverb.
Still the sight of too great beauty blinds us, and we lose / The sense of earthly splendours, gaining heaven.Lewis Morris.
Still the skies are opened as of old / To the entrancèd gaze, ay, nearer far / And brighter than of yore.Lewis Morris.
Still they gazed, and still the wonder grew / That one small head could carry all he knew.Goldsmith.
Still to the lowly soul / He doth Himself impart, / And for His cradle and His throne / Chooseth the pure in heart.Keble.
Still und bewegt—Still and yet moved.Motto of Rahel.
Still waters run deep.Proverb.
Stillest streams oft water finest meadows, / And the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing.Cowper.
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can’t sit still, or at least they must work their limbs or features.Holmes.
Stirb, Götz, du hast dich selbst überlebt—Die, Gotz; thou hast outlived thyself.Goethe.
Stirb und werde! / Denn so lang du das nicht hast, / Bist du nur ein trüber Gast / Auf der dunkeln Erde—Die and learn to live, for so far as thou hast not accomplished this, thou art but a darkened guest in a darkened world.Goethe.
Stirring spirits live alone: / Write on the others, “Here lies such a one.”George Herbert.
Sto pro veritate—I stand in the defence of truth.Motto.
Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.Bible.
Stone masons collected the dome of St. Paul’s, but Wren hung it in the air.Willmott.
Stony limits cannot hold love out; / And what love can do, that dares love attempt.Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2.
Store of grain, O king! is the best of stores. A gem cast into the mouth will not support life.Hitopadesa.
Store Ord giöre sielden from Gierning—Big words seldom accompany good deeds.Danish Proverb.
Storms make oaks take deeper root.Proverb.
Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life; and few there be that find it.Jesus.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again; / Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; / And from the dregs of life think to receive / What the first sprightly running could not give.Dryden.
Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, / Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine!Longfellow.
Strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift, hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale; will either blow out a pestilent scoundrel’s brains, or the scoundrel’s salutary sheriff’s officer’s (in a sense), as you please to choose, for your guinea.Carlyle.
Stranger or countryman to me / Welcome alike shall ever be. / To ask of any guest his name, / Or whose he is, or whence he came, / I hold can never be his part / Who owns a hospitable heart.Macedonius.
Straws show which way the wind blows.Proverb.
Strength alone knows conflict; weakness is below even defeat, and is born vanquished.Mme. Swetchine.
Strength, instead of being the lusty child of passions, grows by grappling with and throwing them.J. M. Barrie.
Strength needs support far more than weakness. A feather sustains itself long in the air.Mme. Swetchine.
Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.Pope.
Strength of mind rests in sobriety, for this keeps the reason unclouded by passion.Pythagoras.
Strength was the virtue of Paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.Hare.
Strenua nos exercet inertia; navibus atque / Quadrigis petimus bene vivere; quod petis hic est—Strenuous idleness gives us plenty to do; we seek to live aright by yachting and chariot-driving. What you are seeking for is here.Horace.
Strict laws are like steel bodices, good for growing limbs; but when the joints are knit, they are not helps, but burdens.Sir Francis Fane.
Strict punctuality is perhaps the cheapest virtue which can give force to an otherwise utterly insignificant character.J. F. Boyes.
Strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always the ruling and divine power, and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken.Ruskin.
Strike, but hear me.Themistocles to Eurybiades before battle of Salamis.
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! / Crack Nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once, / That make ungrateful man!King Lear, iii. 2.
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help.1 Henry VI., iii. 3.
Strike while the iron is hot.Proverb.
Striking manners are bad manners.Robert Hall.
Strip the bishop of his apron, the counsellor of his gown, and the beadle of his cocked hat, what are they? Men, mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.Dickens.
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.Tam. of Shrew, i. 2.
Strive not against the stream.Ecclesiasticus.
Strive to do thy duty; then shalt thou know what is in thee.Goethe.
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.Proverb.
Strong character curdles itself out of the scum into its own place and power or impotence.Ruskin.
Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, gentle ones by permanence.Jean Paul.
Strong conceit, like a new principle, carries all easily with it, when yet above common-sense.Locke.
Strong feeling must create poetry.Moses Harvey.
Strong folks have strong maladies.German Proverb.
Strong passions are the life of manly virtues. But they need not necessarily be evil because they are passions and because they are strong. The passions may be likened to blood horses, that need training and the curb only to enable them whom they carry to achieve the most glorious triumphs.Simms.
Strong reasons make strong actions.King John, iii. 4.
Strong Son of God, immortal Love, / Whom we that have not seen Thy face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace, / Believing where we cannot prove.Tennyson.
Stronger than steel / Is the sword of the spirit; / Swifter than arrows / The life of the truth is; / Greater than anger / Is love, and subdueth.Longfellow.
Strongest minds / Are often those of whom the noisy world / Hears least.Wordsworth.
Studies perfect nature, and are perfected by experience.Bacon.
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.Bacon.
Studiis et rebus honestis—By honourable studies and occupations.Motto.
Studiis florentem ignobilis oti—Indulging in the studies of inglorious leisure.Virgil.
Studio minuente laborem—The enthusiasm lessening the fatigue.Ovid.
Study gives strength to the mind; conversation, grace.Temple.
Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun, / That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks.Love’s L’s. Lost, i. 1.
Study is the bane of boyhood, the element of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of age.Landor.
Study of the Bible will keep any man from being vulgar in style.Coleridge.
Study the best and highest things that are, / But of thyself an humble thought retain.Sir J. Davis.
Study the past if you would divine the future.Confucius.
Study thyself; what rank or what degree / The wise Creator hath ordained for thee.Dryden.
Study to be quiet; contain yourself within your own business, and let the prying, censorious, the vain and intriguing world follow their own devices.Thomas à Kempis.
Study to be what you wish to seem.John Bate.
Stulta maritali jam porrigit ora capistro—He is now stretching out his foolish head to the matrimonial halter.Juvenal.
Stultus nisi quod ipse facit, nil rectum putat—The fool thinks nothing well done except what he does himself.
Stulti sunt inumerabiles—Fools are without number.Erasmus.
Stultitiam dissimulare non potes nisi taciturnitate—No concealing folly save by silence.
Stultitiam patiuntur opes—Riches allow one to be foolish.Horace.
Stultitiam simulare loco, sapientia summa est—To affect folly on an occasion is consummate wisdom.
Stultorum incurata malus pudor ulcera celat—It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal uncured wounds.Horace.
Stultum est timere quod vitari non potest—It is foolish to distress ourselves about what cannot be avoided.Syrus.
Stultus es, rem actam agis—You are a fool; you do what has been done already.Plautus.
Stultus labor est ineptiarum—The labour is foolish that is bestowed on trifles.Martial.
Stultus, qui, patre occiso, liberos relinquat—He who kills the father and leaves the children is a fool.Proverb.
Stultus semper incipit vivere—The fool is always beginning to live.Proverb.
Stunden der Noth vergiss, doch was sie dich lehrten, vergiss nie—Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.Gesser.
Stung by straitness of our life, made strait / On purpose to make sweet the life at large.Browning.
Stupid people and uneducated people do not care for nice discriminations. They always have decided opinions.William Black.
Stupid people move like lay-figures, while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent.Schopenhauer.
Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius.Wieland.
Stupidity is without anxiety.Goethe.
Sturm- und Drang-Periode—The storm-and-stress period. A literary period in Germany, the productions of which were inspired by a love of strong passion and violent action.
Style is the dress of thoughts.Chesterfield.
Style is the physiognomy of the mind.Schopenhauer.
Style is what gives value and currency to thought.Amiel.
Style may be defined, proper words in proper places.Swift.
Stylo inverse—With the back of the pen.
Stylum vertere—To change or correct the style.
Sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido—Each man makes his own dire passion a god.Virgil.
Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio, / Colorque proprius—Since each man has a way of his own of thinking, and a peculiar temper.Phædrus.
Sua cuique vita obscura est—Every man’s life is dark to himself.
Sua cuique voluptas—Every man has his own liking.
Sua quisque exempla debet æquo animo pati—Every one ought to bear patiently with what is after his own example.Phædrus.
Suave, mari magno turbantibus acquora ventis / E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem!—How fascinating it is when on the great sea the winds have raised its waters into billows, to witness the perils of another from the land!
Suavis est laborum præteritorum memoria—Sweet is the memory of past trouble.Cicero.
Suaviter et fortiter—Mildly and firmly.Motto.
Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re—Gentle in manner, resolute in deed.Motto.
“Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re,”—I do not know any one rule so unexceptionally useful and necessary in every part of life.Chesterfield.
Sub cruce candida—Under the pure white cross.Motto.
Sub cruce salus—Salvation under the cross.Motto.
Sub fine—At the end.
Sub hoc signo vinces—Under this sign (the cross) thou shalt conquer.Motto.
Sub initio—At the beginning.
Sub Jove—In the open air.
Sub judice lis est—The question is undecided.
Sub pœna—Under a penalty.Law.
Sub reservatione Jacobæo—With St. James’s reservation; viz., if the Lord will.
Sub rosa—Under the rose; confidentially.