John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Page 185
| John Fletcher. (1579–1625) (continued) |
| 2100 |
| Something given that way. |
| The Lover’s Progress. Act i. Sc. 1. |
| 2101 |
| Deeds, not words. 1 |
| The Lover’s Progress. Act iii. Sc. 4. |
| Robert Burton. (1577–1640) |
| 2102 |
| Naught so sweet as melancholy. 2 |
| Anatomy of Melancholy. The Author’s Abstract. 3 |
| 2103 |
| I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling. 4 |
| Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader. |
| 2104 |
| They lard their lean books with the fat of others’ works. 5 |
| Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader. |
| 2105 |
| We can say nothing but what hath been said. 6 Our poets steal from Homer…. Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best. |
| Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader. |
| 2106 |
| I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself. 7 |
| Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader. |
| Note 1. Deeds, not words.—Samuel Butler: Hudibras, part i. canto i. line 867. [back] |
| Note 2. See Fletcher, page 184. There ’s not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy. Thomas Hood: Ode to Melancholy. [back] |
| Note 3. Dr. Johnson said Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. And Byron said, “If the reader has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty other works with which I am acquainted.”—Works, vol i. p. 144. [back] |
| Note 4. A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.—David Garrick: Prologue on quitting the stage. Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco (Being not unacquainted with woe, I learn to help the unfortunate).—Virgil: Æneid, lib. i. 630. [back] |
| Note 5. See Shakespeare, King Henry IV. Part I, Quotation 21. [back] |
| Note 6. Nihil dictum quod non dictum prius (There is nothing said which has not been said before).—Terence: Eunuchus, Prol. 10. [back] |
| Note 7. A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two.—George Herbert: Jacula Prudentum. A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant’s shoulders to mount on.—Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Friend, sect. i. essay viii. Pigmæi gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident (Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves).—Didacus Stella in Lucan, 10, tom. ii. [back] |