John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Phaedrus fl 1st ent AD John Bartlett
| 1 | |
| Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you. | |
| Book i. Fable 2, 31. | |
| 2 | |
| He who covets what belongs to another deservedly loses his own. | |
| Book i. Fable 4, 1. | |
| 3 | |
| That it is unwise to be heedless ourselves while we are giving advice to others, I will show in a few lines. | |
| Book i. Fable 9, 1. | |
| 4 | |
| Whoever has even once become notorious by base fraud, even if he speaks the truth, gains no belief. | |
| Book i. Fable 10, 1. | |
| 5 | |
| By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength. | |
| Book i. Fable 13, 13. | |
| 6 | |
| No one returns with good-will to the place which has done him a mischief. | |
| Book i. Fable 18, 1. | |
| 7 | |
| It has been related that dogs drink at the river Nile running along, that they may not be seized by the crocodiles. 1 | |
| Book i. Fable 25, 3. | |
| 8 | |
| Every one is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example. | |
| Book i. Fable 26, 12. | |
| 9 | |
| Come of it what may, as Sinon said. | |
| Book iii. The Prologue, 27. | |
| 10 | |
| Things are not always what they seem. 2 | |
| Book iv. Fable 2, 5. | |
| 11 | |
| Jupiter has loaded us with a couple of wallets: the one, filled with our own vices, he has placed at our backs; the other, heavy with those of others, he has hung before. 3 | |
| Book iv. Fable 10, 1. | |
| 12 | |
| A mountain was in labour, sending forth dreadful groans, and there was in the region the highest expectation. After all, it brought forth a mouse. 4 | |
| Book iv. Fable 23, 1. | |
| 13 | |
| A fly bit the bare pate of a bald man, who in endeavouring to crush it gave himself a hard slap. Then said the fly jeeringly, “You wanted to revenge the sting of a tiny insect with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?” | |
| Book v. Fable 3, 1. | |
| 14 | |
| “I knew that before you were born.” Let him who would instruct a wiser man consider this as said to himself. | |
| Book v. Fable 9, 4. |
| Note 1. Pliny in his “Natural History,” book viii, sect. 148, and Ælian in his “Various Histories” relate the same fact as to the dogs drinking from the Nile. “To treat a thing as the dogs do the Nile” was a common proverb with the ancients, signifying to do it superficially. [back] |
| Note 2. See Longfellow, Quotation 2. [back] |
| Note 3. Also alluded to by Horace, Satires. ii. 3, 299; Catullus, 22, 21; and Persius, 4, 24. [back] |
| Note 4. See Horace, Quotation 6. [back] |