C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Cervantes
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
A good name is better than bags of gold.
A little instrument of mighty power.
A man dishonored is worse than dead.
A shy face is better than a forward heart.
All beauty does not inspire love. Some please the sight without captivating the affections.
All persons are not discreet enough to know how to take things by the right handle.
All sorrows are bearable, if there is bread.
All that glisters is not gold.
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.
An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.
And the first thing I would do in my government, I would have nobody to control me, I would be absolute; and who but I: now, he that is absolute, can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes, can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure, can be content; and he that can be content has no more to desire; so the matter’s over.
Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding.
Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.
Beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance, or like a sharp sword; neither doth the one burn, nor the other wound those that come not too near them.
Blessings on him who invented sleep.
By the streets of “By and By” one arrives at the house of “Never.”
Can one desire too much of a good thing?
Cunning cheats itself wholly, and other people partially.
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
Dine on little, and sup on less.
Don’t put too fine a point to your wit, for fear it should get blunted.
Every one in his own house and God in all of them.
Every one is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.
Evil comes not amiss if it comes alone.
Fear has many eyes.
For let us women be never so ill-favored, I imagine that we are always delighted to hear ourselves called handsome.
For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God.
For the army is a school in which the niggardly become generous, and the generous prodigal; and if there are some soldiers misers, they are a kind of monsters, but very rarely seen.
For the bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.
Good Christians should never avenge injuries.
Great expectations are better than a poor possession.
He had a face like a benediction.
He is best served who has no occasion to put the hand of others at the end of his arms.
He said—and his observation was just—that a man on whom heaven hath bestowed a beautiful wife should be as cautious of the men he brings home to his house as careful of observing the female friends with whom his spouse converses abroad.
He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
He who reforms, God assists.
He who sings frightens away his ills.
Health and cheerfulness make beauty.
Heaven’s help is better than early rising.
Here is the devil-and-all to pay.
Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.
History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future.
Honesty is the best policy.
I am almost frightened out of my seven senses.
I am of opinion that there is no proverb which is not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences.
I can tell where my own shoe pinches me.
I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.
I follow a more easy, and, in my opinion, a wiser course, namely—to inveigh against the levity of the female sex, their fickleness, their double-dealing, their rotten promises, their broken faith, and, finally, their want of judgment in bestowing their affections.
I have other fish to fry.
I never thrust my nose into other men’s porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine: Every man for himself and God for us all.
I would do what I pleased; and, doing what I pleased, I should have my will; and, having my will, I should be contented; and, content, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to desire, there is an end of it.
If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things comfortably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not.
In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.
Inasmuch as ill deeds spring up as a spontaneous crop, they are easy to learn.
Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?
It is better that a judge should lean on the side of compassion than severity.
It is courage that vanquishes in war, and not good weapons.
Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large,—of dwarfs giants, suspicions truths.
Leap out of the frying pan into the fire.
Let the worst come to the worst.
Let us not throw the rope after the bucket.
Liberty***is one of the choicest gifts that heaven hath bestowed upon man, and exceeds in value all the treasures which the earth contains within its bosom, or the sea covers. Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.
More knave than fool.
Necessity urges desperate measures.
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.
No padlocks, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden so well as her own reserve.
Nothing costs less nor is cheaper than compliments of civility.
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. There is only one thing, which somebody once put into my head, that I dislike in sleep; it is, that it resembles death; there is very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.
Other men’s pains are easily borne.
Patience, and shuffle the cards!
Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young and extremely beautiful, whom divers other virgins—namely, all the other sciences—make it their business to enrich, polish, and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give a lustre to them all.
Riches are able to solder up abundance of flaws.
Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.
Seek for good, but expect evil.
She who desires to see, desires also to be seen.
Short sentences drawn from a long experience.
Sleep is the best cure for waking troubles.
Sloth***never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.
Smell a rat.
Spare your breath to cool your porridge.
Spick and span new.
Take away the motive, and you take away the sin.
The absent feel and fear every ill.
The ass bears the load, but not the overload.
The darts of love are blunted by maiden modesty.
The knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.
The little birds have God for their caterer.
The mean of true valor lies between the extremes of cowardice and rashness.
The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
The pen is the tongue of the mind.
The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The rather since every man is the son of his own works.
The reputation of a woman may also be compared to a mirror of crystal, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it.
The wicked are always ungrateful.
The wise hand does not all the tongue dictates.
The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so even amidst an army of soldiers.
There is a remedy for everything but death, who, in spite of our teeth, will take us in his clutches.
“There is no book so bad,” said the bachelor, “but something good may be found in it.”
There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a chaste and virtuous woman.
There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.
There is nothing costs less than civility.
They had best not stir the rice, though it sticks to the pot.
This peck of troubles.
Three things too much and three too little are pernicious to man: to speak much and know little; to spend much and have little; to presume much and be worth little.
To be good to the vile is to throw water into the sea.
To-day for thee, and to-morrow for me.
Treason pleases, but not the traitor.
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.
We must not stand upon trifles.
Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also.
What is bought is cheaper than a gift.
When good luck knocks at the door, let him in and keep him there.
When in doubt, lean to the side of mercy.
When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer.
Whoever is ignorant is vulgar.
Wit and humor belong to genius alone.
You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the ’versal world but what you can turn your hand to.