Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Scott

A man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach, either of real good breeding or good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute points of fashionable etiquette.

Affection can withstand very severe storms of rigor, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference. Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but not altogether without it.

Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.

Blood is thicker than water.

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, who never to himself hath saith, This is my own, my native land!

But there’s a gude time coming.

But with the morning cool reflections came.

Courtesy of temper, when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight’s girdle around the breast of a base clown.

Cutting honest throats by whispers.

Dinna curse him, sir; I have heard a good man say that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and maist like to return on his head that sent it.

Do not Christians and Heathens, Jews and Gentiles, poets and philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?

Equity judgeth with lenity, laws with extremity. In all moral cases, the reason of the law is the law.

Every hour has its end.

Fat, fair, and forty.

For deadly fear can time outgo, and blanch at once the hair.

For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

From my experience, not one in twenty marries the first love; we build statues of snow and weep to see them melt.

Give me an honest laugher.

Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than a habit of drinking.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; while the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances.

He that follows the advice of reason has a mind that is elevated above the reach of injury; that sits above the clouds, in a calm and quiet ether, and with a brave indifferency hears the rolling thunders grumble and burst under his feet.

He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.

He who indulges his sense in any excesses renders himself obnoxious to his own reason; and, to gratify the brute in him, displeases the man, and sets his two natures at variance.

His eyebrow dark, and eye of fire, showed spirit proud, and prompt to ire.

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like the aged man reclining under the shadow of the oak which he has planted.

If a faultless poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire the critics themselves, and annoy the whole reading world with the spleen.

In love quarrels the party that loves the most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.

In lover’s quarrels, the party that loves most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.

Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last final awakening.

It is a great disgrace to religion, to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces.

It is more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.

Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye’re sleeping.

Like the last beam of evening thrown on a white cloud, just seen and gone.

Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.

Love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.

Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges.

Mystery has great charms for womanhood.

No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.

Profan’d the God-given strength, and marr’d the lofty line.

Ridicule, the weapon of all others most feared by enthusiasts of every description, and which, from its predominance over such minds, often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.

Sea of upturned faces.

See yonder rock from which the fountain gushes; is it less compact of adamant, though waters flow from it? Firm hearts have moister eyes.

Sensibility is nature’s celestial spring.

Sleep in peace, and wake in joy.

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er, dream of fighting fields no more.

Some feelings are to mortals given with less of earth in them than heaven.

Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to all the world besides.

Still are the thoughts to memory dear.

Stranger is a holy name.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Teach self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.

Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart.

The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.

The legendary tablets of the past.

The lover’s pleasure, like that of the hunter, is in the chase, and the brightest beauty loses half its merit, as the flower its perfume, when the willing hand can reach it too easily. There must be doubt; there must be difficulty and danger.

The man, whom I call deserving the name, is one whose thoughts and exertions are for others rather than himself.

The most learned, acute, and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume.

The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.

The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.

The progress of a private conversation betwixt two persons of different sexes is often decisive of their fate, and gives it a turn very distinct perhaps from what they themselves anticipated. Gallantry becomes mingled with conversation, and affection and passion come gradually to mix with gallantry. Nobles, as well as shepherd swains, will, in such a trying moment, say more than they intended; and queens, like village maidens, will listen longer than they should.

The race of mankind would perish, did they cease to aid each other. From the time that the mother binds the child’s head till the moment that some kind assistant wipes the death-damp from the brow of the dying, we cannot exist without mutual help. All, therefore, that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-mortals; no one who holds the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

The sickening pang of hope deferred.

The stern joy that warriors feel in foemen worthy of their steel.

The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows is like the dew-drop on the rose.

The time which passes over our heads so imperceptibly makes the same gradual change in habits, manners and character as in personal appearance. At the revolution of every five years we find ourselves another and yet the same—there is a change of views and no less of the light in which we regard them; a change of motives as well as of action.

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak, which resists it; and so, in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

Their flag was furled, and mute their drum.

There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its “still small voice” amid rural leisure and placid retirement. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during the season of affliction.

There never did and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in a character which was a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial.

Those faces which have charmed us most escape us the soonest.

Those who are too idle to read, save for the purpose of amusement, may in these works acquire some acquaintance with history, which, however inaccurate, is better than none.

Those who follow the banners of Reason are like the well-disciplined battalions which, wearing a more sober uniform and making a less dazzling show than the light troops commanded by Imagination, enjoy more safety, and even more honor, in the conflicts of human life.

Though wit be very useful, yet unless a wise man has the keeping of it, that knows when, where, and how to apply it, it is like wild-fire, that flies at rovers, runs hissing about, and blows up everything that comes in its way, without any respect or discrimination.

Time rolls his ceaseless course.

To that dark inn, the Grave!

To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.

To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carriere ouverte aux talent—the tools to him that can handle them.

Treason seldom dwells with courage.

We build statues of snow, and weep to see them melt.

We do that in our zeal our calmer moment would be afraid to answer.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.

What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?

When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.

When dark December glooms the day, and takes our autumn joys away.

Where lives the man that hath not tried how mirth can into folly glide, and folly into sin?

Who loves not more the night of June than cold December’s gloomy noon?

Whose lenient sorrows find relief, whose joys are chastened by their grief.

With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.

With every change his features played, as aspens show the light and shade.

Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.

Yet what cam they see in the longest kindly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?