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

Names

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond.

O name forever sad, forever dear!

Pope.

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.

Shakespeare.

Certain names always awake certain prejudices.

Joseph Roux.

Ravished with the whistling of a name.

Pope.

Some to the fascination of a name surrender judgment hoodwinked.

Cowper.

Good name in man and woman is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Shakespeare.

“A person with a bad name is already half hanged,” saith the old proverb.

Whipple.

  • ’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;
  • A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in ’t.
  • Byron.

    Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to sustain them.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    I do beseech you—chiefly that I may set it in my prayers—what is your name?

    Shakespeare.

    Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves; and perhaps that is the reason of it.

    William Penn.

    To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life.

    Chamfort.

    Named softly as the household name of one whom God had taken.

    Mrs. Browning.

    A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.

    Bible.

  • Go back; the virtue of your name
  • Is not here passable.
  • Shakespeare.

    One of the few, the immortal names, that were not born to die.

    Halleck.

    A great name without merit is like an epitaph on a coffin.

    Mme. de Puisieux.

  • May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name,
  • And glorify what else is damn’d to fame.
  • Richard Savage.

    Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil.

    Macaulay.

    In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him; what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing.

    Landor.

    A virtuous name is the precious only good, for which queens and peasants’ wives must contest together.

    Schiller.

    He left the name at which the world grew pale, to point a moral or adorn a tale.

    Dr. Johnson.

    Imagine for a moment Napoleon I. to have borne the name of Jenkins, or Washington to have sustained the appellation of John Smith!

    Artemus Ward.

  • Who hath not own’d, with rapture-smitten frame,
  • The power of grace, the magic of a name.
  • Campbell.

    A name is a kind of face whereby one is known; wherefore taking a false name is a kind of visard whereby men disguise themselves.

    Thomas Fuller.

  • I have a passion for the name of “Mary,”
  • For once it was a magic sound to me,
  • And still it half calls up the realms of fairy,
  • Where I beheld what never was to be.
  • Byron.

    In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,—fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.

    Thoreau.

    The generality of men are wholly governed by names in matters of good and evil, so far as the qualities relate to and affect the actions of men.

    South.

  • Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce
  • Of that serene companion—a good name.
  • Recovers not his loss; but walks with shame,
  • With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse.
  • Wordsworth.

  • Oh! never breathe a dead one’s name,
  • When those who lov’d that one are nigh;
  • It pours a lava through the frame
  • That chokes the breast and fills the eye.
  • Eliza Cook.

  • Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
  • Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
  • Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
  • ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
  • But he that filches from me my good name,
  • Robs me of that which not enriches him,
  • And makes me poor indeed.
  • Shakespeare.

    My name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.

    Bacon.

    He that has complex ideas, without particular names for them, would be in no better case than a book-seller who had volumes that lay unbound and without titles, which he could make known to others only by showing the loose sheets.

    Locke.

  • ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,—
  • Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
  • What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
  • Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
  • Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
  • What’s in a name? that which we call a rose,
  • By any other name would smell as sweet.
  • Shakespeare.

    Make Hamilton Bamilton, make Douglas Puglas, make Percy Bercy, and Stanley Tanley, and where would be the long-resounding march and energy divine of the roll-call of the peerage?

    G. A. Sala.

    A man’s name is not like a mantle, which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which like the skin has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

    Goethe.

  • Call me pet names, dearest! Call me thy bird,
  • That flies to thy breast at one cherishing word,
  • That folds its wild wings there, ne’er dreaming of flight,
  • That tenderly sings there in loving delight!
  • Oh! my sad heart keeps pining for one fond word,—
  • Call me pet names, dearest! Call me thy bird!
  • Mrs. Osgood.

  • Brutus and Cæsar: what should be in Cæsar?
  • Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
  • Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
  • Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
  • Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,
  • Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.
  • Now in the names of all the gods at once,
  • Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
  • That he is grown so great?
  • Shakespeare.

    It is quite as easy to give our children musical and pleasing names as those that are harsh and difficult; and it will be found by the owners, when they have grown to knowledge, that there is much in a name.

    Locke.

  • He that is ambitious for his son, should give him untried names,
  • For those have serv’d other men, haply may injure by their evils;
  • Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; therefore set him by himself,
  • To win for his individual name some clear praise.
  • Tupper.