Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Gifts
Shallow—I know the young gentlewoman; she has good gifts.
Evans.—Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is good gifts.
Shakespeare.—Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Scene 1.
Not a vanity is given in vain.
Pope.—Essay on Man, Epi. II. Line 290.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give.
Shakespeare.—Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 3. (Friar Laurence at his cell door with a basket.)
1.I never gave you aught.
2.My honour’d lord, I know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos’d
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for, to the noble mind,
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1. (Hamlet and Ophelia.)
These are thy brother’s gifts.
Hoole’s Metastasio, Œtius, Act III. Scene 2.
Who gives constrain’d, but his own fear reviles,
Not thank’d, but scorn’d; nor are they gifts, but spoils.
Denham.—Cooper’s Hill, Line 341.
For there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.
Seneca.—Chap. VII. of Benefits.
We like the gift when we the giver prize.
Sheffield.—From Ovid. (Helen to Paris.) The Heroides, Epi. XVII. Line 71.