Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Borrowing
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners.
Isaac D’Israeli—Curiosities of Literature. The Bibliomania.
He who prefers to give Linus the half of what he wishes to borrow, rather than to lend him the whole, prefers to lose only the half.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. I. Ep. 75.
You give me back. Phœbus, my bond for four hundred thousand sesterces; lend me rather a hundred thousand more. Seek some one else to whom you may vaunt your empty present: what I cannot pay you, Phœbus, is my own.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. IX. Ep. 102.
I have granted you much that you asked: and yet you never cease to ask of me. He who refuses nothing, Atticilla, will soon have nothing to refuse.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. XII. Ep. 79.
The borrower is servant to the lender.
Proverbs. XXII. 7.
Croyez que chose divine est prester; debvoir est vertu heroïcque.
Believe me that it is a godlike thing to lend; to owe is a heroic virtue.
Rabelais—Pantagruel. Bk. III. Ch. IV.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 75.
What question can be here? Your own true heart
Must needs advise you of the only part:
That may be claim’d again which was but lent,
And should be yielded with no discontent,
Nor surely can we find herein a wrong,
That it was left us to enjoy it long.
Richard Chenevix Trench—The Lent Jewels.
Who goeth a borrowing
Goeth a sorrowing.
Few lend (but fools)
Their working tools.
Tusser—Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. September’s Abstract. First lines also in June’s Abstract.