Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Consistency
Of right and wrong he taught
Truths as refin’d as ever Athens heard;
And (strange to tell) he practis’d what he preach’d.
John Armstrong—Art of Preserving Health. Bk. IV. L. 302.
Tush! Tush! my lassie, such thoughts resigne,
Comparisons are cruele:
Fine pictures suit in frames as fine,
Consistencies a jewell.
For thee and me coarse cloathes are best,
Rude folks in homelye raiment drest,
Wife Joan and goodman Robin.
Jolly Robyn-Roughhead. (Fake ballad. Appeared in American Newspaper, 1867.)
Nemo doctus unquam mutationem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse.
No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy.
Cicero—Ep. ad Atticum. Bk. XVI. 8.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Emerson—Essays. Self-Reliance.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.***Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.
Emerson—Essays. Self-Reliance.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He’s been on all sides that give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan;
He’s been true to one party, and that is, himself;—
So John P.
Robinson, he
Sez he shall vote for Gineral C.
Lowell—The Biglow Papers. Series I. No. 3.
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
Horatio Smith—Tin Trumpet. Vol. I. P. 273.
Cantilenam eandem canis.
You are harping on the same string.
Terence—Phormio. III. 2. 10.