Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Loss
Losers must have leave to speak.
Colley Cibber—The Rival Fools. Act I. L. 17.
Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
Cowper—Conversation. L. 357. Referring to the story told by Pancirollus and others, of the lamp which burned for fifteen hundred years in the tomb of Tullia, daughter of Cicero.
For ’tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it comes to light,
In every cranny but the right.
Cowper—The Retired Cat. L. 95.
Gli huomini dimenticano più teste la morte del padre, che la perdita del patrimonie.
A son could bear with great complacency, the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair.
Machiavelli—Del. Prin. Ch. XVII. Same idea in Taylor—Philip Van Artevelde.
Things that are not at all, are never lost.
Marlowe—Hero and Leander. First Sestiad. L. 276.
What’s saved affords
No indication of what’s lost.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—The Scroll.
A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
Montaigne—Essays. Of Solitude.
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost;
When health is lost, something is lost;
When character is lost, all is lost!
Motto Over the Walls of a School in Germany.
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all.
Napier—Montrose and the Covenanters. Montrose’s Poems. No. 1. Vol. II. P. 566.
Si quis mutuum quid dederit, sit pro proprio perditum;
Cum repetas, inimicum amicum beneficio invenis tuo.
Si mage exigere cupias, duarum rerum exoritur optio;
Vel illud, quod credideris perdas, vel illum amicum, amiseris.
What you lend is lost; when you ask for it back, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press him further, you have the choice of two things—either to lose your loan or lose your friend.
Plautus—Trinummus. IV. 3. 43.
Periere mores, jus, decus, pietas, fides,
Et qui redire nescit, cum perit, pudor.
We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.
Seneca—Agamemnon. CXII.
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!
Scott—Lady of the Lake. Canto III. St. 16.
Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act V. Sc. 4. L. 1.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. VI. St. 2.
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. LXXVIII. St. 2.
No man can lose what he never had.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. V.