Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Policy
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, “If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.”
Bacon—Essays. Of Boldness.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Burke—Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Like Æsop’s fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
They had best not stir the rice, though it sticks to the pot.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. Pt. II. Ch. XXXVII.
It is better to walk than to run; it is better to stand than to walk; it is better to sit than to stand; it is better to lie than to sit.
Hindu Proverb.
Don’t throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.
Philander Johnson. See Everybody’s Magazine. May, 1920. P. 36.
Masterly inactivity.
Sir James Mackintosh—Vindiciæ Gallicæ. Probably from “Strenua inertia.” Horace—Epistles. XI. 28.
When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
Charles Miner—Who’ll turn Grindstones? Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe. In Wilkesbarre Gleaner. (1811).
The publick weal requires that a man should betray, and lye, and massacre.
Montaigne—Essays. Of Profit and Honesty.
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter’d libertine, is still.
Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 45.
To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under ’t.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 65.
We shall not I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting.
Woodrow Wilson—Annual Message. Dec. 2, 1913. Alluding to Mexico.
We have stood apart, studiously neutral.
Woodrow Wilson—Message to Congress. Dec. 7, 1915.