Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Results
From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
What dire effects from civil discord flow.
Addison—Cato. Act V. Sc. 4.
As you sow y’ are like to reap.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto II. L. 504.
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted—they have torn me—and I bleed!
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto IV. St. 10.
Tantas veces va el cantarillo à la fuente.
The pitcher goes so often to the fountain (that it gets broken).
Cervantes—Don Quixote. I. 30. Tant va li poz au puis qu’il brise. Quoted by Gautier de Coinci. Early 13th century.
Al freir de los huevos lo vera.
It will be seen in the frying of the eggs.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. 1. 37.
Ut sementem feceris, ita metes.
As thou sowest, so shalt thou reap.
Cicero—De Oratore. II. 65.
O! lady, we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone doth nature live;
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
Coleridge—Dejection. An Ode. IV.
From little spark may burst a mighty flame.
Dante—Paradise. Canto I. L. 34.
Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.
George Eliot—Adam Bede. Ch. XVI.
A bad ending follows a bad beginning.
Euripides—Frag. Melanip. (Stobœus.)
So comes a reck’ning when the banquet’s o’er,
The dreadful reck’ning, and men smile no more.
Gay—What D’ye Call’t? Act II. Sc. 4.
That from small fires comes oft no small mishap.
Herbert—The Temple. Artillierie.
They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Hosea. VIII. 7.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew. VII. 20.
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
Pope—Rape of the Lock. Canto I. “Contests” is “quarrels” in first ed. Same idea in Erasmus—Adagia. Claudianus—In Rufinum. II. 49.
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
Proverbs. XXVI. 27.
Contentions fierce,
Ardent, and dire, spring from no petty cause.
Scott—Peveril of the Peak. Ch. XL.
Great floods have flown
From simple sources.
All’s Well That Ends Well. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 142.
Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man?
Henry VI. Pt. II. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 85.
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
King Lear. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 369.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 2. I. 55.
O most lame and impotent conclusion!
Othello. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 162.
Every unpunished delinquency has a family of delinquencies.
Herbert Spencer—Sociology.
The evening shows the day, and death crowns life.
John Webster—A Monumental Column. Last line.
The Fates are just: they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
Whittier—To a Southern Statesman. (1864).
The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
Young—The Revenge. Act V.