|
|
|
More "Aphorism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that you should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... — N. maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm^; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot [Fr.], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis^. axiom, theorem, scholium^, truism, postulate. first principles, a priori fact, assumption (supposition) 514. reflection &c (idea) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a woman; but men who have loved the same woman will seek each other from the ends of the earth, and will take an intense pleasure in their recollections. I don't know whether that aphorism is to be found in Balzac; if not, it is an accident that prevented him from writing it, for it is quite Balzacian—only he would give it a turn, an air of philosophic distinction to which it would be ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... far am I from considering this a defect, that I deem it a necessary result of the impalpable infinitesimal graduation by which the fully-formed parable glides down into the brief detached metaphorical aphorism, in the words of the Lord Jesus during the period ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... organization appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... world dismays, I win a larger tranquillity and a clearer vision from an increased simplicity of life. I know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to incur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose motto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and universal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness which renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the leanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down by ecclesiastical ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... gone most deeply into my mind; and have most raised my opinion of his character. The sense that I was over rather than under valued, made me the more ready to acknowledge and feel my own deficiencies. I felt the truth of an aphorism of Lord Verulam's, which is now come down to the copy-books; that 'knowledge is power.' Having made this notable discovery, I set about with all my might to acquire knowledge. You may smile, and think that this was only in a ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... rich, so there is no virtue in dying poor. That a millionaire should desert his money-bags at his death is not a reproach to him if they be honestly filled. He has small chance of emptying them while he is on the earth. But Mr Carnegie has a reason for his aphorism. He aspires to be a philosopher as well as a millionaire, and he has decided that a posthumous bequest is of no value, moral or material. "Men who leave vast sums," says he, "may fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "God hath set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... attenuate and cool it, from time to time, by gentle purges, or by a very low diet, for two or three days together, if you would avoid fevers. Lord Bacon, who was a very great physician in both senses of the word, hath this aphorism in his "Essay upon Health," 'Nihil magis ad Sanitatem tribuit quam crebrae et domesticae purgationes'. By 'domesticae', he means those simple uncompounded purgatives which everybody can administer to themselves; such as senna-tea, stewed prunes and senria, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... among boys are much less indulged than formerly, and the worrying of domestic animals almost invariably denotes a bad boy, in the worst sense of the phrase, likely to make a bad man; "so true to nature is the admirable aphorism of Wordsworth:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... this 'primitive thought', when we come to analyse them, all seem to resolve themselves into one or other of the ordinary sorts of fallacy, as our own logic-books expound them. If the study of them proves anything at all, it is the familiar aphorism that, while there is only one right way of doing and thinking, there are countless ways of going wrong. Among the most reasonable people (at their highest) that the world has yet seen, there were some of the worst miscarriages ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... in this, as in other crimes, there are degrees. The man who acts as Menage advises, in the aphorism which Garrick used as a motto on his bookplate, the man who reads a book instantly and promptly returns it, is the most pardonable borrower. But how few people do this! As a rule, the last thing the borrower thinks of is to read the book which he has secured. Or rather, that is the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... happiness, security to society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the dearness of labour leads to the adoption ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and the rebel by an occasional gaol-delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick—and it is the grand secret of political life—it takes all sort of people to make a 'party.' When you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... is not difficult to understand, although there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning, although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing illustration of Fichte's dictum, that any great system of philosophy ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has contributed as much ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... organizing the Jewish Crown schools. In this epistle Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young. In reply to a question concerning the edition of an abbreviated Bible text for children, he trenchantly quotes the famous medieval aphorism: ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... ironstone "blow" without examination. Remember the pregnant Cornish saying with regard to mining and the current aphorism, "The iron hat covers the golden head." "Cousin Jack," put it "Iron rides a good horse." The ironstone outcrop may cover a gold, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the power of the Negro writer to practically and profitably demonstrate the oft repeated aphorism, "Genius is not the plant of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... termed the mother of invention; the aphorism may be extended to virtue. It is an acquirement, and an acquirement to which pleasure must be sacrificed, and who sacrifices pleasure when it is within the grasp, whose mind has not been opened and strengthened ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... her account of receipt and expenditure; she calculates almost unconsciously that the time and attention and interest excited by the attractive powers of others is so much homage subtracted from her own. That beautiful aphorism, "The human heart is like heaven—the more angels the more room for them," is to such persons as unintelligible in its loving spirit as in its wonderful philosophic truth. Their craving is insatiable, once it has become habitual, and their ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... famous of Roosevelt's epigrammatic sayings is, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The public, with its instinctive preference for the dramatic over the significant, promptly seized upon the "big stick" half of the aphorism and ignored the other half. But a study of the various acts of Roosevelt when he was President readily shows that in his mind the "big stick" was purely subordinate. It was merely the ultima ratio, the possession of which would enable a nation to "speak softly" and walk safely along the road of peace ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... Merry England because, however plague and pestilence and famine and the cruelties of man to man might darken life, still it loved these things. But there were no two views possible about what the Church thought of dancing; it was accurately summed up by one moralist in the aphorism, 'The Devil is the inventor and governor and disposer of dances and dancing.' Yet when we look into those accounts which Madame Eglentyne rendered (or did not render) to her nuns at the end of every year, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... an ass. You merely did wrong in undertaking a task beyond your capacity. Have you progressed one step since you started this affair? No. That shows that, although you are incomparable as a lieutenant, you do not possess the qualities of a general. I am going to present you with an aphorism; remember it, and let it be your guide in the future: A man can shine in the second rank, who would be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... success against Powers so greatly superior to herself in military strength. It is only fitting that such a secret should have been first penetrated by an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas those that be strongest by land are ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... the Colonel's visits proved excellent moral exercises tinged with chastenings. Whenever he went away he left behind him some aphorism or reflection filled with a wholesome bitter. But still she sought his society and, in secret, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... distinguished name is the same. They are "martyrs for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." And however tenaciously a person may hold other principles, even though he should die for them, he is not a martyr. The aphorism is true,—It is not suffering for religion, but "the cause that makes the martyr,"—suffering unto death from love to "the truth as ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the well-being or perfection of every other such agent shall be included in that perfection for which he lives." [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 205.] The same thought was more pithily expressed by Marcus Aurelius in the aphorism that "what is good for the hive is good for ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... an empty skin but a full budget. I will offer you, dear L., a specimen of the "palaver" [6] which is supposed to prove the aphorism that all barbarians are orators. Demosthenes leisurely dismounts, advances, stands for a moment cross-legged—the favourite posture in this region—supporting each hand with a spear planted in the ground: thence he slips to squat, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... "The aphorism, 'Equal rights to all and special privileges to none,' will be lived out, because no one who is living the thought that all are Divine, will wish to have opportunities that they deny ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, Emma, ou la fiancee, ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... see differences," said Gregory, and he summed up the Lavingtons in the aphorism to himself as well as to Karen; "only to accept samenesses." He hoped indeed, by sacrificing the aesthetic quality of the Lavingtons, to win some approbation of their virtues; but Karen, though not ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning shores of France was called ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... older thought held a controlling voice in the senate of the nation; it was dear to the hearts of all classes; it was superbly endowed; every strong thinker seemed to hold a brief, or to be in receipt of a retaining fee for it. As to preferment in the Church, there was a cynical aphorism current, "He may hold anything ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his preface with the aphorism: "Il est dangereux dans les sciences de conclure trop vite." I fear he must have forgotten this sound maxim by the time he had reached the discussion of the differences between men and apes, in the body of his work. No doubt, the excellent author of one of the most remarkable ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley
... more than five minutes left when we arrived at Dr. Mildman's door, Coleman affording a practical illustration of the truth of the aphorism, that "it is the pace that kills"; so that Thomas's injunction, "Look sharp, gentlemen," was scarcely necessary to induce us to rush upstairs two steps at a time. In the same hurry I entered my bedroom, without observing that the door was standing ajar rather suspiciously, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... his material from his native folk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other quarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his own. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about patriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the last refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the supreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and, anyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... causes. None of these can be a VERA CAUSA; though each may have had its special influence in determining the production of some imperfect works. The main cause I take to be that indicated in Goethe's aphorism: "In this world there are so few voices and so many echoes." Books are generally more deficient in sincerity than in cleverness. Talent, as will become apparent in the course of our inquiry, holds a very subordinate ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... dangerous concession to the enemies of the true science and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied in the first aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Do not draw a wrong inference from the frank statement of the difficulties which beset the medical practitioner. Think rather, if truth is so hard of attainment, how precious ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... M. Bonaparte has overthrown. That power, created by our revolutionary parturition, he has broken, shattered, crushed, torn with his bayonets, thrown under the feet of horses. His uncle uttered an aphorism: "The throne is a board covered with velvet." He, also, has uttered his: "The tribune is a board covered with cloth, on which we read, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." He has thrown board and cloth, and Liberty ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... mistakes; for I spoke not of the placing, but of the choice of words; for which I quoted that aphorism of Julius Caesar, Delectus verborum est origo eloquentiae; but delectus verborum is no more Latin for the placing of words, than reserate is Latin for shut the door, as he interprets it, which I ignorantly construed unlock or ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... eight chapters, each dealing with a specific subject and partaking of the nature of an essay: although these chapters are composed of disjointed paragraphs, generally beginning with an aphorism or an anecdote and closing with an original poem of a few lines. Sometimes these paragraphs are altogether lyrical. We are struck, first of all, by the personal character of these paragraphs; many of them relate the experience of the poet ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... were at their peak and he played it strenuously. But with it all, Landy Spencer kept his moral slate fairly clean. Then as the sober days of manhood came, and Landy witnessed the finish of the improvident and foolish, he began to save and skimp. "Hit's the pore house fer a cow hand," was his terse aphorism on the subject, and Landy had never ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... would seem—they have more sympathy with Englishmen, if not with the English Government, than with any other Westerners. East may be East and West West, though I very much doubt it. But if there be any truth in the aphorism, we must define our terms. The East must be confined to India, and China included in the West. That as a preliminary correction. I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall have more to say, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until the abdomen itself, the seat of the organs of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Austrian to say, who remembers the Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive temper, until the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the Truth would make us free. Here is no announcement of anything we have to do, or of anything that has to be done for us, in order to gain our liberty, neither is it a statement of anything future. Truth is what is. He ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Marthasa's conversation. "One of the things that made me very curious today," he said, "was the general reaction of your people to the Idealist illusion that they have tamed you—as expressed in their aphorism about how was the ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... creature's hands. The harpies could transform themselves in every other way, but their claws remained unchanged, and they were, consequently, obliged to cover them with gloves. "Beware the gloved hand," was a familiar aphorism among the wise women of the West Inch, and Constans, shaken in spite of himself by the remembrance of these old fables, felt the sweat break out upon his forehead, for all that the wind ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... United States was such simply because of his citizenship of a Sovereign State,—whether Massachusetts or Virginia or South Carolina; and, of course, an instrument based upon a divided sovereignty admitted of almost infinitely diverse interpretation. It is a scriptural aphorism that no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. And in the fulness of time it literally with us so came about. The accepted economical theories of the period were to a large extent corollaries of ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... words, finely arranged, and so dexterously consequent, that the whole bears the semblance of argument, and still keeps awake a sense of surprise; but when all is done, nothing rememberable has been said, no one philosophical remark, no one image, not even a pointed aphorism. Not a sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever been quoted, or formed the favourite phrase of the day, a thing unexampled in any man of equal reputation; but while he speaks, the effect varies according to the character of his auditor. The man of no talent is swallowed ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... reason that I have never had any home since I was ten years old, when I was left an orphan. I haven't any deep roots in New York; it's like the ocean, too big to love. I respect and admire the ocean, but I love a little river. You know the made-over aphorism: 'The home is where the hat is'? For 'hat' read 'trunk,' and you ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... true of power in this matter is true of judgment. It is a widely bruited aphorism that "all history is a lie," and this aphorism had its birth in the fact that historians become, as it were, magnetized by the characters with which they deal. A man who writes the life of Napoleon finds himself ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... to eclipse the text, and his words are at once a description and an example of his own most characteristic rhetoric. Wordsworth once uttered an aphorism which De Quincey repeats with great admiration: that language is not, as I have just said, the dress, but 'the incarnation of thought.' But though accepting and enforcing the doctrine by showing that the 'mixture is too subtle, the intertexture too ineffable' to admit of expression, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... consolation to her that she was but a type of many women, who, hardworking and thrifty themselves, are married to men who are nothing but an incubus to their wives and to their families. Small wonder, then, that Mrs. Hableton should condense all her knowledge of the male sex into the one bitter aphorism, "Men ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... frequently uttered aphorism of mercantile economy—"labour is limited by capital," were true, this question would be a definite one. But it is untrue; and that widely. Out of a given quantity of funds for wages, more or less labour is to be had, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... not think there is any truth in the aphorism, now so frequently advanced in England, that the adaptation of shelter to the corporal comfort of the human race is the original and true end of the art of architecture, properly so-called: for, were such the case, he would be the most ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... House and the old war-horses felt like colts. They assumed their leadership, however, with that obliviousness to youth which usually characterizes old age. The gifted and attractive Reed had ruled often by aphorism and wit, but the unimaginative Cannon ruled by the gavel alone; and in the course of time he and his clique of veterans forgot entirely the difference ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... gratification of avarice; but, though his understanding may perceive the demonstration of this moral theorem, though it is the remote principle of his whole conduct, it does not occur to his memory in the form of a prudential aphorism, whenever he is going to do a generous action. It is essential to our ideas of generosity, that no such reasoning should, at that moment, pass in his mind; we know that the feelings of generosity are associated with a number of enthusiastic ideas; we can sympathize with the virtuous ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, viewed them not ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... There is a classic aphorism which runs about this way, "Knock and the world knocks with you; boost and you boost alone." Like most popular sayings this is truth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... contentment had considerable influence over Nelson. It caused the junior man to severely criticize his own restlessness. One of the acting-manager's slogans was about the rolling stone and the moss. The effect of that obsolete aphorism on moss-backs is pitiful. It impressed Evan, not because of his mossiness altogether, but because of his youth, and of youth's anxiety to make good. The lad of eighteen had an example of banking in his manager, Dunn, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... these latter, after tasting no food or drink for three and a half hours, he gave utterance to what was afterwards known as the First Revelation. It ran to this effect: "The Man-God is the Man-God, and not the God-Man." Asked how he arrived at so stupendous an aphorism, he answered that it just came to him. There were troubles in the neighbourhood over the audacity of this utterance; some called it a divine inspiration, to the majority it was known as the Unnamable Heresy. For a brief while the town was formed into two camps, and the Chief of Police, a prudent ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste sua manu). Below the middle stature; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness. A small eater, but not drinker; confesses a partiality for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... The eager author now begs to know whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed therewith; Bulk Delights Publishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in succession as ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Atmospheric Waves, as explained and recommended in this little work, or the seaman be induced by its perusal to attend more closely to the observations of those instruments that are calculated to warn him of his danger, an object will be attained strikingly illustrative of the Baconian aphorism, ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... because this is a novel, and a very delightful one. The only point of direct contact with Rasselas is the knowledge of human nature, though in the one book this takes the form of melancholy aphorism and apophthegm, in the other that of felicitous trait and dialogue-utterance. There is plenty of story, though this has not been arranged so as to hit the taste of the martinet in "fable;" the book has endless character; the descriptions are Hogarth with less of peuple about ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all simplicity." Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very material to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at present was to construct a roundelay of which this should be the prevailing sentiment. He indulged the fancy that he might succeed in producing a composition which would have a fine effect here in Algeria, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... for one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... priests. Thus the most turbulent of all the Governors of Paraguay ceased troubling, and the executioner, after having cut off his head, exhibited it to the people from the scaffold, with the usual moral aphorism as ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... stated—'tis an aphorism trite— That people who live neighborly in daily sound and sight Of each other's personality, habitually grow To look alike, and think alike, and act alike, and so Did Mr. Thomas Todgers and Miss Thomasina Tee, In the town of ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I intended them to convey. I said that it is not more than an hyperbolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the nearest approach to truth. Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one of such cases as are contemplated in that proposition. I really believe, that his view of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... species by selection, based on the absence of transitional forms, fall to the ground. And Mr. Darwin's position might, we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism, "Natura non facit saltum," which turns up so often in his pages. We believe, as we have said above, that Nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor objections to the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with large generic strokes,—if we had the means;—such details belonging to the Prussian Antiquary, rather than to the English Historian of Friedrich in our day. A happy Ten Years of time. Perhaps the time for Montesquieu's aphorism, 'Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History-Books!' The Prussian Antiquary, had he once got any image formed to himself of Friedrich, and of Friedrich's History in its human lineaments and organic sequences, will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... extreme of treatment refers in the original to the extreme restriction of diet, ες ακριβειην {es akribeiên}, but the meaning of the Aphorism has always been taken as ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... what the disease is, tell us likewise what is the remedy therefor.' Since no one else spoke, I turned towards him and—careful lest I should do hurt to the credit I had gained already,—I said, 'You know what Hippocrates lays down in a case like this—febrem convulsioni'—and I recited the aphorism. Then I ordered a fomentation, and an application of lint moistened with linseed-oil and oil of lilies, and gave directions that the child should be gently handled until such time as the neck should be ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the base of the prostate, the result will very likely be fatal, generally from pyaemic symptoms depending on a suppurative inflammation of the prostatic plexus of veins (Fig. XXXIV.). In fact, upon a recognition of this fact is founded the aphorism, "that cases in which the forceps have been introduced before the bladder fairly begins to empty its contents are ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Meredith, but he did not score a success until he wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, two years later. Despite its faults, this is his greatest book, and it is the one which readers should begin with. It is overloaded with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's Scrip," which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, the father of Richard. The boy is trained to cut women out of his life, and just when the father's theory seems to have succeeded Richard meets and falls in love with Lucy, and the whole towering structure founded on the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... mainly a clear statement of the views of the deeper thinkers of his day, so are his political conceptions based upon those of Locke. Locke's aphorism that "the end of government is the good of mankind," is thus expanded ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Superstitions in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland, especially in Relation to Lunacy," by Arthur Mitchell, A.M., M.D., 1862; from the "Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland," vol. iv. The aphorism of Boerhaave, relating to the treatment of lunatics, quoted by this writer, is entirely in keeping with the practice described in the text, "Praecipitatio in mare, submersio in eo continuata quamdiu ferre potest, princeps ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... was his first poem it would be impossible to place it in the canon of his work; it might come in anywhere and so might everything else that he wrote. From the beginning his craftsmanship was perfect; from the beginning he took his subject-matter from others as he found it and worked it up into aphorism and epigram till each line shone like a cut jewel and the essential commonplaceness and poverty of his material was obscured by the glitter the craftsmanship lent to it. Subject apart, however, he was quite sure of his medium from the beginning; it was not ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... says: 'Absence deepens great passions and lessens little ones just as the wind puts out the candle and heightens the fire.' This is fine from the literary point of view, but is it true? My experience says No. Yet during the absence this aphorism seems true enough. Disillusion comes with reunion. Who does not remember that first departure of the Beloved—the innumerable letters, the endless meditation, the ceaseless yearning and the everlasting planning for the glorious return? What a meeting that is going to be! How one dwells in ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... crews apparently holding a consultation. The fire-light which revealed their approach revealed to them also the fact that the occupants of the shipyard were fully prepared to emphatically dispute any attempt on their part to land; and the sight brought vividly to their minds the aphorism that "discretion is ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... pretend to the level of an original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, 'Taste is the Feminine of Genius.' However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not as Literary Essays only, but ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with justice and rectitude. Masamune expressed it well in his oft-quoted aphorism—"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; Benevolence indulged ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... plus something or All plus zero—which is absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet is distinct from his poem—a truth which he has condensed into an aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the Deity such "separation" implies of necessity the self-limitation just spoken of. Just as a billion, minus the billionth fraction of a unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited though it be ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Julie of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, Emma, ou la fiance, ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... seems to be to rid the land of cotton stumps, and this is done in a somewhat careless and indifferent manner. It would seem that as little labour as possible is expended upon the land in preparing it for the reception of seed. Hilaire's aphorism—"Nothing in this country is less expensive, or more productive, than cotton culture"—would seem, when the facts of the whole case are known, to be perfectly warranted so far as Brazil is concerned. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... chosen for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, asperity, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... last thing here meant by the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is possible—to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism—to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there is instinct, but ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... moment Linkheimer regarded Abe sorrowfully. There were few occasions to which Linkheimer could not do justice with a cut-and-dried sentiment or a well-worn aphorism, and he was about to expatiate on ingratitude in business ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... it all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pupil was probably concerned, in each succession, in the gradual loss of the substance of the old method. The possibility of learning to sing by imitation was only gradually lost to sight. This is well expressed by Paolo Guetta. "The aphorism 'listen and imitate,' which was the device of the ancient school, coming down by way of tradition, underwent the fate of all sane precepts passed along from generation to generation. Through elimination and individual adaptation, through assuming the personal ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... falls on these ragged ones, scattered now, many of them, to varied homes of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that "God made the country, but man ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... writer. His two chief works in this kind are his English Grammar, in which a sound knowledge of the rules of English writing is discovered, and the quaintly named Explorata or Discoveries and Timber—a collection of notes varying from a mere aphorism to a respectable essay. In these latter a singular power of writing prose appears. The book was not published till after Ben's death, and is thought to have been in part at least written during the last years of his life. But there can be no greater contrast than exists between the prose style ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of this verse is to show the utility and necessity of acts. Without acting no one, however clever, can earn any fruit. Both the vernacular translators give ridiculous versions of this plain aphorism. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of Greek philosophy, 'like is only understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an aesthetic aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by the poet, on an interplay ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... genuine appreciation; for once he was able to laugh unfeignedly. The aphorism had so many applications from his own point ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that natural, humorous school who took for their motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in 1653,—"To despise flowers is ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the capital was the parade ground of American ideas and principles, she felt not merely no surprise at the august appearance of the wide avenues, but she was eagerly on the lookout, as they drove from the station to the hotel, for signs of social development. The aphorism which she had supplied to her husband, that the American people prefer to have their representatives live comfortably, dwelt in her thoughts and was a solace to her. Despite her New York experience, she had the impression that the doors of every house in Washington would fly open at her approach ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... reellement obscenes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit of special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life of a saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be a more subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is," he writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." The etats d'ames of Felicien Rops, then, may or may not have been morbid. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. That which Ruskin called the 'spirit' of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his aphorism 'Stand by Form against Force' (by 'form' all the peculiar qualities of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure. Now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane, spirit requires ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... evil. This indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... title "The History of an Eight-Week-Old", and in a prose style of uniformly flowing and attractive quality. "A Love Song", Miss Stalker's other contribution, is a poem of delicate imagery and unusual metre. "Our Paring Knife", by Gertrude Van Lanningham, is a short sketch with an aphorism at the end. Though this type of moral lesson is a little trite, Miss Van Lanningham shows no mean appreciation of literary form, and will, when she has emerged from the "bud" stage, undoubtedly blossom into a graphic and sympathetic writer. "Co-Education", ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... in Upper Canada. Francis Gore and Sir Peregrine Maitland might successively posture as figure-heads under the title of Lieutenant-Governors, but the real depositaries of power were the Rector and the Chief Justice. Ominous combination! which falsified the aphorism of a great writer—now, unhappily, lost to us—about the inevitable incompatibility of law and gospel. Both of them had seats in the Executive Council, and, under the then-existing state of things, were official but irresponsible advisers of the Crown's representative. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... socialists in his attack on private wealth of one particular kind—that is to say, the rent of land—was equally vehement in his defence of the interest of industrial capital. Socialists say—and the aphorism is constantly repeated—"A man can get an income only by working or stealing; there is no third way." In answer to this, it was pointed out by George that one kind of wealth, at all events—and we may add that here we have wealth in its oldest form—consists of possessions ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... Services to our Country entitle him to it. Yet even he has undergone the Suspicions of some, unsupported by any solid Reasons that I have heard of. We live in an Age of Jealousy, and it is well enough. I was led to believe in early Life, that Jealousy is a political Virtue. It has long been an Aphorism with me, that it is one of the greatest Securities of publick Liberty. Let the People keep a watchful Eye over the Conduct of their Rulers; for we are told that Great Men are not at all times wise. It would be indeed a Wonder if in any Age or Country they were always honest. There are however ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... among the Serious Reflections a passage which may be taken as an apology for the practices into which Defoe, gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but that when it is we may ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... hankering after Socialism and Theophilanthropic experiments, got much farther than Thomas Carlyle in his preaching in Book IV. on "Aristocracies," "Captains of Industry," "The Landed," "The Gifted"? What truth, what force in the aphorism:—"To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled; effaced, and what is worse, defaced!"—"Of all Bibles, the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this 'Bible ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced by the precise and terse mode in which the popular writers of that date expressed their thoughts. To a people naturally inclined to think that every possible view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is included in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word "voila," truths expressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm. It is, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so many eminent French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Montesquieu, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... knot (hamstringed) thirty good horses. To this good housewife, in fact, might be traced, if antiquaries would renounce for it less important investigations, the old saying, that stolen joys (qu. queys?) are sweetest, undoubtedly a Border aphorism, and now received into the society of legitimate moral sayings. When lazy and not inclined for "felonie," Will would not subscribe to the truth of the dictum, and often got for grace to the dinner ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table- boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry——Allow me to stop dead short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... within the guard-house was strong upon me, and I hesitated a moment, half inclined to risk the attempt to take the few we needed. That he who hesitates is lost proved itself a true aphorism in this instance, for another moment saw me creeping stealthily toward the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of men. It is a prudential maxim of the celebrated Raleigh, that 'Whosoever will live altogether out of himself, and study other men's humours, shall never be unfortunate;' a maxim, which the example of Howard might almost teach us to convert into a medical aphorism by saying, 'Whosoever will live altogether out of himself, and consult other men's wants, and calamities, shall never be unhealthy.' It is delightful to those, who detest the debasing tenets of a selfish philosophy, to see the happy influence ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... the human mind from its thralldom. The limit of man's power over his environment has been extended again and again; and even in your day, Mr. Henley, you have witnessed such marvelous advances as have adduced the aphorism, that this is an age of miracles. We speak from one end of the continent to the other. We sit in New York and sign our name to a check in Chicago. We reproduce a horse race or any athletic sport just as it occurred with every movement to the slightest detail, so that all ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners," he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... is very cleverly said, but the human heart is too large and too restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism. Do you mean to tell me that if you found you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna's happiness as well as resigned your own, that thought would not somewhat deform the very shape you would give to your life? Is it colour alone that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In such a spirit I desire to approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His umbrae, who have put but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal banter, the party breaks up, and we ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... John. And then he added, "That aphorism, which struck you as it struck me, Elinor, by its good sense—about the heir to a peerage—is really ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... of the cardinal rules of the game, my dear, 'Keep your eye on the ball.' You are demonstrating its truth of that aphorism every time you take your ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... from ancient and modern civilizations as external evidence, and corroborating the experiences of the present age as internal evidence, my conclusion is reached. If my judgment is faulty, let us remember that trite aphorism: "To err is human, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of Sir Henry Wotton's being designed for the employment of an ambassador, came to Eton, and requested from him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations; to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible aphorism,—that, to be in safety himself, and serviceable to his country, he should always, and upon all occasions, speak the truth (it seems a state paradox). "For," says Sir Henry Wotton, "you shall never be believed; and by this means your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ever ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... error to be obliged to contradict itself, when it does not decide to dwell in a brief aphorism, in order to live as well as may be with facts and concrete problems. The "History" of Winckelmann dealt with historic concrete facts, with which it was necessary to reconcile the idea of a supreme beauty. His admission of the contours of lines and his secondary ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... cultured, or culture-seeking, public of his day. Italy being then regarded as the centre of culture and fashion a colloquial knowledge of Italian was a fashionable necessity. A reference in a current play to an aphorism of Florio's or to a characteristic passage from the proverbial philosophy of which he constructs his Italian-English conversations, which would pass unnoticed now, would be readily recognised by a ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... this aphorism the brave man took a spoon to help the smoking fish and potatoes, when a knock at ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... our fashion instead of after people's own fashion, we ought to be disappointed. Any recognition of truth, whatever form it may take, whether that of poetic delight, intellectual corroboration, practical commonplace; or even vulgar aphorism, must be welcomed by the husbandmen of the God of growth. A response which jars against the peculiar pitch of our mental instrument, must not therefore be turned away from with dislike. Our mood of the moment is not that by which the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... tendencies of the working-classes, and concluded with the reflection that the more you did for them the less thanks you got. But when Amherst showed an unwillingness to let the matter rest on this time-honoured aphorism, the President retrenched himself behind ambiguities, suggestions that they should await Mrs. Westmore's return, and general considerations of a pessimistic nature, tapering off into a gloomy view ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... hour later, hearing the cheers of the returning revelers. His hallway was utterly deserted, the school was deserted. If he needed any further evidence that virtue did not pay, here it was. "Be good and you'll be lonesome." There was one aphorism proved, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... text, not those in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... lazy to take the trouble, Bourrienne. Besides, I'm a regular Janissary—what is to be, will be. Why the devil should I bother to form an opinion and battle for it. It's quite wearisome enough to have to live." And the young man enforced his favorite aphorism with a long yawn; then he added: "Do you think there will ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... commemorated by Sallust, who "danced better than became a modest woman." He thought some of their displays were a little operatic, and that he had seen something like them at certain balls in Paris—not the balls of the Faubourg St. Germain. He thought that the historian's aphorism might be extended to the male part of the company,—and that they danced better than became intelligent men. He thought—but as he prudently kept thoughts to himself, and as some of his foreign prejudice ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... balance-sheet. ["Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success, will know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum."—Macaulay's Review of Basil Montagu's Edition ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... could pardon the slavery thou inflictest on my life, didst thou but leave unshackled my intelligence. But each vast scheme to be thwarted, every thought for thine own aggrandisement beyond thy barren rocks, met and inexorably baffled by a selfish aphorism, a cramping saw—'Sparta is wide eno' for Spartans.'—'Ocean is the element of the fickle.'—'What matters the ascendancy of Athens?—it does not cross the Isthmus.'—'Venture nothing where I want ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... stated that if a Ceylon elephant be introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and raising them reverentially. This passage has been so repeatedly quoted in works on Ceylon that it has passed into an aphorism, and is always adduced as a testimony to the surpassing intelligence of the elephants of that island; although a reference to the original shows that Tavernier's observations are not only fanciful in themselves, but are restricted to the supposed excellence of the Ceylon animal in war.[2] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... XXX. XXXI. XXXII. From the same.— Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe. Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so; and why. Women like not novices; and why. Their vulgar aphorism animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them. Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's, No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... easy to adopt "attractive industry," another of Fourier's mottoes, for were they not trying mind and body to make it so? And finally, it was easy to adopt the aphorism that the attractions of life in the universe are in proportion to the destinies they assist in accomplishing—"attractions are proportionate to destinies," as it is translated. Certainly it was simple and easy to grasp and believe, when ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... had not yet received his title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... idea; it is intimately united with the idea of carnal pleasure. Stendhal obscurely perceived this when he defined beauty as 'a promise of happiness.' Beauty is a woman, and women themselves have carried docility to men so far as to accept this aphorism which they can only understand in extreme sexual perversion.... Beauty is so sexual that the only uncontested works of art are those that simply show the human body in its nudity. By its perseverance in remaining purely sexual Greek statuary has placed itself forever above all discussion. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... piano, or in the solution of mathematical problems, a decided gain in skill and speed comes after what seems to be not only lack of progress but decided backsliding.[1] It is this which led William James to quote with approval the aphorism that one learns to skate in summer ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... useful Synthetic Summary of the Influence of the Environment upon the Organism (1887) takes for its text Spencer's aphorism, that the direct action of the medium was the primordial factor of organic evolution. Professor Geddes relies on the changes in the soil and climate to account for the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... said Gerald, hastily. "Great mistake to think; wastes the tissues awfully. Action first, thought afterward! aphorism! Or if you must indulge in the baneful pursuit, think how much poor Jerry wants you. Poor ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sentinels to do with the sciences or the arts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and discernment—for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and hardy habits—in indomitable patience—in quick sagacity. But there were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and those scarce so praiseworthy—viz., craft and simulation. He ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here is something better than the scenery. There is a Beethoven melody and a piece by Liszt called 'Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude.' Certainly we have no solitude, but if you turn the pages of Albert Samain's poems you will find an aphorism by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: 'Know that there will always be solitude on earth for those who are worthy of it.' This solitude of a soul that can ignore all that is not in tune ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to how the barbarians pass their time, when not employed in affairs of commerce or in worshipping their ancestors, has inspired me to examine the matter more fully. At the same time your pleasantly-composed aphorism that the interior nature of persons does not vary with the colour of their eyes, and that if I searched I should find the old flying kites and the younger kicking feather balls or working embroidery, according to their sex, does not appear to ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... object of this verse is to show the utility and necessity of acts. Without acting no one, however clever, can earn any fruit. Both the vernacular translators give ridiculous versions of this plain aphorism. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... coquetting with communism, and the model working-man and the rebel by an occasional gaol-delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick—and it is the grand secret of political life—it takes all sort of people to make a 'party.' When you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... pass an ironstone "blow" without examination. Remember the pregnant Cornish saying with regard to mining and the current aphorism, "The iron hat covers the golden head." "Cousin Jack," put it "Iron rides a good horse." The ironstone outcrop may cover a gold, silver, copper ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... parties only was the love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do really ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His umbrae, who have put but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal banter, the party breaks up, and we are glad ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... aphorism 'Honesty is the best policy,' it reveals the difference between a fact and a truth. Both sayings are correct as facts, but as guides of conduct devilishly false, leading to dishonesty and treachery. To ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... of such proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table-boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry——Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... not long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George Ticknor ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... impracticable without serious modifications. Henry George, however, although he outdid most socialists in his attack on private wealth of one particular kind—that is to say, the rent of land—was equally vehement in his defence of the interest of industrial capital. Socialists say—and the aphorism is constantly repeated—"A man can get an income only by working or stealing; there is no third way." In answer to this, it was pointed out by George that one kind of wealth, at all events—and we may add that here we have wealth in its oldest form—consists ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... on which was unfavourable to him, he, with a number of friends and sympathisers withdraw from the Confederation. Seven days afterwards, he issued the first number of a newspaper, bearing the significant title of The United Irishman, and having for its motto the following aphorism, quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of the aphorism that it is the unexpected which always happens. For all at once, after a long period of perfect silence, there was a peculiar grating sound at the back of the hut instead of at the front, and for a few moments both the defenders of ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I intended them to convey. I said that it is not more than an hyperbolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the nearest approach to truth. Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one of such cases as are contemplated in that proposition. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... canon of his work; it might come in anywhere and so might everything else that he wrote. From the beginning his craftsmanship was perfect; from the beginning he took his subject-matter from others as he found it and worked it up into aphorism and epigram till each line shone like a cut jewel and the essential commonplaceness and poverty of his material was obscured by the glitter the craftsmanship lent to it. Subject apart, however, he was quite sure of his medium from the beginning; it was not long before ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... herself defending the style, and inveighing against the monotony of the fashions of the West End. Nor was this the only occasion on which she disagreed with her husband that evening. He launched an aphorism across the dinner-table which he had cogitated from the report of a divorce-suit in the evening papers. "It is a strange thing," he said, "that the woman who knows her influence over a man usually employs it to hurt him; the woman who doesn't, employs it unconsciously ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... man" is an ancient aphorism that has a very wide application. While the forms and standards of what constitute good manners change with the times, their essential basis is always the same—a deference to, and consideration for, those with whom one is thrown in contact. Courtesy, politeness, helpfulness, and other evidences ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... New Jersey or the ornithologist of Esopus-on-Hudson is expected to give an affirmative reply to similar questions concerning his chosen hunting-grounds, if, indeed, he does not avail himself of that happy aphorism with which Gilbert White was wont to instruct his questioners concerning the natural-history harvest of his beloved Selborne: "That locality is always ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... many proverbs and aphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmitted from one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitable axioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we have an instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams images appear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue to be mere ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... that such a secret should have been first penetrated by an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... all clear what this valuable aphorism had to do with the subject in hand, but it impressed the two ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... horrors that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own—or perhaps ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... never perceived but one fault in you, and that you have grievously, viz. modesty; you form an exception to Sydney Smith's aphorism, that merit and modesty have no other connection, except in their ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... or as the appurtenances of the fool. Loyalty is a phrase little understood, and the merchant leaves as little to his clerks' honesty or honour as he can possibly help. In business he holds that 'Every man's hand is against his neighbour, and his neighbour's against him;' and he pushes the aphorism to its fullest logical conclusion, i.e., not merely to 'Believe every man to be a knave until you find he is honest,' but 'Believe that when a man is honest it is merely the more successfully to carry ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... prose writer. His two chief works in this kind are his English Grammar, in which a sound knowledge of the rules of English writing is discovered, and the quaintly named Explorata or Discoveries and Timber—a collection of notes varying from a mere aphorism to a respectable essay. In these latter a singular power of writing prose appears. The book was not published till after Ben's death, and is thought to have been in part at least written during the last years of his life. But there can be no greater contrast than exists between ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... people then. There is a saying given to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, "Chaque homme qui pense est mechant." Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say that what has been well written has ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... This aphorism, so uttered by Thekla, provoked a yell from Primrose, echoed by Fergus; and Primrose, getting her breath, declared that dear Miss Winter was a great darling, and since she had gone away, more's the pity, mamma was real governess to herself, Valetta, and Mysie, and she always looked at their translations ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 'we reproduce it, Sir—we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor—the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob—wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning shores of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... logical definitions from some that are excluded; but so far am I from considering this a defect, that I deem it a necessary result of the impalpable infinitesimal graduation by which the fully-formed parable glides down into the brief detached metaphorical aphorism, in the words of the Lord Jesus during ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... God sends a little shoe," I told him, remembering the aphorism of my old Irish nurse. "And the sooner you get me home, Dinky-Dunk, the happier I'll be. For I'm tired of this place and the smell of the formalin and ether and I'm nearly worried to death about Dinkie. And in all the wide world, O Kaikobad, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that "God made the country, but man made ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... bought, a mob may, in any hour, become the master. An honest people and a weak mob,—a corrupt people and a strong mob," said the other, rather to himself than to his comrade, and scarce, perhaps, conscious of the eternal truth of his aphorism. "He is no mere brawler, this Rienzi, I suspect—I must see to it. Hark! what noise is that? By the Holy Sepulchre, it is the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at me with his grave bright eyes ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his, but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to evade it by an attempt at banter. "You can't make a tragedy, my dear girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... to defend this action on strictly moral grounds," I continued, peeling off his coat and waistcoat with the celerity of a skilful butcher skinning a sheep for a bet. "I think we may regard the transaction as a pertinent illustration of Pandulph's aphorism—to wit, that 'He who stands upon a slippery place, makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.' When the hurly-burly's done, I must get you to favour me with your address, so that"—— Here ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... will be noticed, has chosen for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to it ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive temper, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... wrong in undertaking a task beyond your capacity. Have you progressed one step since you started this affair? No. That shows that, although you are incomparable as a lieutenant, you do not possess the qualities of a general. I am going to present you with an aphorism; remember it, and let it be your guide in the future: A man can shine in the second rank, who would be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... criticism, and by not a few of his colleagues he was considered directly responsible for the want of combination which had marred McClellan's plan of attack. More than once Mr. Lincoln infringed his own famous aphorism, "Never swap horses when crossing a stream," but when he transferred the destinies of the Army of the Potomac from McClellan to Burnside he did more—he selected the weakest of his team of generals to bear ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... after tasting no food or drink for three and a half hours, he gave utterance to what was afterwards known as the First Revelation. It ran to this effect: "The Man-God is the Man-God, and not the God-Man." Asked how he arrived at so stupendous an aphorism, he answered that it just came to him. There were troubles in the neighbourhood over the audacity of this utterance; some called it a divine inspiration, to the majority it was known as the Unnamable Heresy. For a brief while the town was formed into two camps, and the Chief ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... weather, and an unnatural dormition—will blast and wear out of memory the most endearing obligations; and hence it was that some politicians in love have looked upon the former of these two as a main remedy against the fondness of that passion. But for my own part, my Lord, I shall deny this aphorism of the people, and beg leave to assure your Lordship, that, though these reputed obstacles have lain long in my way, yet neither of them could work upon me: for I am now—without adulation—as warm and sensible of those numerous favours and kind influences received sometimes ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... man a good character, and not the other. Instances of this kind occur out of number to confirm the rogues in their preconceived notions of the uncertainty of punishment, and that "the greatest crimes come off the best." This is an aphorism among the thieves. I have seen some of them, after being sentenced by the court, dance for hours, calling out continuously, "Did I not tell you all, the biggest rogues get off the best?" The scene in the several yards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it tones down ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... then, except by military students now, it is not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous burnous upon ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... 6. He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "God hath set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture which is ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... giving expression to this excellent aphorism, Madame Plumet, unable to contain herself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sleep, and beds not too soft, early retiring and rising, and cold baths, are means prescribed to harden the body and prepare it to resist the attacks of disease. "A sound mind in a sound body" is the celebrated aphorism which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, drames de recette. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients—description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... would lead a happy married life, First learn to rule, and then to have, a wife," say Beaumont and Fletcher—and a pleasant aphorism it is too—and a wise and useful—but with a slight alteration, a periphrasis comprehending advice not less to the purpose may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... I summed up my observations on Orchids by saying that nature "abhors perpetual self-fertilisation." If the word perpetual had been omitted, the aphorism would have been false. As it stands, I believe that it is true, though perhaps rather too strongly expressed; and I should have added the self-evident proposition that the propagation of the species, whether by self-fertilisation or by cross-fertilisation, or asexually by buds, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an aesthetic aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by the poet, on an interplay ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... observing the creature's hands. The harpies could transform themselves in every other way, but their claws remained unchanged, and they were, consequently, obliged to cover them with gloves. "Beware the gloved hand," was a familiar aphorism among the wise women of the West Inch, and Constans, shaken in spite of himself by the remembrance of these old fables, felt the sweat break out upon his forehead, for all that the wind blew ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of Roosevelt's epigrammatic sayings is, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The public, with its instinctive preference for the dramatic over the significant, promptly seized upon the "big stick" half of the aphorism and ignored the other half. But a study of the various acts of Roosevelt when he was President readily shows that in his mind the "big stick" was purely subordinate. It was merely the ultima ratio, the possession ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... also knew I could move my arm, so what did it matter? I told myself to wait till we got to the ship. Had we stayed there longer, we might all have stopped bullets—and some bullets might have stopped us." He grinned, as if the aphorism amused him, and added: "To know when to run is the perfection ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... pen and pencil and in the very presence of the jury copying handwriting which was given her for that purpose by various members of the yellow press who crowded close behind the rail. From time to time she would dash off an aphorism or a paragraph in regard to the trial which she handed to a reporter. If satisfactory this was elaborated and sometimes even illustrated by her for the evening edition ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Maxim.— N. maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm[obs3]; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot[Fr], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis[obs3]. axiom, theorem, scholium[obs3], truism, postulate. first principles, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... civilization, public happiness, security to society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... with seven languages, and for whom mathematics held no secrets. She was devoted to algebra and geometry, which, she said, "are the only provinces of thought wherein peace reigns." Madame de Charriere expressed herself in an aphorism of the same order: "An hour or two of mathematics sets my mind at liberty, and puts me in good spirits; I feel that I can eat and sleep better when I have seen obvious and indisputable truths. This consoles me for the obscurities of religion and metaphysics, or rather makes me ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... prophecies are ridiculous, your fears are vain, you see how little of the mischiefs which you formerly foreboded are come to pass." Thus, by degrees, that artful softening of all arbitrary power, the alleged infrequency or narrow extent of its operation, will be received as a sort of aphorism,—and Mr. Hume will not be singular in telling us, that the felicity of mankind is no more disturbed by it than by earthquakes or thunder, or the other more ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... come a word of explanation. I have been asked why I use the word Sutras, for these rules of Patanjali's system, when the word Aphorism has been connected with them in our minds fora generation. The reason is this: the name Aphorism suggests, to me at least, a pithy sentence of very general application; a piece of proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of circumstance, and which will almost bear on its face ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... men sat among them; sat doggedly in defeat. Gallantry is a noble quality when joined to wisdom and foresight; alone, it leads into pits and blind alleys. And these four men recognized with no small bitterness the truth of this aphorism. They had been ambushed scarce four hours from Quebec by a baud of marauding Oneidas. Only Jean Pauquet had escaped. They had been captives now for several weeks. Rage had begun to die out, fury to subside; apathy seized them in its listless embrace. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could reason out for himself,—under which third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted by ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... natural, humorous school who took for their motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in 1653,—"To despise flowers ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... in every exchange has overturned and misled all our ideas: men have ended in thinking that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. Hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorism, "What one gains the other loses;" and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and embrued it with blood.[2] After much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... respects ill chosen, though it may, in some degree, denote the exquisite triumphs which art has here accomplished. The Illustrations consist of eighteen portraits of every order of beauty, of variety enough to realize Sir Philip Sidney's aphorism, that "whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful." But here all must be liked; therefore all are beautiful. The very names would make out a sort of court-roll of Venus, and the book itself the enchanting effect of the goddess' embroidered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... i.e. of the capacity of the individual to enter into independent agreements with strangers to his family-group by which he was legally bound—an historical process which Maine sums up in his famous aphorism that the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... fundamental social fact. This is the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
