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More "Proverb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards. It was an inn wherein to take one's ease, a large hostel full of accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of entertainment below, where meals were taken, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much obliged if any of your correspondents or readers can inform me of the origin of the proverb "Ex pede Herculem." In what classical author is it to be found? I have looked in vain through ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... cleared field or two, one of which seemed yet under cultivation and shewed corn stalks and pumpkin vines, but the other was in that poverty-stricken state described by the proverb as 'I once had.' The house was a mere skeleton. Clapboards, indeed, there were still, and shingles; but doors and windows had long since been removed—by man or Time,—and through the open spaces ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and politeness always comes from within, and is born of a life of love, kindliness, and service. This is the universal language, known and understood everywhere, even when our words are not. There is, you know, a beautiful old proverb which says, "He who is kind and courteous to strangers thereby shows himself a citizen of the world." And there is nothing so remembered, and that so endears one to all mankind, as this universal language. Even dumb animals understand it ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Jesuits, came into spiritual possession; and later on, episcopal rule succeeded to the influence of Loyola's disciples. The relative estimation in which these various orders of the Church were held being illustrated by a Canadian proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, il ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... mercantile connexions, such as her father, if living, would have disdained. Her married life was, however, perfectly unclouded, her ample means gave her the power of dispensing joy, and her temperament was so blithe and unselfish that no pleasure ever palled upon her. Cheveleigh was a proverb for hospitality, affording unfailing fetes for all ages, full of a graceful ease and freedom that ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from time to time, and which were not allowed to become dead letters. A permanent committee of the three orders supervised the executive and the administration of the laws. These "twenty-two" received an appeal from the meanest citizen, and the Liege proverb "In his own home the poor man is king," was very near ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Begemder, the proverb says, "is the maker and destroyer of kings;" certainly it was so in the case of Theodore. After the flight of Ras Ali, Begemder at once acknowledged him, and caused him to be looked upon as the future ruler of the land. Theodore was ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous material! The ladies of these ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the people. It required nine States to pass any measure of importance. During the war the confederacy was a pitiable failure. It issued bills which no one would take, its certificates of indebtedness and promises to pay were so worthless that it gave rise to the proverb, "Not worth a continental." Robert Morris, the financier, pleaded hopelessly for help. Alexander Hamilton denounced the confederation as "neither fit for war nor peace." Even Washington, always hopeful, wrote in 1781: "Our troops are fast approaching nakedness; our hospitals are ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... anxious and miserable man and I will tell you why, because you are understanding. You must not be angry if I now mention my wife in this affair. A mill and a woman are always in want of something, as our proverb says; but though we may know what a mill requires, who can guess a woman's whims? I am dazed with guessing wrong. I don't intend to be hard or cruel. It is not in me to be cruel to any woman. But how if your own woman ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... them watching that treasure. It'll be near where they are, and I'm going to snaffle it or break my neck—and all your necks—in the deuced desperate attempt. Is that clear? Where the carcass is, there wheel the kites and there the jackals fight, as your proverb says. The easiest part will be finding the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... boards and commissions are far less effective in getting things done than single men with clear-cut authority and equally clear-cut responsibility. Another principle, so well known that it has almost become a proverb, is to delegate everything you can, to do nothing that you can get someone else to do for you. But the wisdom of letting a good man alone is less commonly understood. It is sometimes as important for the superior officer not to worry his subordinate ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... especially in the case of women whose life is entirely built up on certain emotions like the love and care of children; and when that is so, a nature becomes liable to the sharpest incursions of fear. It is of little use arguing such cases theoretically, because, as the proverb says, as the land lies the water flows,—and love makes very light of all ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... old proverb from this time forth," said Mr. Taylor, as he leaned back against the wall and thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest. "Whistling girls and crowing hens will hereafter have a chance to be heard. Old saws ain't always true, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... from the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain the removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in your cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and this wooing; for iron of himself draweth a man to him." The proverb is manifestly of an age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron except one eccentric mace and one arrow-head ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... long since passed into a proverb, that homely women are good, that plain women have strong common sense. An eminent writer asks, "Who ever saw a handsome talented woman?" There is among us a class of "strong-minded women," brave of heart and deep of soul, high of purpose and pure of life, who are stirring the country from ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... about. A melancholy proverb, meaning that state of irritable intoxication when a man comes home and ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple, so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... had elapsed since Madame had engaged M. Vandeloup and his friend, but as yet the Devil's Lead had not been found. Madame, however, was strong in her belief that it would soon be discovered, for her luck—the luck of Madame Midas—was getting quite a proverb in Ballarat. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... proverb which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of masters. This priest was, without exception, the most niggardly of all miserable devils I have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Spanish proverb—'Subtract from a Spaniard all his good qualities, and the remainder makes a pretty fair Portuguese;' but, as there was nobody else to gamble with, she entered freely into their society. Very soon she suspected that there was foul play: all modes of doctoring dice ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of a cup of coffee; and as the generous nectar warmed my veins my thoughts took a philosophical turn. It is fate who writes the was, the is, and the shall be. We have a proverb for every joy and misfortune. It is the only consolation fate gives us. It is like a conqueror asking the vanquished to witness the looting. All roads lead to Rome, and all proverbs are merely sign posts by which we pursue our destinies. And how was I to get to Rome? I knew ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the case of a friend—a distinguished lawyer at the English bar. I had the circumstances from himself, which lie in a very small compass; and, as my friend is known, to a proverb almost, for his literal accuracy in all statements of fact, there need be no fear of any mistake as to the main points of the case. He was one day engaged in pleading before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy; a court then, newly appointed, and differently ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... There was a proverb as redoubtably popular as Solomon's "Spare the rod"; it originated in Brazil, where the natives were easily humiliated:—"Regarder un sauvage de travers, c'est le battre; le battre, c'es le tuer: battre un negre, c'est le nourrir": Looking hard at a savage is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... with this great body of bribery against him, was providentially freed from Nundcomar, one of his accusers, and, as good events do not come alone, (I think there is some such proverb,) it did so happen that all the rest, or a great many of them, ran away. But, however, the recorded evidence of the former charges continued; no new evidence came in; and Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which branded peculation, fixed and eternized ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... from the German natives, gets the peasant under his thumb again. Now, if any one of the young gentlemen would set us an example, would show us, "See, this is how you ought to manage!" ... What will be the end of it? Can it be that I shall die without seeing the new methods?... What is the proverb?—the old is dead, but the young ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is practically useful to have the German gift of summoning a thing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... know the old saying—'He that pleads his own cause has a fool for his client.' We cannot say that the proverb has held good in this case. The defendant has proved himself no fool. Never in my life have I listened to the pleadings of an opponent with deeper anxiety. Nature and the awful chances of life have made the defendant in this case more than eloquent. For a moment I actually trembled ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... course of time the merchant's son grew up. Praise be to Brahma! what a wonderful youth it was, with a face like a monkey's, legs like a stork's, and a back like a camel's. You know the old proverb:— ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the good God will arise to work miracles again, such things might be; but how can we look for Him to do so? What manner of man is the Dauphin of France that he should look for divine deliverance? 'God helps those who help themselves,' so says the proverb; but what of those who lie sunk in lethargy or despair, and seek to drown thought or care in folly and riotous living—heedless of the ruin ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... O Bhishma, is even like that of the old swan. These lords of earth might slay thee in anger like those creatures of the feathery tribe slaying the old swan. Persons conversant with the Puranas recite a proverb, O Bhishma, as regards this occurrence, I shall, O Bharata, repeat it to thee fully. It is even this: O thou that supportest thyself on thy wings, though thy heart is affected (by the passions), thou preachest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... you are to room with Miss Sadie Minot, a young lady from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think you will find her an agreeable companion. However"—with a humorous twinkle in his eyes—"to use a homely proverb, 'it is Hobson's choice,' for it happens to be the only vacancy in the building; we have a very full school this year. I will call some one to show you how to find it, and have your trunk sent ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... darky as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was a proverb in Greenfield, conquered at last, and Hitty became conscious, to find herself in a chamber whose plastered walls were crumbling away with dampness and festooned with cobwebs, while the uncarpeted floor was checkered with green stains of mildew, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... had to wait until the rain made the ground soft enough for their ploughs to enter it, consequently many had to toil in cold, stormy, winter weather. To this the proverb alludes which says: "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... the 'Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us.' And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn with an internal La Vendee, this is the conclusion we have arrived at: to put down Anarchy by Civil War! Durum et durum, the Proverb says, non faciunt murum. La Vendee burns: Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege of Mentz is become famed;—lovers of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... progress, and give the subject a little ventilation. We do not expect to furnish an Ariadne's thread, but we may hope to find some indication of the right way out of this labyrinth of uncertainty. Veritas nihil veretur nisi abscondi: or, as the German proverb says, "Truth creeps not into corners"; its life ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... at the bait on Brown's hook, changed his mind, flirted his fins, and swam away—a proof of the proverb about second thoughts. A bird in the branches of the tree above the two men burst into ecstatic song. But neither heard him. "Mistah Breckenridge" had buried his black face in the cool grass, his hot tears falling fast upon it. Beside ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... that they may as well thy body as thy house defend. But, certes, to move war or suddenly to do vengeance, we may not deem [judge] in so little time that it were profitable. Wherefore we ask leisure and space to have deliberation in this case to deem; for the common proverb saith thus; 'He that soon deemeth soon shall repent.' And eke men say, that that judge is wise, that soon understandeth a matter, and judgeth by leisure. For albeit so that all tarrying be annoying, algates [nevertheless] it is no reproof [subject ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... through all future time,—whether they shall be blessed or banned, cursed or canonized. The judgment that shall be passed upon them and their work will be given according to the result, and from it there can be no appeal. The Portuguese have a well-known proverb, that "the way to hell is paved with good intentions;" but it is not the laborers on that broad and crowded highway who gain honorable immortality. The decisions of posterity are not made with reference to men's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... lesson from the life and character of Queen Victoria. Some will be surprised that this lesson should have been kept for the last one, as the kindness and sympathy of the late Queen was a proverb among her people. But, if we come to think of it, it is far best to have kept it to the last. Mere kindness, apart from sincerity, apart from moral courage, without the rainbow of purity, counts low among the virtues. We have known kind people, have we not, who were weak, ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... bustled in and out of the kitchen, preparing the dinner-table in the long sitting-room, the hooks and door-handles seemed to have an unaccountable habit of thrusting themselves in her way, and she was ready to cry at each glance of Mark's laughing eyes. She had never heard the German proverb, "who loves, teases," and was too inexperienced, as yet, to have ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... discovery himself, gossip [an intimate friend or companion (obsolete)]," said the elder personage; "it may, perchance, save a rope and break a proverb [refers to the old saw, 'Who is born to be hanged will ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... lye between Whitby and Gisborough.' The civic magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off. The Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, 'for the Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the Conduits kept up at the publick charge.' A disagreeable account is ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... restored the Union. One of the regiments which came to Washington from New York, the Seventy-ninth Highlanders, becoming wretchedly disorganized, he detailed his brother, Colonel James Cameron, to command it. This settled all differences, the Scotchmen remembering the proverb that "The Camerons of Lochiel never proved false to a friend or a foe." In a few weeks, however, Colonel Cameron was killed at the Battle of Bull Run while bravely leading his men against the enemy. The weight of this great calamity fell upon Secretary Cameron at a time when the utmost powers ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... change of front when the old officer retired and a young and energetic man succeeded him. A "new broom" is eulogized in proverb; and Mr. Michael Bonar, being new to his district, and a man of youth and determination, boasted that he meant to sweep away the taint of smuggling from the neighborhood of Ardmuirland, which bore a ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... piece of fun; and Pretty Bobby, one of Miss Mitford's delightful sketches. The Visit to the Zoological Gardens is not just what we expected; still it is attractive. Major Beamish has accommodated military tactics to the nursery in a pleasant little sketch; and the proverb of Much Coin Much Care, by Mrs. R.S. Jameson is a little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... so dissimilar to myself was a natural and necessary evil. I am, it is well known, of a robust and corpulent appearance, and at the same time somewhat diminutive in stature. What wonder, then, that the lath-like tenuity of my acquaintance, and his altitude, which has grown into a proverb, should have met with all due estimation in the eyes of Mrs. Lackobreath. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... but by Danae's shower of gold, and still give thanks that you are not kept in reserve for some needy occasion? The native, whom they pretend to regard as an imbecile, is not so much so that he does not understand that it is ridiculous to work himself to death to become worse off. A proverb of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among his bad qualities he has the good one of applying to himself all the criticisms and censures he prefers to live miserable and indolent, rather than play the part of the ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... reduced you sadly.' At last I spoke a little. 'I am glad to see you so merry, sir,' says I; 'but I think the doctor might have found something better to do than to make his game at his patients. If I had been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to have let him come to me.' 'What proverb?' says he, 'Oh! ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... Patriarchist Slavs whom they freely murdered, but even in many cases the very Exarchists, who came to dislike the komitadji bands, whom they were required to shelter and to feed and to assist with a subscription to their funds. "Still more," says a Bulgarian proverb—"still more than if you have a boat on the sea or a Roumanian wife, are you certain to sleep ill if you have a property in Macedonia." As year after year went by and the komitadji men appeared to be doing very little beyond terrorizing the country, those ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... poor shooting of the British troop, in but little personal danger. One very unpleasant characteristic they have, and that is an absence of regard for the truth, especially where land is concerned. Indeed the national characteristic is crystallised into a proverb, "I am no slave to my word." It has several times happened to me, to see one set of highly respectable witnesses in a land case, go into the box and swear distinctly that they saw a beacon placed on a certain spot, whilst an equal number on the other side will swear ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... where the proverb applies: "Measure ten times before you cut once." ... It is very painful ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... intrusted me with, that I may think of airting them your way INSTANTER; and so setting you up in practice, so far as my small business or influence may go; and, doubtless, Alan, that is a day whilk I hope may come round. But then, before I give, as the proverb hath it, "My own fish-guts to my own sea-maws," I must, for the sake of my own character, be very sure that my sea-maw can pick them to some ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... It is a proverb how different things are in theory and when reduced to practice. Agellius had thought of the end more than of the means, and had had a vision of Callista as a Christian, when the question of rites and forms would have ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... might note How the popular vote, As shown in all legends and anecdote, Declares that a breach Of trust to o'erreach The devil is something quite proper for each. And, really, if you Give the devil his due In spite of the proverb—it's something you'll rue. But to lie and deceive him, To use and to leave him, From Job up to Faust is the way to receive him, Though no one has heard It ever averred That the "Father of Lies" ever yet broke HIS word, But has left this position, In every ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Haydn. It was in Mannheim, on the way to Paris, that Mozart made the acquaintance of the copyist Weber, and succumbed to the charms of his daughter, Aloysia. But Leopold Mozart, wisely playing the role of stern father, soon sped the susceptible youth on his way to the French capital. It is a French proverb that tells us,— ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... good and better: think Of the choice that once a simple Mother gave her son: she said: "Egg or rasher, which will I give thee?" And he said: "The rasher, mother, But with the egg upon it, prithee". "Both are best", so says the proverb. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... did like Daniel as well as you do Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the bamboo are available for food, and the Chinese have a proverb that it produces seed more abundantly in years when the rice crop fails, which means, probably, that in times of dearth the natives look more after such a source of food. The Hindus eat it mixed with honey as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... on our hero developed into one of the most admired braves of his community. No one was more successful in battle, and it became almost a proverb that when Why-Why went on the war-path there was certain to be meat enough and to spare, even for the women. Why-Why, though a Radical, was so far from perfect that he invariably complied with the usages of his time when they seemed rational and useful. If a little tattooing ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... vortex, tears off his clothes and dances before Samuel and David, the only self-possessed spectators of the bacchantic company, till he falls down; and he lies naked as he is a whole day and a whole night upon the ground—whence the proverb, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" But that David when he fled, fled in earnest and went in the direction of Judah, instead of amusing himself by going first towards the north, is perfectly evident, as much so as that it is a ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... say this that I think the same thing will be practised again, or anything like it, though I know that very homely proverb, "More ways of killing a dog than hanging him."—But I instance it to shew, the counsels of every grand juryman should be kept secret, that he may act freely and without apprehensions of resentment ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... said, "alas, my poor Corinne! But consider. There is an English proverb: the horse needs must trot along, trot smart, when it ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Latin proverb,' said Mr. Ashburn, with a feeling that it was his turn—'an old Latin proverb, "Nec suetonius ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... reservation of a right in his successor to resume them for the public good, if he should think fit.[13] Hindoo sovereigns, or their priests for them, often tried to bar this right by invoking curses on the head of that successor who should exercise it.[14] It is a proverb among the people of these territories, and, I believe, among the people of India generally, that the lands which pay no rent to Government have no 'barkat', blessing from above—that the man who holds them is not blessed in their returns like the man ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... tempted by the Italian proverb about seeing Naples and then dying, were to ask us what is the most favourable moment for visiting the enchanted city, we should advise them to land at the mole, or at Mergellina, on a fine summer day and at the hour when some solemn procession is moving ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand! It's a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says, or somehow that way. You'll be happy yet, and Beriah Sellers will be there to see, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... had promised him that a "child of God" would lead him. If he waited and trusted and just let things take their course, all things would come right. Haste comes of the devil—a true Eastern proverb, a warning far too little regarded by the Western children of speed. But his conscience rebuked him. Had he verily been one of those who do deeds of real kindness? Was he worthy to drink of the cup tempered with camphor? Had his deed been sincerely inspired by disinterested love towards ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... fell before long; owing to treachery as tradition relates, but more probably to the improved siege artillery as the official despatches affirm. Most of the garrison were promptly hanged; a fatal blow was dealt to the insurrection. The "pardon of Maynooth" became a proverb. Skeffington, retaining the deputyship, was replaced in command of the army by Lord Leonard Grey, Kildare's brother-in-law, son of Lord Dorset; to whom ultimately Silken Thomas surrendered under a vague half-promise of lenient treatment. Kildare himself had ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... seek the hand of Mireio for him, comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... worked him for SILVER, the precious dollar that buy everything, that he send in the galleon to the Philippines for the silk and spice! THAT is good enough for HIM! For the gold he made nothing, even as my leetle wife Urania. And regard me here! There ees a proverb of my father's which say that 'it shall take a gold mine to work a silver mine,' so mooch more he cost. You work him, you are lost! Naturalmente, if you turn him round, if it take you only a silver mine to work a gold mine, you are ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... defence thereof by Mr. Stuart, the letter of the retainers and the letters of the retained, will be a curiosity; the conduct of the whigs and democrats an amazement, and the peculiar institution a proverb amongst all the nations of the earth. In the turmoil of party politics, and of personal controversy, let us not forget continually to move the previous question, whether Freedom or Slavery is to prevail in America. There is ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... for me to pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the Witch of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more than she bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in India, from a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember the sense. They Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a closed door, the devil will open it—excuse my mentioning such a thing; but ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... a proverb in Gothic Christian art. One speaks of the "nave of Amiens, the bell towers of Chartres, the facade of Rheims." A month before the coronation of Charles X a swarm of masons, perched on ladders and clinging to knotted ropes, spent a week smashing with hammers every bit of jutting sculpture on the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... place in the year corresponding to 1 B.C. The laws of Ieyasu (1610 A.D.) likewise condemn this custom as unreasonable, together with the custom in accordance with which the retainers committed suicide upon the master's death. These same laws also refer to the proverb on revenge, given in the third paragraph of this chapter, and add that whoever undertakes thus to avenge himself or his father or mother or lord or elder brother must first give notice to the proper office of the fact and of the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... exact distance is a moot question), where she laid to and allowed her furnaces to cool The men were "dead tired out" after their night's work, and the captain considered that he was within the protection of French waters. But there is a very ancient proverb about a pitcher and a veil, and the period of its realization had been reached at last Whilst the San Margarita was effecting the landing, a coastguard's boat had slipped from under the heights of Fontarabia, and given notice of what was going on to the Buenaventura in Los ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... proposes and God disposes,' says the old proverb, and a very wise one too, as we proved before the next forty-eight hours ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sort of minds influenced by set sayings. A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority rest there content: can the keeper of such a house ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... better or that they manage life better; the only moral that I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we should each understand and hence make allowance for the other fellow's way. You will admit, I am sure, be you American or English, that everybody has a right to his own way? The proverb "When in Rome you must do as Rome does" covers it, and would save trouble if we always obeyed it. The people who forget it most are they that go to Rome for the first time; and I shall give you both English and American examples of this presently. ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... sorts of queer answers to give to these questions, to quiz the passengers who ask them, and amuse themselves. For instance, if the passengers ask when any thing is going to happen, the sailors say, 'The first of the month.' That is a sort of proverb among them, and is meant only in fun. But if it happens to be near the end of the month, the passenger, supposing the answer is in earnest, goes away quite satisfied, while the sailors wink at each ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... a woman in the Three Kingdoms but envied the Gunnings, and was 't not yourself told me, "the Luck of the Gunnings" was become a proverb in Ireland, and the highest wish for a girl? What will the sermonizers say now? That 'tis best to be homely and live to eighty? I know not; but 'tis as well the choice is not given, for I believe there is not ten women living but would ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown—or in other no less ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... said, seeing my uncertainty: "Why! don't you know me, your old college chum, your playmate in childhood, Arthur Granson! Does my turban make such a change in me? So much the better! Or are you mean enough to stick to the letter of the proverb which pretends that friends are not Turks? By Allah and his prophet Mahomet, I shall prove to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... song, "fifteen and five make twenty-two." The signatures of Messieurs Postel and Gannerac were obviously given to oblige in the way of business; the Cointets would act at need for Gannerac as Gannerac acted for the Cointets. It was a practical application of the well-known proverb, "Reach me the rhubarb and I will pass you the senna." Cointet Brothers, moreover, kept a standing account with Metivier; there was no need of a re-draft, and no re-draft was made. A returned bill between the two ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a thing willed, or a will.—This third meaning, which is generally given the least consideration, is the most significant. If, in truth, habit is the will of man, then this alone can be his real will. In this sense the proverb is significant that habit is called a second nature, and that man is a creature of habit. Habit is, in fact, a psychic disposition, which drives and urges to a specific act, and this is the will in its most outstanding form, as decision, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and the remodelled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... months before would not have dared to raise their eyes from the dust before me. I lived in continual terrour, frighted by every noise at the door, and terrified at the approach of every step quicker than common. I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much, borrow the pillow of a debtor:" my solicitude and vexation kept me long waking; and when I had closed my eyes, I was pursued or insulted by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Despite the old proverb, "Never cross a bridge till you get to it," we had, because of the very absence of a bridge, been running ahead of ourselves during the entire trip, to make the dreaded crossing over this deceptive and gormandizing stream. We had now ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... The other Beatrice was Ercole's half-sister, the elder daughter of Niccolo III., who had long been the ornament of her father's court, when she had been known as the Queen of Feasts, and it had become a common proverb that to see Madonna Beatrice dance was to find Paradise upon earth. In 1448, at the age of twenty-one, this brilliant lady had wedded Borso da Correggio, a brother of the reigning prince of that city, and, after her first husband's early death, had become the wife of Tristan Sforza, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... impressed me with so high a sense of Chilian hospitality, that, heartbroken as I had been by the infamous persecution which had driven me from the British navy, I decided upon Chili as my future home; this decision, however, being only an exemplification of the proverb ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... who had executed such a neat manoeuvre at Gilling's. One or two of the papers actually published leaderettes upon the subject, severely criticising the incompetency of the police in such matters. I have since heard, however, that at Scotland Yard there is a proverb that the wealthier the thief the less chance of his being caught. Bindo and his friends certainly did not lack funds. The various hauls they had made, even since my association with them, must have put many thousands into ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... know about that! There's a proverb which says, "He laughs longest who laughs last," and we've yet to see who that will be. So far, the men have burnt Balmoral, but that loss is insured against; but they have not bettered their position, and they are losing money, whereas the ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... myself, for having waited till I heard of your being again immerged into the land of newspapers before forwarded your key. However, as you have at length got them safe, I claim absolution under the proverb, that 'all ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... citizen of Miletus, who betrayed his country to the people of Prien. When asked what he purposed, he replied, "Nothing bad," which expression had therefore passed into a proverb. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable misgivings that I have ventured to publish even this fragment of it. 'Enough,' says the old proverb, 'is as good as a ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a bush stuck up before the door of what seemed to be a wine-shop. If so, it is the ancient custom, so long disused in England, and alluded to in the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." Several times we saw grass spread to dry on the road, covering half the track, and concluded it to have been cut by the roadside for the winter forage of his ass by some poor peasant, or peasant's wife, who had no ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always to himself, and concludes that if Persius had not been obscure, there had been no need of him for an interpreter. Yet when he had once enjoined himself so hard a task, he then considered the Greek proverb, that he must [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] (either eat the whole snail or let it quite alone); and so he went through with his laborious task, as I have done with ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... returned with the Moors, who said, that far from wishing to do us harm, they had come to offer us their assistance, and to conduct us to Senegal. This offer being accepted of with gratitude by all of us, the Moors, of whom we had been so afraid, became our protectors and friends, verifying the old proverb, there are good people every where! As the camp of the Moors was at some considerable distance from where we were, we set off altogether to reach it before night. After having walked about two leagues through the burning sands, we found ourselves again upon the shore. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... that proverb long ago," said Cranfield, "by taking their galleons laden with plate from ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... wondrous pitiful. Cupid, tear off your bandage, new string your bow and tip your arrows with harder adamant. Oh! shame upon you, only hear the words of your exultant votarist—'Even Love, which according to the proverb conquers all things, when put in competition with painting, must yield the palm and be a willing captive.' Oh! fie, fie, good master Cupid, you shoot but poorly if a victim so often wounded can talk ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... advance of his contemporaries, and of most of ours too. Johnson liked satisfying food, such as a leg of pork, or veal pie well stuffed, with plum pie and sugar, and he devoured enormous quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea has almost passed into a proverb,—he has actually been credited with twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu, spoken to Miss Reynolds, points ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... dim dawn, she lay and thought it over, Clover slumbering soundly beside her meanwhile. "Morning brings counsel," says the old proverb. In this case it seemed true. Katy, to her surprise, found a train of fresh thoughts filling her mind, which were not there when she fell asleep. She recalled her passionate words and feelings of the day before. Now that the mood had passed, they seemed to her worse ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... assured that she is received into his glory, and beyond the cares of this rough and weary world. The next thing is to watch and labor in all matters for the service of our sovereign the king, and to endeavor to alleviate his grief. His majesty is the head of Christendom. Remember the proverb which says, when the head suffers all the members suffer. Therefore all good Christians should pray for his health and long life; and we, who are in his employ, ought more than others to do this with all study and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... an oil-can. He's out of oil, and has come a-begging. However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare. As he mounted the deck, ahab abruptly ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and the President du Ronceret looked at Camusot, and one thought troubled their minds. The lady's tone, the way in which she flung her proverb in the faces of the eight conspirators against the house of d'Esgrignon, caused them inward perturbation, which they dissembled as provincials can dissemble, by dint of lifelong practice in the shifts of a monastic existence. Little Mme. Camusot ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... says Helen Keller, 'that when the Lord took from me one faculty, He gave me another, which is in no way impossible. I think of the beautiful Italian proverb, 'When God shuts a ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... fisherman the greatest pleasure has been the certainty of something new to learn, to feel, to anticipate, to thrill over. An old proverb tells us that if you wish to bring back the wealth of the Indias you must go out with its equivalent. Surely the longer a man fishes the wealthier he becomes in experience, in reminiscence, in love of nature, if he goes out with the harvest of a quiet eye, free from the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... allow him a chair, she permitted him to remain standing at the counter and smoke his cigar while they conversed. It was this indulgence which occasioned people to think that she would marry the doctor; but at last they got tired of waiting, and it became a sort of proverb in Fisher's Alley and its precincts, when things were put off to an indefinite period, to say, "Yes, that will be done when the widow ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the mine; as is the nose, or rather face, of a lion or leopard still remaining at Stamford, which also gave name to the edifice it adorned. And hence, when Henry VIII. debased the coin by an alloy of copper, it was a common remark or proverb, that 'Testons were gone to Oxford, to study in Brasen Nose.' " -Churton's Life of Bishop Smyth, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... amuses nor diverts his mind, that which seems to him to miss the magic and to lack the charm of happiness, let him pass on, with as much charity as he can spare for the anthologist, remembering the proverb of Terence and counting himself an infinitely happier man for this clear proof ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... punishment, Bzekiel did not believe that it would last for ever. The righteousness of God would not permit future generations to be held responsible for ever for the sins of generations past and present. "What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion to use this proverb any more in Israel! Behold, all souls ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... those, father," replied Robert, merrily; "but, as the proverb says, you must shell the peas before you can eat them. It was necessary that I should first work in ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... Catholic, favoured the Huguenots; narrowly escaped at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; was killed at the siege of Epernay; carried a note-book with him everywhere, and so observant was he that it passed into proverb, "You will find it in Biron's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... BORGIA forms, with his father Pope Alexander VI., and his sister Lucrezia, one of a trio who have become a proverb for infamy of every kind. His father, Roderigo, was by birth a Spaniard, and by education a lawyer, in which profession he gained much distinction, till suddenly, with an impetuosity strange in a man who did everything ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... be loaded above her birth-marks, for, says a maritime proverb, a master must know the capacity of his vessel, as well as a rider the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... pours," said Joe, quoting an old proverb. "I begin to think I shall be rich some time, ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... completed his education at Rome, and began to practise at the bar about 68. But he was chiefly distinguished as a teacher of eloquence, bearing away the palm in his department from all his rivals, and associating his name, even to a proverb, with preeminence in the art. By Domitian he was invested with the insignia and title of consul, and is, moreover, celebrated as the first public instructor who, in virtue of the endowment by Vespasian, received a regular salary from the imperial exchequer. ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... pretty, the wives and daughters of the principal merchants of Rouen, who were waiting to compliment him. He seated himself in this charming circle, and remained there perhaps a quarter of an hour; then passed into another room, where awaited him the representation of a little proverb, containing couplets expressing, as may be imagined, the attachment and gratitude of the inhabitants of Rouen. This play ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... despite of the fact that the meat was only half done. But hunger is the best cook, as the proverb says, and he was not very fastidious. Anything would have tasted good to ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... unwilling to take his departure for the purpose of dressing himself. Monsieur, singing, laughing, and admiring himself, passed away the time until the dinner-hour, in a frame of mind that justified the proverb of "Happy as ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Negropont. According to the proverb, the Turks of Egripo, the Jews of Salonica, and the Greeks of Athens, are the worst of their ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the popular proverb, which very well expresses our idea: "That which is worth taking, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... "Oh, of a courage! But as the proverb says, 'If you set an Englishman by a hornets' nest they shall not remain ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood," a custom of which a modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb. Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with their dog's head followers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the land, so that during the first sixteen days I had only one view of the Cordillera behind Lima. These mountains, seen in stages, one above the other, through openings in the clouds, had a very grand appearance. It is almost become a proverb, that rain never falls in the lower part of Peru. Yet this can hardly be considered correct; for during almost every day of our visit there was a thick drizzling mist, which was sufficient to make the streets muddy and one's clothes damp: this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... was never mean. "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'po'rth of tar," was a favourite motto of his. She had ever thought it a proverb both pleasant and wise. She was not an extravagant woman, but she also liked to have things well done, and had no sympathy with cheese-paring ways. The house was well and handsomely furnished, she and the children had plenty of dress, their table was an excellent one, all of them indulging ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... passage in Scripture where both kinds of influence are illustrated. "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The first part of the proverb refers to direct influence: as "iron sharpeneth iron," so one man applying to another his powers of persuasion, his motives in the shape of money or some other inducement, moulds, fashions, sharpens him to his liking. "As in ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about '76. I never doubted that it would be ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... average strength of each corps was one thousand men. Who could have believed that the Place de l'Hotel de Ville was capable of accommodating so many! This farcical assertion of the two hundred and fifteen battalions has passed into a proverb.] ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... know it has got to be a proverb, "When a woman hesitates, she is lost." Mollie had begun to hesitate, and Mollie ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... age of puberty for both sexes is quite as much later than in the heart of the towns, where, in order to gratify their vanity, people are often extremely parsimonious in the matter of food, and where most people, in the words of the proverb, have a velvet coat and an empty belly. It is astonishing to find in these mountainous regions big lads as strong as a man with shrill voices and smooth chins, and tall girls, well developed in other respects, without any trace of the periodic functions ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... argument, is not always painted in shadow, its horizon obscured by dark-tinted nebulosities! On the contrary, there is ever some light infused into it, to bring out the deeper tones—"a silver lining" generally "to every cloud," as the proverb has it. So, I now experienced, as I ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... old horse. I scored heavily at the end of the visit. She'd got to the quoting-proverbs stage by that time. 'Ah, my dear,' she said to Millie. 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' Millie stood up to her like a little brick. 'I'm afraid that proverb doesn't apply to me, Aunt Elizabeth,' she said, 'because I haven't repented!' What do you ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin, too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most elaborate, often being ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... he is much given to;] for who can take upon him to write of the proper duty, virtue, challenge and right of EVERY several vocation, profession and place? [—truly?—] For although sometimes a looker on, may see more than a gamester, and there be a proverb more arrogant than sound, 'that the vale best discovereth the hill,' yet there is small doubt, that men can write best, and most really and materially of their own professions,' and it is to be wished, he says, 'as that which would ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... only thinking of the Swiss proverb about lightning, 'Vor den Eichen sollst du weichen.' We ought to make ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... devices of this cleanliness, which know no bounds, when it can command the labor of others? Which of the people who have become rich has not experienced in his own case, with what difficulty he carefully trained himself to this cleanliness, which only confirms the proverb, "Little white hands ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... a smile of the proverb Which says you may treat as you will The vase which has once contained roses, Their fragrance will cling to ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." I said, "I have been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left." He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" Well, I reflected and I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... inconsistent with constitutional loyalty, and all weapons but those of justice and truth. "We are a loyal people, and have given abundant proof of our loyalty, but it is not an unalterable principle. There is an old proverb: 'The sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar.'" On the departure of the delegates (Jan. 15, 1851) they were attended by the Launceston Association and a large concourse of people. The vessels in the harbour were decorated with their colours, and the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... her and Emma. It was a bright summer afternoon; and for a wonder I was suffered to remain from school, although I received numerous charges to keep my tongue still, and was again reminded of that excellent old proverb (the composition of some old maid, I know), "Children should be seen and not heard;" so, seated in a corner, my hand pressed closely over my mouth, the better to guard against contingencies, I looked on and thought, with ineffable satisfaction, how much handsomer ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... which I acknowledge, and am sorry I did not expresse my intent, or that I was so weak as to use so foolish a proverb. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered, acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her the capabilities ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... being punished and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, did seem rather unfair.... So I—walked around to—to see if I could find something to look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb, isn't there Pa-pah?—something about being executed for ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... One of these was Blackmore, at some distance from Shenfield. The manor-house of Blackmore is called Jericho; so when Harry chose to retire with his mistresses, the cant phrase among the courtiers was, "He was gone to Jericho." Hence this proverb or saying. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... more than her share of civic business; her reputation for absolute reliability caused people to get into the habit of saying "Oh, go to Miss Beach!" on every occasion, and as she invariably proved the willing horse, she justified the proverb and received ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... with the lesson it is designed to teach; these are kept distinctly separate in the parable. Myths are fictitious stories, sometimes with historic basis of fact, but without symbolism of spiritual worth. A proverb is a short, sententious saying, in the nature of a maxim, connoting a definite truth or suggestion by comparison. Proverbs and parables are closely related, and in the Bible the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.[653] The Old Testament contains two parables, a ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... acrimonious invectives that the unlucky discovery of the three members of Parliament at the Blue Posts cost thirty honest gentlemen their seats. One of the criminals, Tredenham, escaped with impunity. For the dominion of his family over the borough of St. Mawes was absolute even to a proverb. The other two had the fate which they deserved. Davenant ceased to sit for Bedwin. Hammond, who had lately stood high in the favour of the University of Cambridge, was defeated by a great majority, and was succeeded by the glory of the Whig ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their teaching, and the consciousness that Julie held her talent as a direct gift from GOD, and never used it otherwise than to His glory. She has penned nothing for which she need fear reproach from her favourite old proverb, "A wicked book is all the wickeder because it can never repent." It is difficult for those who admire her writings to help regretting that her life was cut off before she had accomplished more, but to still such regrets we cannot do better than realize (as a kind friend remarked) "how much ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... anxiously changed the dwelling, and went to live in the city, opposite a school, where her son found examples the most worthy of imitation, and began to profit by them. This anecdote has become incorporated by the Chinese into a proverb, which they constantly quote: The mother of Mentius seeks ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... return to Rome he finds that a rival, profiting by his absence, has taken his place with a young girl whom he was to have married. So great a misfortune demands an heroic remedy, and Della Valle makes a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. But if, as saith the proverb, there is no road which does not lead to Rome, so there is no circuit so long as not to lead to Jerusalem, and of this Della Valle was to make proof. He embarks at Venice in 1614, passes thirteen ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb, that 'Good times, and bad times, and all times pass over.' Of all men, perhaps, who have lived in our days, the most truly successful was the great Duke of Wellington; and one thing, I believe, ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... light, which may be effectually accomplished by means of yellow calico. A free supply of water is indispensable, which may be conveyed both to and from by means of the gutta percha tubing now in such general use. We apprehend, however, that the old proverb, "You must cut your coat according to your cloth," is most especially applicable to our querist, for not only must the house be constructed according to the advantages afforded by the locality, but the amount of expense will be very differently thought of by different persons: one will be content ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... the Rhodians could bear witness of it. One of the company replied, "If you speak the truth, think this place to be Rhodes, and jump here;" when it turned out that he could do nothing, and was glad to make his exit. The English proverb, "Great boast and small roast," is ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... I am fairly settled at home again, and can look back over my late travels with the coolness of a spectator, it seems to me that I must have tired out all men, women and children that have had to do with me by the road. The proverb says 'there is much ado when cadgers ride.' I do not know precisely what 'cadger' means, but I imagine it to be a character like me, liable to head-ache, to sea-sickness, to all the infirmities 'that flesh is heir to,' ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... dedicated to Athene, and being respected at Athens, it had greatly multiplied. Hence the proverb, 'taking owls to Athens,' similar to our English 'taking ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... girls lonely!" retorted Mr. Wilkinson. "Ridiculous! That is certainly a fine ground on which to seek sympathy from me! I forget who it is has the proverb, 'Never pity a woman weeping or a cat in the dark.' And I am reminded of it when I look at you two. You and my fair cousin, when you have one another to talk to, are just about as much in need of sympathy as a tiger is of tea . . . Speaking of tea—" he turned to Isabel with bland inquiry ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Turkmans homines bestiales. In our day Ainsworth notes of a Turkman village: "The dogs were very ferocious;... the people only a little better." (J. R. G. S. X. 292.) The ill report of the people of this region did not begin with the Turkmans, for the Emperor Constantine Porphyrog. quotes a Greek proverb to the disparagement of the three kappas, Cappadocia, Crete, and Cilicia. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in obtaining the full amount of the goods we required without having to wait much longer at Batavia. There is an old proverb, "It is an ill wind that blows no one good." The vessel for which they were intended had lost her master and both mates by sickness, and the merchant therefore sold them to me. We had not altogether escaped, and several of our men who were perfectly healthy ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... home was not in the literal sense of the proverb. It turned out that he had been neighbouring to some purpose. Old Simpson could not move himself about indoors or attend to his work without, and Jim, who had not before this attached himself by regular ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... was for the hundredth time menaced with immediate dissolution; but the familiar proverb that pronounces the longevity of ordinary men when threatened, appeared to be equally applicable to Cabinet Ministers. It will be seen from the following communications that they were likely to lose the support of one of their most influential friends at Court. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... aren't. All the proper names, no matter how unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;—I don't know what a verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "Quand le cheval est sellé ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... too striking," replied the old man; "and in affecting the respectability and usefulness of so important a class, it has educed a cause of deterioration, distinctly from itself, and hardly less formidable. There is an old proverb of our country—'Better the head of the commonality than the tail of the gentry.' I have heard you quote it, Robert, oftener than once, and admire its homely wisdom. Now, it bears directly on what I have to remark—the ministers of our church have moved but one step during ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... inasmuch as his pain arises from a comparison between his own infirmity and other men's power or virtue, it will be removed, or, in other words, he will feel pleasure, if his imagination be occupied in contemplating other men's faults; whence arises the proverb, "The unhappy are comforted by finding fellow—sufferers." Contrariwise, he will be the more pained in proportion as he thinks himself inferior to others; hence none are so prone to envy as the dejected, they are specially keen in observing men's actions, with a view to fault—finding ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... to hear that business is so flat, but the proverb says it never rains but it pours, and it may be remarked with equal truth upon the other side, that it never don't rain but it holds up very much indeed. You will be busy again long before I come home, I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... against a puller, and a protection against a kicker. Australians use a rolled blanket, strapped over the pommel of the saddle, for the same purpose. To bad horsemen who are too conceited to use a Somerset, I say, in the words of the old proverb, "Pride must have ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... it, his wife declares he has only cut it off. He flings her into a deep pool, and calls to her to say "shaved." Utterance is impossible to her, but "she lifts one hand above the water and by means of two fingers makes signs to show that it was cut."[48] The story has even settled into a proverb. Of a contradictory woman the Russian peasants affirm that, "If you ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... moment's hesitation they decided that Giotto was the man they wanted, and they at once invited him to come to Rome to decorate the cathedral walls. So when the story was known the people became prouder than ever of their great painter, and the round O of Giotto has become a proverb to ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... so? Of course she ought not. Neither ought she to have suffered her thoughts to stray, in the manner they did, towards Mr. Carlyle. She ought not, but she did. If we all did just what we "ought," this lower proverb touching fruit defendu would go out ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... men of good sense, and estimated the proverb—"a bird in hand is worth two in the bush"—at its true value. It did not require much argument to persuade them to receive a sum of over forty thousand dollars, and give a full discharge to the defendant; and I flattered myself that the matter was all satisfactorily ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... will lend it to you, notwithstanding the proverb which says we should only lend to the rich. But now hear what I have ascertained—I, who do not boast either of my scruples of conscience or of my perspicacity. This young man has in his pocket, at this moment, a written direction of the route to the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shall rise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does"; that "All is not Shaw that Bernards"; that "Better Yeates than Clever"; that words are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henry to ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... anxious; I'll answer for it that I can kill anybody as well as any doctor in the town. The proverb usually is, "after death comes the doctor," but you will see that if I have anything to do with it, it will be, "after the doctor comes death!" But now, while I think of it, it must be difficult to play the doctor; and if I ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... depends upon management, Concordia res parvae crescunt. I fear not these articles, though they were ten times worse than they are, if we once cordially forgive one another, and that, according to our proverb, bygones be bygones, and fair play for time to come. For my part, in the sight of God, and in the presence of this honorable house, I heartily forgive every man, and beg that they may do the same to me; and I do most humbly propose that his grace, my lord commissioner, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... enough, and used to be not a little frightened, for they were aware both of the strength and perseverance of their enemies. But what seemed rather odd to some of these servants, the gentleman used to tell them, that while they continued to be afraid, they would be safe; and it passed into a sort of proverb in that family, "Happy is he that feareth always." Some of the servants however, ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... that, just before reaching Bideford the silencer worked loose, and so got upon Mrs. Norton's nerves that Apollo was stopped in the pouring rain for Young Nick to right the wrong. As if to prove the truth of the proverb, "the more haste the less speed," in his hurry poor Buddha burnt his hand. While he was wringing it like a distracted goblin, along came the Tyndal car, which had left Tintagel about half an hour after Apollo. To Sir ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "Is not one man alone sufficient matter on which to reflect?" "One can find God in a herring's head...." says a Japanese proverb. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... old story probably came the proverb about paying the piper; and it is one of many stories which turn on the magical power of a voice or a sound to draw men, women, and children to their doom. These very interesting stories are not like the stories which ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... disgrace confined within the enclosure of her own monastery; it spread as far as her reputation had extended. All Italy was moved with a transport of indignation against her; the storm of invective which was raised reached her even in her prison; her name became a proverb of reproach through Europe; and the nuns whonad been professed at her hands made their professions over again to the new prioress, as if their vows formerly made to ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... beginning by the Creator,"* (* "A plan fully matured in the beginning and undeviatingly pursued;" or "In the beginning His plan was formed and from it He has never swerved in any particular" (Agassiz and Gould, 'Principles of Zoology').) who may have written here, as a Portuguese proverb says "straight in crooked lines."* (* "Deos escrive direito em linhas tortas." To read this remarkable writing we need the spectacles of Faith, which seldom suit eyes accustomed to the Microscope.) I cannot but think that we can scarcely ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... course, still more and more. The horrible growl which rage and pain forced from him, brought all the inhabitants of the house and neighbourhood to the spot, and poor bruin was soon dispatched by shots from the windows. He has, however, immortalized his memory, and become a proverb amongst the town's people, for when any one injures himself by his own violence, they call him "the bear with ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... his hut, but only to go away himself, for though willing to give the fugitives shelter and act against the authorities, he did not wish to be present, if the refugees should be caught. Caught with them, hung with them! He knew the proverb, and went down to the village, with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Early in the morning, I mounted a horse for the purpose of visiting the equally-renowned rock temples of Elora (ten miles from Roja). But, as it frequently happens in life that the proverb, "man proposes and God disposes," proves true, such was the case in the present instance—instead of the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... "Now we may say as the proverb has it: All good things are in threes. This is your case, Sigurd. Three times you have disturbed me, if I remember rightly; and now are you any the wiser than ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... has it, 'All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword,'" continued the count. "It is not your fault, master, if the Electoral Prince does not know this proverb. Now farewell, master, and be of good courage, for another good proverb says, 'Fortune smiles on the brave.' Go now, master, my chamberlain ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... villa. In 1880-82 a third and deeper network of galleries was excavated for the sake of extracting the pozzolana, the beds of which support the tufa and the catacombs excavated in it. Some damage was done to the tombs, but the Italian proverb Non tutto il male viene per nuocere proved true once more on this occasion. The excavation of the catacombs, which is generally a difficult and costly work, and sometimes impossible, when the owner of the ground above them objects to this form of trespassing ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... war; and ends thus: "And there was never heard of such troublesome and distracted times as these five years have been, but especially for constables." It is so natural, that inconvenient to my Lord Castlecomer is scarce a better proverb. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... measures are adopted, the nation as a whole cannot fail to benefit mentally, morally and physically. The success of the measures, of course, depends to some extent on their being taken in time, but in this, as in many other directions, the old proverb holds good: Better late ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... market for kersies hath been very great, especially of the finer sort,' says Westcote, 'for the aptness and diligent industry of the inhabitants ... did purchase it a supereminent name above all other towns, whereby grew this common proverb—as fine as Kirton spinning ... which spinning was very fine indeed, which to express, the better to gain your belief, it is very true that 140 threads of woollen yarn spun in that town were drawn together through the eye of a tailor's needle; ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is practically useful to have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... sports and hunting in this country, yet the conquest of the enchanting kingdom of Cashmere, which has never yet been subdued by monarchs of the age, which for natural strength and inaccessibility is unrivalled, and which, for beauty and pleasantness, is a proverb among the most sagacious beholders, became secretly an object of my wishes, BECAUSE I received constantly accounts of the tyranny of the rulers of that region. Accordingly, in a very short time, my brave warriors annexed ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... of induction are general, but they depend on the subjects to which they are applied. We may, to follow an Indian proverb, judge of a whole field of rice by tasting one or two grains only, but if we apply this rule to human beings, we are sure to fall into the same mistake as the English chaplain who had once, on board an English ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... modern-built houses; and although I have had my share of the ills to which we all are heir, I must date my real unhappiness from the first month after I took possession. With your permission, I will enter into my history, as it may prove a warning to others, who will not remember the old proverb of "Let ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... unless it pours: Now I can have the other readily. The proverb hits me aptly: "Well they do Who doff the old love ere they don the new!" [He glances again over the letter.] Yes, Caulaincourt now writes he has every hope Of quick success in settling the alliance! The Tsar is willing—even anxious for it, His sister's youth the single obstacle. The Empress-mother, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... principal merchants of Rouen, who were waiting to compliment him. He seated himself in this charming circle, and remained there perhaps a quarter of an hour; then passed into another room, where awaited him the representation of a little proverb, containing couplets expressing, as may be imagined, the attachment and gratitude of the inhabitants of Rouen. This play ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shall absolve them, because he is an enemy of the church.—There is a proverb, I confess, which says, that dead men tell no tales; but let your soldiers apply ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... wearied of being perpetually threatened by traitors, poisoned daggers, air-guns, plots, and intrigues, of all kinds. It is time to hunt down the chief men of these bravoes who have been sent here from England, Germany, Russia, and Italy, and I have had enough of illustrating the old proverb, 'Hang the little thief and let the great one run.' I mean to have the great thief and to hang him, for that is the only way of intimidating these fellows ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Josiah, being a tributary of Babylon, thought it his duty to endeavour to stop him, and going out to battle with him at Megiddo, was there mortally wounded, and died on his way home, in the year 611. The mourning of the Jews over their good king was so bitter, that it was a proverb long after; and they had indeed reason to lament, for he was the last who stood between them and their ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that volumes fill, Since Aesop first his fables told, The wisest is the proverb old, That every Jack must have ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... Babylonia, was in the northern kingdom confined for the most part to a single class. In Babylonia it was of very old standing. There were libraries in most of the towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Order. That there were no other footmen who were so comfortably housed, he was sure. And Patch was in clover. Anthony reflected that he had much to be thankful for. A dinner of herbs was infinitely better than none at all. He was, you observe, unconsciously converting the proverb to his own use. Stalled oxen, with or without hatred, were not nowadays in his line. He had quite forgotten what they were like, and cared as little. Indeed, but for Valerie, his Ambition would have been dead. Even now it lay very sick. High stomachs ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the mottoes of the Orsini; and, whatever its earlier signification, had long passed into a current proverb, to signify ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... philosophically. "You are not going to-morrow," he reminded her. "Don't cross your bridges until you come to them. That is a good proverb for maids and men. You might take us all with you, or spend every third year or so in California. No doubt you would need the rest. And meanwhile remember that the high and mighty Chamberlain has not yet asked for the honor of an alliance ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... too unsteady, Favraud, for my maitre d'hotel. Your mind is too much engrossed by the bubbles of politics, you would spoil all my materials, and realize the old proverb that 'the devil sends cooks.' But go to work like a good fellow, and carve the dish before you; by that time the soup will be removed. I have a fine fish, however, in reserve (let me announce this at once), for my ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... is, I don't want Honours to be respectable any more. Proverb: When fish has gone bad ten thousand decent men can't take ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... says an old proverb; but is it generally known that the 'bush' in question, used as a sign for wine, was a bunch of Ivy? The custom went from Greece to Italy, from Italy to Germany, and so on westward. Very different is this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said Riccabocca, listlessly. "Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'he who sows land, reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a pause, and in a more irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on—nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... fail. And she certainly did write a good deal of poor stuff: it was all in a sense poor, but books and books, poor soul, she had to write. It was in a sense poor because it was mostly ambitious stuff, and, as the proverb says, "You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren." She was driven to fly, and gave her little wings too much to do, and her flights were apt to be mere little weak flutterings over the surface ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... he hath affirmed that he only intended the proverb used in the west country, nor do ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the great lady he has since obtained for a wife, in opposition to the will of her family. He might, besides, have flattered himself that he should easily have gained a pardon from her by whom he was beloved, according to the Italian proverb, "Che la forza d'amore non riguarda al delitto" (Lovers are not criminal in the estimation of one another). Accordingly, the Marquis solicited Don John to be despatched to me on some errand, and arrived, as I said ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it, if you will only trust to Lady Why; and be sure that Why is the mistress and How the servant, now and for ever. That Lady Why is utterly good and kind I know full well; and I believe that, in her case too, the old proverb holds, "Like mistress, like servant;" and that the more we know of Madam How, the more we shall be content with her, and ready to submit to whatever she does: but not with that stupid resignation which some folks preach who ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... Who gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you more than once for the small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... to be chained. When the gods told him that they had finished their task, Fenrir shook himself violently, stretched his limbs, rolled on the ground, and at last burst his chains, which flew in pieces all around him. He then freed himself from Dromi, which gave rise to the proverb, 'to get loose out of Laeding, or to dash out of Dromi,' when anything is to be accomplished ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... envy those that are innocent, and upon that account be as ready to say and swear that they did see them as the Devil is to present their shape to them. Add but this also, that, when they are once under his power, he puts them on headlong (they must needs go whom the Devil drives, saith the proverb), and the reason is clear,—because they are taken captive by him, to do his will. And we see, by woful and undeniable experience, both in the afflicted persons and the confessors, some of them, that he torments them ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the thought of it. Perhaps all was fair in love and war, as the old proverb said. But this seemed like sneaky, unfair fighting to him. There was nothing about it of the glory of warfare. He was learning for himself that modern warfare is an ugly thing. He was to learn, later, that ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... consider the darky as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... combine as nearly as possible the three prime requisites of salubrity, fertility, and beauty. His object was to speculate; "and this was to be done," he said, "at an early hour of the day." "The Spanish proverb," he was wont to say, "which regulates the eating of oranges, is not a bad rule to govern a man in making his speculations. Speculations (oranges) are gold at morning, silver at noon, and lead at night. It is your wise man," he added, "who buys and sells ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... entire compass, from first to last, never could have been represented as properly belonging to any one present time, whensoever that had been selected: belonging to every place alike, they would belong, according to the proverb, to no place at all; or, (reversing that proverb,) belonging to no place by preferable right, they would, in fact, belong to every place, and therefore to ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... well, therefore, be classed among the trees producing necessaries of life,—venerabile donum fatalis virgae. That money-trees existed in the golden age there want not prevalent reasons for our believing. For does not the old proverb, when it asserts that money does not grow on every bush, imply a fortiori that there were certain bushes which did produce it? Again, there is another ancient saw to the effect that money is the root of all evil. From which two ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not crumbled away, but enlarged, almost with the rapid accumulation of a snow-ball, into an enormous mass of territory, under the title of French Republic, what would he not have to say in a sermon? Rien de nouveau sous le ciel, though an old proverb, would not now suit as a maxim. This, in fact, seems the age of wonders. The league of monarchs has ended by producing republics; while a republic has raised a dukedom into a monarchy, and, by its vast preponderance, completely overturned the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... one of those, father," replied Robert merrily; "but, as the proverb says, 'you must shell the peas before you can eat them.' It was necessary that I should first work ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... whose history I am detailing finally became a proverb in his native town. Good mothers often exhorted their children not to be like Charles Duran! Who of my little readers would like such a distinction as this? Try to live so that parents may point you out as good examples for their children ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... built round the Academia by Hipparchus was so expensive that it became a proverb applied to all ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... the mighty talons and all that was left of the Cebuan champion was a heap of bloodied feathers. The "match" was quickly over and the triumphant sailors, collecting their bets, departed for their ship. Ever since then there has been a proverb in Cebu—"Never match your ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... deemed me already dead, drowned in the fosse, and so would make no search for me. Yet, as soon as I went about my master's affairs, as needs I must, I would be known and taken; and, as we say in our country proverb, "my craig would ken the weight of my hurdies." {12} None the less, seeing that the soldiers deemed me dead, I might readily escape at once from Chinon, and take to the roads again, if but I could reach my master's house unseen, and get rid of this foolish feminine gear ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... imitation of Hercules, who always returned upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to him; sacrificed Busiris, killed Antaeus in wrestling, and Cycnus in single combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence, they say, comes the proverb of "a Termerian mischief"), for it seems Termerus killed passengers that he met, by running with his head against them. And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had inflicted upon others, justly suffering after ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... should make an end, they began controversies, and "protract their causes many years, persuading them their title is good, till their patrimonies be consumed, and that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery." So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, [516]holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; [517]what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to this view. She quoted the old proverb of "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." She said it would be a sure living during the time they were learning the new country and its opportunities. She begged Roland to let her accept the offer. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... other upstart at the homestead, instinctively to play second fiddle to her. And when we suggested that our wife could measure swords (or, shall we say, forks) with her as a cook, she giggled and remembered some white man's proverb about the proof of the pudding being in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... together in private, and love alone can judge our behaviour, we know full well that they are women and we are men. Then is the name 'mistress' changed to 'sweetheart,' and the 'slave' becomes a 'lover.' As the proverb says—'By service true and loyalty, do servants rise to mastery.' They have honour equally with men, who can give it to them and can take it away; and seeing us suffer in patience, they should reward us when they can do so without hurt ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... real value, addressing an unknown audience, and relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many of their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other cases, the proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life, has been engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... music-master. She, who formed for me the brightest projects, and no longer trusted implicitly to the judgment of M. d'Aubonne, seeing with concern that I was so seriously occupied with a talent which she thought frivolous, frequently repeated to me that provincial proverb, which does not hold quite ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of the Poets.—It is for the developing of the best moral and mental qualities in the lads that they are compelled to memorize long passages of the great poets of Hellas. Theoginis, with his pithy admonitions cast in semi-proverb form, the worldly wisdom of Hesiod, and of Phocylides are therefore duly flogged into every Attic schoolboy.[*] But the great text-book dwarfing all others, is Homer,—"the Bible of the Greeks," as later ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... was always taught that listeners never heard any good of themselves. Not that the proverb holds strictly true in this case; but if Uncle Mat were standing in your place, and heard what I said to Miss Ross, he would not deny I was speaking the truth—being always praised for my truthfulness and shaming the devil as much ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... generally supposed to be the author of it. Carleton inclined, however, to suspect Grotius, "because," said he, "having always before been a stranger to my house, he has made me the day before the publication thereof a complimentary visit, although it was Sunday and church time; whereby the Italian proverb, 'Chi ti caresse piu che suole,' &c.,' is added ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to me, so false to his written word," she said, and the letter was hidden away, and she passed into the dangerous stage of irresolution, where temptation is secretly dwelt upon. She hesitated, and, according to the proverb, the woman who does this is lost. Instead of indignantly casting temptation from her, she left her course open, to be decided somewhat by circumstances. She wilfully shut her eyes to the danger, and tried to believe, and did almost believe that her lover ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the question how to prevent the degeneration of mankind would be a simple and natural one, if history and proverb had not taught us that as often as a new truth appears "the very oxen butt their horns against it." They cannot help this, the "disposition" is natural; for when Pythagoras had found the Master of Arts, Mathesios, he was so overjoyed that he sacrificed ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... distinctly congenital origin. Hirschfeld has confirmed Flatau's observations on this point. It may be added that inverted women are very often good whistlers; Hirschfeld even knows two who are public performers in whistling. It is scarcely necessary to remark that while the old proverb associates whistling in a woman with crowing in a hen, whistling in a woman is no evidence of any general physical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest on it; ut when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and cry out, 'Stolen from our ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was. It was the worst enemy I had among them all—one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about '76. I never doubted that it ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that is in Timothy, which dwelt first in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice. Paul himself was brought up by devout parents. The Bible has many instances of men, like that of Samuel, who have been trained for great parts in the world in a religious household. The old proverb has it, "Like father, like son." If God is honoured by the parents and the home commended to Him, the children will be quite sure to honour Him also. Bring up your children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). Have them ready ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... the little moonlight glade, having in front the reverend, though ruinous chapel, and the rude hermitage, so well suited to ascetic devotion, Wamba whispered to Gurth, "If this be the habitation of a thief, it makes good the old proverb, The nearer the church the farther from God.—And by my coxcomb," he added, "I think it be even so—Hearken but to the black sanctus which they ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and Raleigh appears to have directed that execution, whereby eight hundred prisoners of war were cruelly butchered and flung over the rocks in the sea. From that time out the phrase "Grey's faith" (Graia fides) became a proverb ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... hero developed into one of the most admired braves of his community. No one was more successful in battle, and it became almost a proverb that when Why-Why went on the war-path there was certain to be meat enough and to spare, even for the women. Why-Why, though a Radical, was so far from perfect that he invariably complied with the usages of his time when they seemed rational and useful. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... After the inventions were completed, and their value shown, the merchant and the manufacturer created the demand, and then the articles became a necessity, and not before. For this reason I think the proverb should be amended to say that 'the necessity of the inventor is the mother ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... evidence to the vast weight of Imperial France, it is not difficult to find Frenchmen who declare that the Emperor is a mere adventurer, and that he is only "a lucky fellow." If they are right, what shall we think of all France? Does the reign of Napoleon III. serve only to illustrate the proverb, that among the blind the one-eyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... to the water mill, through all the livelong day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour away; How languidly the autumn wind does stir the withered leaves As in the fields the reapers sing, while binding up their sheaves! A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with water that ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... The ancient proverb now I know for sure: Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. After my death they will have grievous wrong ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the quality of these simple ingredients that made the occasion memorable. The eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed. "La plus belle fille du monde," as the French proverb says, "ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;" and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it. But there was a bloom of punctuality, so to speak, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... there was something in the intensity of her look which fascinated and held him for a moment. She was curiously grave. "Nigel, I believe in certain things you do not believe in. I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them. It is not a new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says, 'Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.' I believe also that the worst—the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think steadily—steadily—only of the best. To you that is merely superstition to be laughed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... surrendered the ruder protection of the sword. We had not then seen a Governor in his chamber at the State-House with his hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and his feet upon the stove. Domestic service, in spite of the proverb, was not seldom an inheritance, nor was household peace dependent on the whim of a foreign armed neutrality in the kitchen. Servant and master were of one stock; there was decent authority and becoming respect; the tradition of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... this cursed mystery is thrusting a finger into my life and darkening it. I grow a very anxious and miserable man and I will tell you why, because you are understanding. You must not be angry if I now mention my wife in this affair. A mill and a woman are always in want of something, as our proverb says; but though we may know what a mill requires, who can guess a woman's whims? I am dazed with guessing wrong. I don't intend to be hard or cruel. It is not in me to be cruel to any woman. But how if your own woman ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... enjoyment of them, what peculiar display of magnificence could there be, where the poor man went to the same refreshment with the rich? Hence the observation, that it was only at Sparta where Plutus (according to the proverb) was kept blind, and like an image, destitute of life or motion. It must further be observed, that they had not the privilege to eat at home, and so to come without appetite to the public repast: they made a point of it to observe any one that did not eat ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... a wee! Everything comes to the man who can wait, as the old proverb says. But I must confess I am at the end of my patience with those young ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... and has, perhaps, won public confidence more surely than any other in the country. For James J. Hill has kept faith in the smallest detail with every man who ever entrusted a dollar to his hands. The loyalty of the employes of the Great Northern has passed into a proverb, "Once a Hill man, always a Hill man," and it is true. He knows his road as few other men do. Before he bought the St. Paul & Pacific, he traveled over the route in an ox-cart, studying not only the road, but the people along the way—there weren't many—and the resources of the country. Before ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... fall in their hands; prostitution is carried on to an enormous extent, and although loathsome concustant [sic] diseases stare the stranger in the face in the street, in the market-place, in the church, and at the fountain; 'Drunken as a Galician' is a proverb; and superstitions forgotten, abandoned in the rest of Spain, are clung to here with surprising pertinacity, the clergy exerting themselves to uphold them by carrying on a very extensive sale in charms, verifying the old saying, 'Witches ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... "There's an old proverb to answer that," answered Rawbon, as he leisurely adjusted his lank frame upon the seat. Having established himself ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... says, "There is a proverb, as old and unchangeable as their hills, amongst North American Indians, 'My son, if thou wouldst be wise, open first thy eyes; thy ears next, and last of all thy mouth, that thy words may be words of wisdom, and give ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... my son will grow up a-say-nothing-to-nobody sort of chap," said Mr Gallup, boastfully. "I'll take care of that. Now you listen to me, mother. You know the proverb 'Give a dog a ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... homo" is a Latin proverb which means that one man alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... there is a modern maxim which can be translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... strange, yet nevertheless true, that a woman's glances are not always her own property. The old proverb, that "a Cat may look at a King," goes a-begging when applied to a woman; and this enables us to present to the Sorosis a subject for examination, at least as metaphysical as the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... into my heart, they would have discovered no waggery there; for the truth of that old proverb, "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," had struck me with all its force: and the more I struggled to arrange and appropriate to myself what I had seen, the less I succeeded. I had at last to content myself with a silent after-operation. Ordinary ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... for conquest and come to the school. Talk is cheap, according to a proverb more common than elegant; but it is sinful to waste the cheapest of things. While you dress, you will meditate upon the sensation which it is your intention to make in the ring, and upon the humiliation which you will heap upon your riding master by showing wonderful ability to ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... me in that and in some other things also,' M. de Rosny answered, 'it would be very well for France.' Though he spoke courteously, he threw so much weight and independence into his words that I thought of the old proverb, 'A good master, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... will strengthen our wills. For when God comes into a heart, He restores the due subordination which has been broken into discord and anarchy by sin. He dismounts the servant riding on horseback, and carrying the horse to the devil, according to the proverb, and gives the reins into the right hands. Now, if the gift of God's Spirit, working through the Word of God, and the principles and the motives therein unfolded, and therefrom deducible, be the great means by which we are to be kept from open and conscious transgression, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made by Dryden in conjunction with Davenant; "whom," says he, "I found of so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him in which he could not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those first thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not always the least happy; and as his fancy was quick, so, likewise, were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter into any ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... offered payment to the proprietor. The Laird of Luss seized on the offenders, and, by the summary process which feudal barons had at their command, had them both condemned and executed. The MacGregors verify this account of the feud by appealing to a proverb current amongst them, execrating the hour (Mult dhu an Carbail ghil) that the black wedder with the white tail was ever lambed. To avenge this quarrel, the Laird of MacGregor assembled his clan, to the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the Swiss proverb about lightning, 'Vor den Eichen sollst du weichen.' We ought to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... dear,' he protested. 'I'm as deep as Gamck. As for your still waters running deep, it'd be a better proverb to my mind to say deep waters run still—at times. Niagara's deepish, folks say that have seen it. That's not to say that I even myself with Niagara, you'll understand, though 'tis in my nature to splash about a good deal. But all ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... slip," Hath the proverb well said, "'twixt the cup and the lip!" How blest should we be, have I often conceived, Had we really achieved what we nearly achieved! We but catch at the skirts of the thing we would be, And fall back on the lap of a false destiny. So it will ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... right," said Bob, in a would-be airy tone that carried its own contradiction. "All's fair, according to the proverb; I no more blame you than you would have blamed me. I hope, on the contrary, that ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... folly and hardness of heart and inclined to hatred and enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan that is set over them be (which God the Most High forfend) weak or lack of policy and majesty, without doubt, this will be the cause of the ruin of the land. Quoth the proverb, 'A hundred years of the Sultan's tyranny, rather than one of the tyranny of the people, one over another.' When the people oppress one another, God setteth over them a tyrannical Sultan and a despotic ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... themselves how to define man, so as to distinguish him from other animals. Burke says, "Man is an animal that cooks its victuals." "Then," says Johnson, "the proverb is just, 'there is reason in roasting eggs.'" Dr. Adam Smith has hit this case; "Man," says he, "is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this—one dog does not change ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... Lincoln made no reply. He knew, what some statesmen never appear to know, the times when one should risk all upon that French proverb, "who excuses, accuses." However, he made his futile attempt to bring Greeley to reason, to induce him to tell the truth about Niagara without confessing to the country the full measure of the despair that had inspired his course. When Greeley ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... for anybody to sit in." This might certainly be considered as a tolerably broad hint that they had better discontinue their representations, but they were arrived at that state of eagerness which may be best illustrated by the proverb referring to a blind horse. Every one, inclined to that same impetuosity, and want of soberness, can remember the dismay with which hosts of such disregarded checks will recur to the mind when too ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all for a man to come from his own land and pretend to me that he had no mind for the beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it would not deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a seanfhacal—that is an old-word ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the proverb runs, and that proverb's truth was doubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of his excursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked the supreme vanity that is the attribute ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... enter a closed mouth," replied the old conspirator, justifying the proverb by the manner in which he shut his toothless mouth, into which, indeed, at that moment, neither a fly nor the tiniest grain ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... published here in the English language—The Levant Herald—and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French papers rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers are not popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand journalism. The proverb says, "The unknown is always great." To the court, the newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They know what a pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Alexandria, born about A.D. 191, says, in his Stromata, that he cannot explain the Mysteries, because he should thereby, according to the old proverb, put a sword into the hands of a child. He frequently compares the Discipline of the Secret with the heathen Mysteries, as to their internal and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thresher Duck could o'er the Queen prevail, The proverb says, "no fence against a flail." From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains, For which her Majesty allows him gains. Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw! Thrice ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... ago it had been decided that the less details known by the average man in the movement about Paul's activities, the better it would be. There is always betrayal and there are always counter-revolutionary agents within the ranks of an organization such as this. What was the old Russian proverb? When four men sit down to discuss revolution, three are police spies and ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Gospel sacraments were by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, though a certain gulligut friar (Frere Lubin croquelardon.) and true bacon-picker would have undertaken to prove it, if perhaps he had met with as very fools as himself, (and as the proverb says) a lid ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... houri make a paradise?" she bantered, while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till she thought his ears would hear it. "We have a proverb—one swallow ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... speech, saying, word, sentence, phrase, proverb, argument, proposal, discourse, homily, Bo; , CP: testament, will, enactment, decree, decision, ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... an "old soldier;" a term which, for some reason or other, is used in civil life with no complimentary import. It has a better meaning in service, however, which is well exemplified in the French proverb, "Il n'est chasse que de vieux chiens" (old dogs are staunch hunters). The pay also varies, and it is a feather in the cap of our Government that we may say she is in this respect more liberal than any other. In France, Prussia, Germany, Austria, and Russia, a private, with all economy, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... lee of Porto Santo we enjoyed a dry deck and a foretaste of the soft and sensuous Madeiran 'Embate,' the wester opposed to the Leste, Harmattan, Khammasin, or Scirocco, the dry wind which brings wet. [Footnote: The popular proverb is, 'A Leste never dies thirsty.'] Then we rolled over the twenty-five geographical miles separating us from our destination. Familiar sites greeted my eyes: here the 'Isle of Wood' projects a dwarf tail composed of stony vertebrae: seen upon the map ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... I clearly comprehended Kory-Kory. But there was a singular expression he made use of at the time, enforced by as singular a gesture, the meaning of which I would have given much to penetrate. I am inclined to believe it must have been a proverb he uttered; for I afterwards heard him repeat the same words several times, and in what appeared to me to be a somewhat: similar sense. Indeed, Kory-Kory had a great variety of short, smart-sounding sentences, with which he frequently enlivened ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... laughed, and putting his arm lightly round Pantaleone's waist, he reminded him of the French proverb: 'Le vin est tire—il ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... old Latin proverb,' said Mr. Ashburn, with a feeling that it was his turn—'an old Latin proverb, "Nec ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... upon it, and stooping down under pretence of pulling up his stocking, slipped it into his pocket. We stole some flints from our attendants, and made tinder by burning an old shirt. "Necessity is the mother of invention," says an old proverb, which, in our case, spoke truly, for by untiring perseverance we succeeded in constructing a compass, which, though of course imperfect, answered every purpose. After many entreaties, we procured from our attendants a couple of needles, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace books,—if they had such painful aids to culture,—and were comforted and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. This glib command of the matter-of-course, with a ready use of the proverb and the 'old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the work. It emphasizes the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... for the present, and occupy our minds with the proceedings of the other personages of this drama. An era of disaster was in store for most of them. It is curious to note how the proverb that misfortunes never come single was illustrated in the case of these people. Fate seems to have launched its thunderbolts at them all at once, as if making up for lost time; or like a playwright, who clears his stage of all secondary and superfluous characters, and leaves ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... Experience will soon teach you to put such reliance on its never capricious council that you will follow its suggestions implicitly, and, when your work is altered, the result will satisfy you invariably, that, as the proverb says of two heads, so two images are better than one. When you have come to this conclusion there is not a beauty of eighteen who will consult her glass (though it is true for a somewhat lighter purpose,) more eagerly, more devoutly, more frequently, or finally, we ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... wealth, like Ben-Ali-Cherif, turn the Tofailian into a proverb, and thus laugh at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... taken notice of by [682]Thevenot, and Herbert. In respect to the grottos I am persuaded, that they were temples, and not tombs. Nothing was more common among the Persians than to have their temples formed out of rocks. Mithras e [683]Petra was in a manner a proverb. Porphyry assures us, that the Deity had always a rock or cavern for his temple: that people, in all places, where the name of Mithras was known, paid their worship at a [684]cavern. Justin Martyr speaks to the same [685]purpose: and Lutatius ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... The French have a proverb which says: "It is always the unexpected that happens." And it was the unexpected ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... stiff collar gleams in the light of a Chinese lantern. Lord Saint Sinnes's linen is a matter of proverb. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... mountains were trained by life-long habit to look on life and death with iron philosophy. As I passed by a couple of tall, lank, Oklahoma cow-punchers, I heard one say, "Well, some of the boys got it in the neck!" to which the other answered with the grim plains proverb of the South: "Many a ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... in a former chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than the males; and here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the process of denudation. With respect to the completion of the process through sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zealand proverb, "There is no woman for a hairy man." All who have seen photographs of the Siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. And the king of Siam had to bribe a man to marry ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Nothing under Teresia—Gad, I think some old Dog-Star reigns to Day, that so many old Hearts are burning in their Sockets—I'm in love with this young Tittymouse here, most damnably—Well, what say you, Widow? Speak now, or you know the Proverb. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... demanded neither affection for Napoleon's person, nor regard for his interest, nor compassion for the youth and innocence of the Duke d'Enghien, to perceive the imprudence, as well as wickedness, of the proceeding. The remark of the callous Fouche had passed into a proverb, "It was worse than ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain —adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wished for comes when your hands are tied," says the Turkish proverb. Win had been yearning for a spin. She kept silence and sped on, wondering whether she could surprise the enemy by executing ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... organs, together with its corollary, hygiene, the care of the health. From ancient times psychology and physiology have been considered as equally associated and of prime importance. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old Latin proverb. The need of every one to "know himself," both in mind and body, was taught by the earliest "Wise Men" of Greece. The Roman emperor Tiberius said that any one who had reached the age of thirty in ignorance of his physical constitution ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... No proverb is too hackneyed to be comforting at times, and the girl reminded herself that blood is thicker than water as she looked among her mother's papers for the Menotti address. They were her cousins, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... literature and the schools of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy, "Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the life of Francis was the inspiration of the early Italian art. Cimabue and Giotto drew from the inspiration of that unique and lovely life the pictorial conceptions that have made Assisi the cradle of Italian painting. The great works of Giotto ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... my head on his arm, and he went on: "By and by, the Southdowns will be changed up here, and the Shropshires will go down to the orchard. I like to keep one flock under my fruit trees. You know there is an old proverb 'The sheep has a golden hoof.' They save me the trouble of ploughing. I haven't ploughed my orchard for ten years, and don't expect to plough it for ten years more. Then your Aunt Hattie's hens are so obliging that they keep me from the worry of finding ticks at shearing time. ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... for them. I quit then, after giving him my opinion of him and of the chances of his shop. I do not know where he may be now, but wherever he is, I will warrant that my prediction came true. There is in Danish an old proverb, "Falsk slaar sin egen Herre paa Hals," which is to say that chickens come home to roost, and that right in the end does prevail over might. The Lord Chief Justice over all is not to be tricked. If the labor men will only remember that, and devote, let us say, as much time to their duties as to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... had my share of the ills to which we all are heir, I must date my real unhappiness from the first month after I took possession. With your permission, I will enter into my history, as it may prove a warning to others, who will not remember the old proverb of "Let ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 'ministry', 'perjury'. Many words of this class have been further abbreviated in their passage through French. Such are 'benefice', 'divorce', 'office', 'presage', 'suffrage', 'vestige', 'adverb', 'homicide', 'proverb'. The stress in 'div['o]rce' is due to the long vowel and the two consonants. A few of these words have been borrowed bodily from Latin, as 'odium', ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... of myself, that I have been better since I wrote to you. Mazzinghi {14} tells me that November weather breeds Blue Devils—so that there is a French proverb, 'In October, de Englishman shoot de pheasant: in November he shoot himself.' This I suppose is the case with me: so away with November, as soon as may be. 'Canst thou my Clora' is being put in proper musical trim: and I will write it out for you when ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... represent various races. The Bundelas—the race who gave the name to the country—still maintain their dignity as chieftains, by disdaining to cultivate the soil, although by no means conspicuous for lofty sentiments of honour or morality. An Indian proverb avers that "one native of Bundelkhand commits as much fraud as a hundred Dandis" (weighers of grain and notorious rogues). About Datia and Jhansi the inhabitants are a stout and handsome race of men, well ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... distinguished for his large benevolence, commenced his mercantile career by peddling goods that he carried in a band-box from one milliner's shop to another. "You must creep before you can walk," is an old maxim, and the lives of all distinguished men verify the proverb. He who creeps well, will walk so much the better by and by; but he who is ashamed to creep, must never expect to walk. We know a successful merchant who commenced the work of an errand-boy in a large mercantile house, when he was about twelve years old. He was not mortified to ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... you, sweet lady, that love would find a way?" he said. "We have a proverb in Spain that the way to make sure of winning a girl is to make love to her mother. As you have no mother, I made love last night to Lady Fermanagh, who, I was told, is your guardian, and she invited me to call. Hence my presence here. The fates are kind, and now ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the tuneful Muses' hapless train, Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main! Their hearts no selfish stern absorbent stuff, That never gives—tho' humbly takes enough; The little fate allows, they share as soon, Unlike sage proverb'd Wisdom's hard-wrung boon: The world were blest did bliss on them depend, Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a friend!" Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son, Who life and wisdom at one race ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he might attempt to read in the sitting-room, and would find it impossible with the inefficient light of one candle. The hostess, seeing his dilemma, would say: "It is rather difficult to read here evenings; the proverb says 'you must have a ship at sea in order to be able to burn two candles at once;' we never have an extra candle except on extra occasions." These extra occasions occur, perhaps, twice a year. In this way the good woman ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... history receiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: 'The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.' He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our intellectual desires after truth, all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic self is misery, because it makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the desire to find like satisfaction again. The appetite comes in eating, as the proverb says, and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic self, torn with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... well as they can, and sleep too; but the proverb, "He who sleeps dines," does not apply to this elevation, for one cannot seriously do the one or ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... cronies down in Frenchtown, who know everything, and can recite you many a story, tell of one sad heart on Mardi Gras years ago. It was a woman's, of course; for "Il est toujours les femmes qui sont malheureuses," says an old proverb, and perhaps it is right. This woman—a child, she would be called elsewhere, save in this land of tropical growth and precocity—lost her heart to one who never knew, a very common story, by the way, but one which ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, "throw out the babe with the bath," as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hartmann's Ethnological ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... I didn't make a very hearty meal. After that the weather began to get bad, and continued getting bad for a long time. Then for some days, as sure as I went down below for a meal I did violence to the sentiment of the old proverb "wilful waste makes woeful want." However, in a few days I recovered sufficiently to withstand the noxious influences of the saloon long enough to satisfy my hunger. We had bad weather, more or less the whole way across ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... doing, we are to build a regular yard and sheds for all the animals close to the house, and palisaded round as the house now is, with a passage from one palisade to the other. Then it will be very convenient; but 'Rome was not built in a day,' as the proverb says; and we must, therefore, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... this added, that by original constitution they were as strong as Meux's dray-horses; and thus, after all, they may simply illustrate the old logical dictum ascribed to some medical man, that the reason why London children of the wealthier classes are noticeable even to a proverb for their robustness and bloom, is because none but those who are already vigorous to excess, and who start with advantages of health far beyond the average scale, have much chance of surviving that most searching quarantine, which, in such [Footnote: For myself, meantime, I am far from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... discussion of a case which has and is now agitating this good County of Brome, that spirit of British fair play which has attained to the dignity of a proverb has been lost sight of to a marked degree. I refer to the alleged assault on Mr. W. W. Smith, at Sutton Junction, in July last. The Dominion Temperance Alliance and its friends are doing their best, by means of the press and otherwise, to poison ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... nights Moses now devoted to the study of the Torah, and in all the time he ate no bread and drank no water, acting in accordance with the proverb, "If thou enterest a city, observe its laws." The angels followed this maxim when they visited Abraham, for they there ate like men; and so did Moses, who being among angels, like the angels partook of no food. He received nourishment from radiance of the Shekinah, which also sustains the holy Hayyot ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," has so long ago become a proverb, that it seems almost idle to repeat the sentiment. And yet it is to be feared that very few receive it as a practical truth, in the management of children. Now nothing is more certain than that it is easier, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... of the deep hollow lane together. Necessarily it would seem, for this lane appeared to defy the proverb and have no turning. But that it had one we know—and to it the little party came at last. A gate led to some fields belonging to the estate of the Hazels—Lettice and the nurse prepared ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... faith, my lord," returns father, "but have a care lest we translate the proverb, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... never be decided, for as the Spanish proverb says, sobre los gustos no hai disputa. Every one is effected in his own way. These fugitive sensations can be expressed by no known character, and there is no scale to measure if a CAT-FISH (!), a sole, or a turbot ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... Herculem.—I shall feel much obliged if any of your correspondents or readers can inform me of the origin of the proverb "Ex pede Herculem." In what classical author is it to be found? I have looked in vain through Erasmi Adagia ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... challenge of trailing the coat-tails, and believers in hereditary might, perhaps, be justified in assuming a strictly celibate sainthood. Be that as it may, Irish people have ever been prone to extremes, and, in spite of the proverb, there are some extremes that never touch, and chief among them are those that concern religion. Religion, or rather, difference of religion, is a factor in every-day Irish life of infinitely more potency than it is, perhaps, in any other ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... much sympathy from modern readers, who quite overlook all the extenuating circumstances in his case.[FN643] Nor do we always find the Jew famous for 'cuteness in folk-tales. This phase of his reputation is comparatively modern, and in the time of Horace, "Credat Judaeus" was a Roman proverb, which means, freely translated, "Nobody would be fool enough to believe it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, "He who never reveals a secret keeps it best," is thus finely amplified by Saadi: "The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... work. Do not say, 'Four months and then comes the harvest'; I say to you, lift up your eyes and see these fields white for the harvest! Already the reaper is receiving his wages and gathering in a crop for eternal life, that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the proverb holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap a harvest for which you had not toiled; other men have toiled and you are sharing the results ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... a sort of proverb in the little village where Caroline resided, when any one was not very generous, "She's almost as selfish as Carrie Rose," I don't know whether she knew how she was regarded among boys and girls of her ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... and the heart of a female quail carried about a woman, causes natural love and fruitfulness. Let them, also, that would increase their seed, eat and drink of the best, as much as they can; for sine Cerere el Libero, friget Venus, is an old proverb, which is, "without good meat and drink, Venus ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... could outrun our adversary, would we hamstring him at the starting-post? It was accounted by all men, in all ages, an unmanly thing to steal, and a yet more unmanly thing to steal from the weak; so that it has passed into a proverb, 'Only a dog would steal the blind man's dinner.' And yet," he said, "we are willing to steal the vote of the ignorant, the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... from him, brought all the inhabitants of the house and neighbourhood to the spot, and poor bruin was soon dispatched by shots from the windows. He has, however, immortalized his memory, and become a proverb amongst the town's people, for when any one injures himself by his own violence, they call him ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... points with great delicacy, it was as a seaman talking to seamen, and he could not entirely throw aside the frankness of the profession. Ashore, men live in the privacy of their own domestic circles, and their secrets, and secret thoughts, are "family secrets," of which it has passed into a proverb to say, that there are always some, even in the best of these communities. On shipboard, or in the camp, it is very different. The close contact in which men are brought with each other, the necessity that exists for opening the heart and expanding the charities, gets in time to influence ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wealth." This proverb has been repeated to most of us until we are either tired of it or careless of it, but it is well to remember that a saying becomes a proverb because of its truth and significance. Many a man has proved that if economy is not actual wealth, it is, in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... first men went naked, or at most loosely clad in the skin of some animal. Vide Mart. Hist. p. 18. This proverb is applied to inculcate the necessity of accommodating one's self to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... you a new proverb, one I have found useful at times. Put not thy finger into thy neighbor's pie, lest it get ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... revelation was completed with these writings which follow the Gospels in our New Testament. But Christ's teaching brings us up to the understanding of the facts and of the commentary upon them which Scripture contains, so that what was parable or proverb, dimly apprehended, mysterious and enigmatical when it was spoken, and what remains mysterious and enigmatical to us until we grow up to it, gradually becomes full of significance and weighty with a plain and certain meaning. This is the teaching which goes on through ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... accomplished in a little more than twenty-seven days. Neither is much weight due to the fanciful comparison of Gubernatis: "The moon is the watcher of the sky, that is to say, she sleeps with her eyes open; so also does the hare, whence the somnus leporinus became a proverb." [89] The same author says on another page, and here we follow him: "The mythical hare is undoubtedly the moon. In the first story of the third book of the Pancatantram, the hares dwell upon the shore of the lake Candrasaras, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... go to the depth of a desert, to the jungles of an Indian archipelago, to the woods at Caffraria, to the desert plains of North America, or to the Cordilleras, you will not escape from the miserable spectacles of human hypocrisy. The Turks have a proverb which says, 'Cure the hand you cannot spare.' Now we can add to this maxim, 'Cure the hand which can serve you, satisfy your pride, avarice and egotism.' Young and happy when you first entered on life, dear Ireneus, you have seen much. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... lost nothing with the passing seasons, but grew more perfect, even under the inexplicable shade of dissatisfaction that sometimes veiled it. "Fair as the wife of Hermas" was a proverb in Antioch; and soon men began to add to it, "Beautiful as the son of Hermas"; for the child developed swiftly in that favouring clime. At nine years of age he was straight and strong, firm of limb and clear of eye. His brown head was on a level ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Moss, still keeping his seat, made a little speech. "I think if Miss O'Mahony would allow me, I would counsel her against too rigid an economy. She will have heard of the old proverb,—'A penny wise and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... still more so in the present reign of Frol Zverev. In fact, Ilya Simonov was not alone in Party circles in wondering whether or not discipline had been allowed to slip too far. It is easier, the old Russian proverb goes, to hang onto the reins than to regain them ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a queer way about it. I reckon you think with the old saw, [Proverb.] 'The nearer the church the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] Degradation of freemen into serfs remained ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... from being the pleasantest and most genial of fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a significant proverb,—"Silks and satins put out the kitchen fire." Silks and satins—meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping—often put out not only the parlor fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of domestic love. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... some only of these measures are adopted, the nation as a whole cannot fail to benefit mentally, morally and physically. The success of the measures, of course, depends to some extent on their being taken in time, but in this, as in many other directions, the old proverb holds good: Better late ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... muscle in his broad back and arms was strained to the uttermost; so also were the muscles of his companions, and the canoe seemed to advance by a series of rapid leaps and bounds. Yet the sound of the pursuers' oars seemed to increase, and soon the proverb "it is the pace that kills" received illustration, for the speed of the canoe began to decrease a little—very little at first—while the pursuers, with fresh hands at the oars, gradually overhauled ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... as has just been observed, is apt to overreach itself, has passed into a proverb; and the case of Jacopo and his employers was one in point to prove its truth. The unusual silence of those who ordinarily sought him on similar occasions, had not been lost on the agent; and the sight of the felucca, as he strayed along the quays, gave an accidental ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we know nothing as yet. We'll see what news Pavel brings back. In our calling one must be brave. The English have a proverb 'Never say die.' A very good proverb, I think, much better than our Russian, 'When trouble knocks, open the gates wide!' We mustn't ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... doors closed against them;—were shut occasionally to those whom she most specially wished to see within them. She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it. We are told by the Latin proverb that he who gives quickly gives twice; but I say that she who gives quickly seldom gives more than half. When in the early spring the Duke of Omnium first knocked at Madame Max Goesler's door, he was informed that she was not at home. The Duke felt very cross ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... "Standard" Work (in the Press), New Edition of Allsopp's Fables. N.B.—This volume will contain two extra Fables, illustrating the proverb of "Allsopps to Cerberus," and "There's many a slip between the mug and the Hind-lip." Many ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... Napoleon promised to reconstitute her, and the Poles fought by thousands in his armies and won many victories for him. Then came the campaign of Russia and ended all that. To-day, Poland is remembered in France only by a proverb, 'Saoul comme un Polonais,' 'Drunk as a Pole.' It is so we think of them, when we think of them at all, which is not often. This disdain, this forgetfulness, has been carefully fostered by Germany and Russia. No one thinks it worth while to interfere. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... by the character they produce, not by the logical consistency of their tenets—had spread throughout Italian society. The Englishmen who came to know Italian society could not avoid being contaminated by the contact. The Italians themselves observed the effect and summed it up in their proverb, Inglese italianato e un diabolo incarnato. What struck the Italians must have been still more noticeable to Englishmen. We have a remarkable proof of this in an interpolation made by Roger Ascham at the end of the first part of his Schoolmaster, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," answered the sheikh. At least, he made use of an Arab proverb of a similar tenor. "However, I will consider the matter. In the meantime, I will receive you and the other Nazarene as guests in my tent, where you will be pleased to exhibit the various articles ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... than to amuse myself with sports and hunting in this country, yet the conquest of the enchanting kingdom of Cashmere, which has never yet been subdued by monarchs of the age, which for natural strength and inaccessibility is unrivalled, and which, for beauty and pleasantness, is a proverb among the most sagacious beholders, became secretly an object of my wishes, BECAUSE I received constantly accounts of the tyranny of the rulers of that region. Accordingly, in a very short time, my brave warriors annexed that kingdom to my dominions. Though the princes of that country ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... a moment, and then continued: "You send a great many missionaries to India and elsewhere. Is it because you have no work for them at home? In my country, my benighted and heathen Sennaar, we have a proverb that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of profession. In Rome, I say, we used to fear lest the people, with crossings and dippings and genuflections and repetitions of a long series of invocations and confessions and ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... round about the Marble Arch, where fiery orators "let themselves go," must be the safety-valve of many an obscure home. Occasionally I go there—just to listen to men and women giving an example of that proverb about "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing." Moreover, there is a certain psychological interest in this rowdy corner of a peaceful park. It is typical of England, for one thing. I don't mean to say that tub-thumping is typical of England, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... secrets of Antichrist. 'From Rome' he says 'flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a 'good Christian,' or in their language, a fool. It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could.' If the German princes and nobles did not 'make short work of them in good earnest,' Germany would either be devastated or would ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... be anxious; I'll answer for it that I can kill anybody as well as any doctor in the town. The proverb usually is, "after death comes the doctor," but you will see that if I have anything to do with it, it will be, "after the doctor comes death!" But now, while I think of it, it must be difficult to play the doctor; and if I do ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... Stella. The threatened man lives long. You know the old proverb: 'The man I most fear is he who says nothing, but smiles in your face while he is planning to stab ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... unfailing courtesy and tact, tolerance and humility, even under the greatest provocation. The man who bet 400 Zuz that he would break Hillel's patience by silly and far-fetched questions lost his own temper at the consideration with which he was treated. And so the proverb became current, "Patience is worth 400 Zuz." And other tales are told of Hillel's considerate dealing with heathens who wished to embrace Judaism, in contrast to the harsh treatment meted out to them ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the night; she had left him only at daybreak. But then, in his state of collapse, he had been hardly conscious of her presence. Now to ask for her or to see her would stamp him coward, say what he might to her. The proverb, that the King's face gives grace, applied to her; and an overture on his side could mean but one thing, that he sought her grace. And that he would not do though the cold waters of death covered him more and more, and the coming of the end—in that quiet chamber, while the September sun ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... become unbearable, but I know how to escape from people of the corporal's class without being rude. I do not tell them I have another engagement—that is not accepted because, as there is no time in Sicily, punctuality is not recognised. If they have a proverb about it, it ought to be, "Never put off till to-morrow what can be done the day after." Nor do I say I have letters to write—that only ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... are very fond of music and are constantly singing. They have a proverb: "He who sings thinks not of evil." Tomaseo thought their folk-songs richer than those of any other nation, ranging as they do over all manner of subjects. They are generally heroical or amorous in character, divided into short verses ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men," I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encourag'd ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... of Pisa and Arezzo," said Cennini. "Ay, Messer Pisano, it is no use for you to look sullen; you may as well carry your banner to our San Giovanni with a good grace. 'Pisans false, Florentines blind'—the second half of that proverb will hold no longer. There come the ensigns of our subject towns and signories, Melema; they will all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year, when they will give ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... profess Christianity; but, as the religion of the Greek church, as I saw it, appears to be practically something very little better than fetich-worship, I cannot exalt them as models of evangelical piety. They are, however, according to a popular proverb, not far from godliness in being very clean in their persons; and not only did they appear so to me, but I was assured by several Russians that, as regarded these singing gypsies, it was invariably the case. As for morality in gypsy girls, their principles are very peculiar. Not a whisper ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the letter back, sincerely sorry for Mr. Franklin, for I knew how fond he was of my young lady; and I saw that her mother's account of her had cut him to the heart. "You know the proverb, sir," was all I said to him. "When things are at the worst, they're sure to mend. Things can't be much worse, Mr. Franklin, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... guest also," the old gentleman interrupted. "The question of new men can be solved. But there is time for everything, and now is the time for all of you to rest. As our proverb has it, 'Devagar se vae ao longe'—he goes far who ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... as Jacob in his dealings with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me that proverb and practice too ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... he, 'you know, Baron, the proverb tells us, "It's ill taking the breeks off a Highlandman,"—and the boots are here ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... with which you have been pleased to honour me in your obliging letter, and entirely agree with your quotation, of "Quam bonum et quam jucundum!" We may indeed esteem ourselves as come of the same family, or, according to our country proverb, as being all one man's bairns; and there needed no apology on your part, reverend and dear sir, for demanding of me any information which I may be able to supply respecting the subject of your curiosity. The interview ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... speak; a well-known voice interrupted the silence, and drew nearer and nearer. "Ah," whispered she, lightly, "the proverb is fulfilled, 'Speak of the wolf, and he appears.' That is Lord Elliot and Camilla speaking with such ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... comin'. Talkin' to this same German—He's always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money market—'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says 'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' to friend, you've giv' ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... air-guns, plots, and intrigues, of all kinds. It is time to hunt down the chief men of these bravoes who have been sent here from England, Germany, Russia, and Italy, and I have had enough of illustrating the old proverb, 'Hang the little thief and let the great one run.' I mean to have the great thief and to hang him, for that is the only way of intimidating these fellows and inspiring ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so full of hope and youth in all its breathings—that rainbow that we may, if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... be too absurd, certainly. You have heard the proverb— Hold in contempt the innocent words of those Who from their infancy have known no guile:— But trust the treacherous counsels of the man Who makes a ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... greatest historian observes of it) "the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history," which is, indeed (as he says), "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." The influence of Rome extended beyond his borders. As in modern times it has become a proverb that when a particular European nation is satisfied the peace of the world is assured, so in the days whereof we are treating it would seem that Rome had only to desire repose, for the surrounding ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... in favor of the general interest, but in so doing he came very near traversing, unwittingly, the plans of the general government by his local action, laudable and proper as that certainly was. He was, however, professionally lucky to a proverb, and escaped this mischance by a hair's breadth. The purposed detachment had already started for Jamaica, and he was accompanying it in person, when there joined him on March 25th, off the island of St. Kitt's, not far from Antigua, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... than Angera. The proverb says, "He who would know the pains of the infernal regions, could go to Angera in the summer and to Arona in the winter." The neighbourhood is exquisite. Unless during the extreme heat of summer, it is the best place to stay at on the Lago Maggiore. The Monte Motterone is within the compass of ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... nigger; and when you have keeled a great many Kaffirs, by the lash, with the crocodiles, or what-not, then a white man or two makes less deeference. I acknowledge there were too many on board that sheep; but what was one to do? You have your Engleesh proverb about the dead men and the stories; it was necessary to make clin swip. You see ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... stables. Having had a serious difference with Diana, he had made up his mind to try whether a long absence on his part would not have the effect of reducing her to submission, and at the same time remembering the proverb, that "absence makes the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... I believe that this complimentary proverb originally referred to the learning of the English clergy, but it would apply with equal truth to their social agreeableness. When I was writing about the Art of Conversation and the men who excelled in it, I ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... one of the shrewdest men of his day, so shrewd that by common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the Seven Sages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world's tradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... dear good peasants are taking your father in to a dead certainty. You know the Russian proverb, "The Russian ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... conversation she displays a grace which is otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were not echoing at the present moment through all ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Tom. "You weigh the butter, I will weigh the sugar, Rosy the treacle, and Margaret measure the vinegar. It is such an advantage to have so many helpers; we get the work done so quickly. There is a proverb which says 'Many hands make light work.' ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... than some of the native wines do): they accept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as they grow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicated by beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says, have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now, and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said," says the same author, "that the American has no talent for lying, and distrust of a man's word strikes the Yankee as specifically European." Now in England "an American lie" has stood almost as a proverb; yet the German writer is entirely in earnest, though personally I do not agree with him. He sees the symptoms, but the diagnosis is wrong. The American has an excellent talent for lying, but in business he has learned that falsehood and deception are poor commercial weapons. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... want to gather some of the flowers—who does not want to gather Roses? We want some fully opened blossoms and many of the dainty buds. But the straggling stems of the Rose soon teach us the truth of the proverb: "No Rose without a Thorn." The stems are thickly covered with thorns; these are not only sharp, but hooked as well, and we do not get our bunch of roses without a scratch ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... Pierre-Pointue, where the mule-path ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuade the Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over his ears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying to Tartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has the credit of getting up early may sleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard, he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, vai, Mont Blanc... what a humbug..." Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. had issued a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the blockade runners, received as high as one hundred dollars in gold per month, and a bounty of fifty dollars for every successful trip, which from Nassau could be easily made in seven days. Other people were paid in proportion, and as the old proverb says, "What comes over the Devil's back is spent under his breast," the money so obtained was squandered recklessly, and all ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the use of picking out all the exceptions to prove your point? Of course the exception proves the rule—at least so the proverb says—but a great many exceptions prove nothing that I know of, except—that is—but what's the use of arguing, child, you'll never be convinced. Come, how much do you want ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... "tired and terribly jaded horses." But, in telling of his exploits, he says nothing about losing two pieces of his artillery. The saying of Bonaparte's, "False as a war bulletin," has passed into a proverb, and this bulletin of Gen. Shelby's is ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... northerner? A soulless cult of rhythm, and then, when the simplest of melodies emerges, they cling to it with the passionate delight of a child who has discovered the moon. These men are still in the age of platitudes, so far as music is concerned; an infantile aria is to them what some foolish rhymed proverb is to the Arabs: a thing of God, a portent, a joy ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... for it is said that no phrase becomes a proverb until after a century's experience of its truth. In England it is proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... impotent language. The age of reasoners had passed away with Barrow, South, and Sherlock; and a studied mingling of affected simplicity and deliberate nonsense constituted the sole merits of the pulpit in the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, according to the proverb, that "when things come to the worst, they must mend," came the gentle enthusiasm of Wesley and the fierce declamation of Whitefield, both differing utterly in doctrine, practice, and principle, yet both regarding themselves as missionaries to restore ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... lady. Maria, Countess of Coventry, died aged twenty-seven, not untouched by scandal, and a victim to her own frivolity. Mrs Gunning received a valuable appointment as Housekeeper at one of the royal palaces. "The Luck of the Gunnings" became a proverb. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... many strong men habitually do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in their hearts to recognise how great they are. Many a man whose affectations and assumptions are a proverb, has lost the magnificent virtue of simplicity, for no other reason than that he needed courage to take his own measure, and so finally confirm to himself the reality of his pretensions. With Byron, as with some of his prototypes among the men of action in France and elsewhere, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... sight, out of mind, seems to be a proverb which applies to enemies as well as friends. Because the French army was no longer seen from the cliffs of Dover; because the sound of cannon was no longer heard by the debauched London bathers on the Sussex coast; because ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... in time. Our friend—your husband—has many of the English idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire—' You know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man to take a rational and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stepan Lanovitch—the owner of this house, by the way. His reception of the news I have ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were shabby fellows ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Warren, taking down two bars for the girls to go through into a green lane fenced in on either side with a heavy wire fence. "Talk and work, mixed, are all right, but all talk and no work makes Jack a poor hired man—haven't you ever heard that proverb?" ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." There is truth back of most proverbs, although to-day both horses and men of Texas are losing something of their erstwhile bronco character. That out of such conditions, out of ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... sanded, the door of the toril was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the pick of the corrida should be fifth on the list. It was also a compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... qualities. The recognition of the claims of their relations might be emulated by our higher civilization; so impressed upon their natures was the duty to those who were related to them, that their language contains a proverb: "Ca-si-ri pi-rus, he wi-ti ti-ruk-ta-pi-di-hu-ru—Why, even the worms, they love each other—much more should men." They were also very hospitable, very sociable, and fond of telling stories. They really had a literature of stories and songs, which, if they could be gathered in their entirety, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish," which has come into vogue again in connection with the revised income tax—for who can deny that the saving of the penny is wise?—is lost in obscurity; but there is no doubt that it is very ancient. Many nations have the same proverb in different terms as applied to their own currency. In France the coins to which the saying best applies would be the sou and the louis; in America, the cent and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... His rural ballads and idyls are as genuinely American as any thing that our poets have written, and have been recommended, as such, to English working-men by Whittier's co-religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is probably Maud Muller, whose closing couplet has passed into proverb. Skipper Ireson's Ride is also very current. Better than either of them, as poetry, is Telling the Bees. But Whittier's masterpiece in work of a descriptive and reminiscent kind is Snow Bound, 1866, a New England fireside ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that their alarms ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... an old and true proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. And in like wise it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot make them breathe it. Their own folly, or the folly of their parents and educators, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... necessity of learning to read other languages has brought with it that wide intellectual sympathy which is the beginning of all culture and which is not infrequently missed by those who have devoted themselves to many grammars and a single literature. The old proverb, "Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well," has only value when "well" is properly interpreted. Although the science of language is as great as any science, it is not the science of language, but the practical interpretation ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win hearts by your mere being—by only being what you are. And Mena too loved you tenderly; but 'absence,' says the proverb, 'is the one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any town in all France:' for which reason I laid no stress upon the accident till I had enquired of the master of the inn about it, who telling me seriously it was so—and hearing, moreover, the windiness of Avignon spoke of in the country about as a proverb—I set it down, merely to ask the learned what can be the cause—the consequence I saw—for they are all Dukes, Marquisses, and Counts, there—the duce a Baron, in all Avignon—so that there is scarce any talking to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... are poor; you deserve it! Remember the old proverb which says: 'Stolen money never bears ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... to them that not he, but those who will not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher should not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. The wise man should not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him. Now the pilot is the philosopher—he whom in the parable they call star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in the harking back to primal lore that we seem to feel true passion at its best and purest, as somehow all truth of legend, proverb and fable has come from those misty ages of the earth. The drooping harmonies merge in the returning swing of the first solemn hymn,—a mere line that is broken by a new tender appeal, that, rising ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... knows what may happen? When I was a kid in the circus—you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a travelling circus"—how simply he brought this out!—"the fat woman, we called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the people will ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... He is a kind husband and a kinder father; he never disowns his poor relations; his hospitality is extended alike to white and black; he is open in his dealings and faithful to his word, and his honesty is a proverb in the land. True, if war breaks out and the thirst for slaughter comes upon him, he turns into a different man. When the fierce savage spirit is once aroused, blood alone will cool it. But even then he has virtues. If he is cruel, he is brave in the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... a person is in great pain, the cause of which he cannot remove, he sets his teeth firmly together, or bites some substance between them with great vehemence, as another mode of violent exertion to produce a temporary relief. Thus we have a proverb where no help can be had in pain, "to grin and abide;" and the tortures of hell are said to be attended with ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Never put your best foot foremost. The proverb is a false one—as many proverbs are. We will dynamite them afterwards, and electrify them last of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... mouthful of the growing corn. However, I know the master of this estate, which belongeth to Rensi, the son of Meru. There is no doubt that he hath driven every robber out of the whole country, and shall I be robbed on his estate?" And this Tehutinekht said, "Is not this an illustration of the proverb which the people use, 'The name of the poor man is only mentioned because of his master?' It is I who speak to thee, but it is the steward [Rensi, the son of Meru] of whom thou art thinking." Then Tehutinekht seized a cudgel of green tamarisk wood, and beat cruelly with ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... of [Greek: skalme] Saumaise reads [Greek: skambe]. There is a Greek proverb, [Greek: skambon xylon oudepot orthon]: "You cannot make a crooked ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... with my amour. I have every encouragement that I could wish. Indeed my fair one does not verbally declare in my favor; but then, according to the vulgar proverb, that "actions speak louder than words," I have no reason to complain; since she evidently approves my gallantry, is pleased with my company, and listens to my flattery. Her sagacious friends have undoubtedly given her a detail of my vices. ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... more than apathy, nothing that so stimulates his policy of constant pressure as inertia. Ndengei, the supreme deity of the Fiji Islands, the laziest of all the gods, has the serpent for his effigy. "The Devil tempts the busy man," says a Turkish proverb, "but the idle ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... less hairy on the under surface than the males; and here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the process of denudation. With respect to the completion of the process through sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zealand proverb, "There is no woman for a hairy man." All who have seen photographs of the Siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. And the king of Siam had to bribe a man to marry the first hairy woman in the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... said Tom, who could not help thinking about the proverb concerning a dog with a bad name. "This shutter must have a proper fastening. But who would have thought of any one getting a ladder? You ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... succeeded to his father's business in the university city, and attained that position of independence which enabled him to force the rule that each horse in his stable was to be hired only in its proper turn, thus originating the proverb, "Hobson's choice," that is, "this or none." Despite his ever growing wealth and advanced years, Hobson continued his regular journeys to London until the outbreak of the plague caused the authorities ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... and in their daily conduct. Still, they had some redeeming qualities. The recognition of the claims of their relations might be emulated by our higher civilization; so impressed upon their natures was the duty to those who were related to them, that their language contains a proverb: “Ca-si-ri pi-rus, he wi-ti ti-ruk-ta-pi-di-hu-ru—Why, even the worms, they love each other—much more should men.” They were also very hospitable, very sociable, and fond of telling stories. They really had a literature of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... supported, by dint of great painstaking, in a somewhat novel way. That is to say, he put upon himself the limitation of employing no theory, statement of fact or argument in the book that was not already embodied in a common proverb in some civilized language. Now and then it was a bit hard to find the proverb, but in most cases it was very easy, and in some cases he found, not one, but dozens. Well, this laborious pastiche of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... for the Persians, saith Herodotus, before they conquered the Lydians, had nothing rich or valuable: and [417] Isaiah tells us, that the Medes regarded not silver, nor delighted in gold; but the Lydians and Phrygians were exceeding rich, even to a proverb: Midas & Croesus, saith [418] Pliny, infinitum possederant. Jam Cyrus devicta Asia [auri] pondo xxxiv millia invenerat, praeter vasa aurea aurumque factum, & in eo folia ac platanum vitemque. Qua victoria argenti quingenta millia talentorum reportavit, & craterem Semiramidis cujus pondus ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... of Diana had passed into a proverb; and such was Theresa's character for coldness and reserve, that I attributed to her temper of mind, the evident indifference with which she received my attentions. Meeting her as I did, either in public assemblies, or in the antechamber of the Queen among the other ladies in waiting, I had no ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... godly, sober lives. But as far as the Government and the great bulk of the country are concerned, we are spiritually dead. I have been studying the utterances of our statesmen, and I have looked too often in vain for anything like idealism and for a vision. You know what the old proverb says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish," and that ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... "Tia" means "aunt" in Spanish. Presumably for the reason that nephews are sometimes troublesome to their aunts, there is a Spanish proverb that warns a nephew against making his aunt too ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... This proverb is derived from the Greek, and applied to Theramenes, who was at first a mighty stickler for the thirty tyrants' authority: but when they began to abuse it by defending such outrageous practices, no man more violently opposed it than he; and this (says Potter) got him the nick-name of "Jack ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... spectators. In this manner he traversed the space of a league, till he came to the spot where his church now stands, the angels meanwhile chanting around him Gloria tibi Domine, and others repeating three times the Alleluia. It was this unusual promenade that gave rise to the well-known proverb that it is only the first step ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... to prove a negative, and my main reason for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; but I am absolutely certain I never said that 'some of them (the National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and to administer it by falsehood. We don't.' Most certainly I do not expect to found anything ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the fact that the meat was only half done. But hunger is the best cook, as the proverb says, and he was not very fastidious. Anything would have tasted good to ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... from Illinois Be the world's proverb of successful shame, Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, Who, when the sad State spares them, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... others—whether he, I say, in acting thus, was guilty of wrong, violating the truce and breaking the Peace, or not? Was it fit that one of the Hellenes should arise to prevent it, or not? {72} If it was not fit— if it was fit that Hellas should become like the Mysian booty[n] in the proverb before men's eyes, while the Athenians had life and being, then I have lost my labour in speaking upon this theme, and the city has lost its labour in obeying me: then let everything that has been done be counted ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... up to thank you and he your humble servant. A certain curate could never trust his Indian to carry important letters until he had given him twenty-five lashes. Servile and timid, superstitious and indolent, the Quichuans have not half the spirit of our North American Indians. It has passed into a proverb that "the Indian lives without shame, eats without repugnance, and dies without fear." Abject as they are, however, they are not wholly without wit. By a secret telegraph system, they will communicate between Quito and Riobamba ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of 'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some crowded place 'where there is not heed for ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... No blue ruin or heavy wet. In the days of the great Caesar all feasts began with eggs and ended with fruits, cream and apples; hence the proverb, ab avo usque ad mala, and the man who did not crush his eggshell or put his folded napkin on his left knee, was considered a fool. As we have not eggs we will do our best with the napkins. No melancholy subjects ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical softening of our sympathy.[25] He had not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespeare acted conformably to this ingenious maxim without having ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Conrector, not the punch which Mam'sell Veronica most admirably brewed, no! but simply that cursed student is to blame for all the mischief. Do you not observe that he has long been mente caphis? And are you not aware that madness is infectious? One fool makes twenty; pardon me, it is an old proverb; especially when you have drunk a glass or two, you fall into madness quite readily, and then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go through your exercise, just as the crack-brained fugleman makes the motion. Would you believe it, Conrector? I am still giddy ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the place where he was seated, and conveyed him to prison for having had the audacity to reprove an actress in favour at court. From such improper exercise of authority, the following verse had become a proverb: ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... manner. He seemed close and cold; but he was courageous, just, and inflexible; never bullied, and to his utmost would prevent tyranny. The little boys looked up to him as a stern protector; and his word, too, throughout the school was a proverb: and truth ranks a great quality among boys. In a word, Millbank was respected by those among whom he lived; and school-boys scan character more nicely ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... overheard the remark and I turned laughingly to Bennett and said: Nonsense; he can't harm any one, and there is an old proverb about the impossibility of drowning those who are born ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... done in this, according to the Proverb, changed a bad for a worse; but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: Do thou so too, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... pardon me, Lieutenant; but as the proverb hath it, strange countries, strange manners; my friend here, Padre Carera, brings a message from El Senor Picador Cangrejo, one of our magnates, that he will consider it an especial favour if you will can on him, either this ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution."—Life of Schiller, p. 148. "That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 360. "For what purpose they embarked, is not yet known."—"To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of sin, is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... they come. There is a passage in Scripture where both kinds of influence are illustrated. "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The first part of the proverb refers to direct influence: as "iron sharpeneth iron," so one man applying to another his powers of persuasion, his motives in the shape of money or some other inducement, moulds, fashions, sharpens him to his liking. "As in water face answereth to face:" this is the ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... dreary monotony. It is interspersed with rocks, some not less than 300 feet in height, and shaded by thickets of acacias or date-trees. The shelter of these trees is, however, unavailing against the vertical rays of the sun, which explains an Arabic proverb, "Rely upon the favour of the great and the shade ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... laboured hard all day, digging and washing, and with good success. I begin to hope now that I have really laid the foundation of a fortune, and I thank God for it. I have been kicked tolerably well about the world, and the proverb, that a "rolling stone gathers no moss," has, I am sure, been abundantly proved by my case. Now, however, I have a grand chance, and I am resolved that all that industry and perseverance can do shall be done to ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... from many countries, loaded or unloaded their cargoes on the wharves, or sailed peacefully by. Antwerp excelled all seaports and became very rich again. Her people loved their native city so dearly, that they coined the proverb "All the world is a ring, and Antwerp is the pearl set ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... encounter is known in the Southwest as "the fight at Dug Spring." The next day another skirmish occurred, and, on the third morning, twenty-five miles from Springfield, General Lyon called a council of war. "Councils of war do not fight" has grown into a proverb. The council on this occasion decided that we should return to Springfield without attacking the enemy. The decision ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... certain that we have cast out the thorns. There is an old German proverb, the vulgarity of which may be excused for its point. 'You must not sit near the fire if your head is made of butter.' We should not try to walk through this wicked world without making very certain that we have stubbed the thorns out of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. Qui pane d'amour—how does the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,—she was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping hand, but (however rich ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest on it; ut when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and cry out, 'Stolen from our plate chest,' ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... hunter in his lifetime, his ghost will naturally be more than usually able to assist his brethren in the craft after his death. For that reason when such a man has just died, the people, to adopt a familiar proverb, hasten to make hay while the sun shines by hunting very frequently, in the confident expectation of receiving ghostly help from the deceased hunter. In the evening, when they return from the chase, they lay a small portion ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... unless he becomes emasculated into a clay-eater, he obtains the excitement that his ancestors got in war, and the New-Englander gets in work, in gaming, horse-racing, and all manner of dissipation. His life verifies the proverb, that the idle brain is the Devil's workshop. He is trained to despise labor, for it puts him on a level with his father's slaves. At the University of Virginia one may see the extent of demoralization to which eight generations of idleness can bring English blood. There the spree, the riot, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Pan to guard from his cave below the roysterings of youth. It is easy to let an allusion to my friend Lucian slip off the end of my stylus when I think of Athens. He and Gellius are scarcely the 'like pleasing like' of the proverb! Lucian, in fact, disposed of Gellius once by calling him an 'Infant Ignorance on the arm of Fashion.' This was after he had watched a peasant making holiday among the statues and temples on the Acropolis, carrying in his arms a three months old child who dozed in a colonnade ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... and hunting in this country, yet the conquest of the enchanting kingdom of Cashmere, which has never yet been subdued by monarchs of the age, which for natural strength and inaccessibility is unrivalled, and which, for beauty and pleasantness, is a proverb among the most sagacious beholders, became secretly an object of my wishes, BECAUSE I received constantly accounts of the tyranny of the rulers of that region. Accordingly, in a very short time, my brave warriors annexed that kingdom ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... still, I beseech you! All wise men are fatalists; and no proverb is more pithy than that which says, 'What can't be cured must be endured.' Lie still, I tell you! Little, perhaps, do you think that you are performing one of the noblest functions of humanity; yes, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the ranche. In two weeks after the whole family, mother, sons, and daughters were en route to California, where their long wanderings terminated. There they are now living and enjoying the rich fruits of their energy and enterprise, proving for once the falsity of the proverb that "a rolling stone ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... an old proverb, first come must be first served," replied the traveller, pushing his horse forward a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... to a sense of its duty to the people of England. This he failed to do, and his reward was perpetual imprisonment, lingering torture, and a premature death, inflicted upon him by the very same sovereigns that he had spared from annihilation. The old proverb, of "Save a thief from the gallows and he will cut your throat," was never more truly ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... another proverb: 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' Tom and I will try ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of teaching a dog of mature age even the simplest thing is so well known that it has passed into a proverb: "It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." In other words, the conditions must be favorable. But what is the case with the elephant? The question shall be answered by G. P. Sanderson. In his "Wild Beasts of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... a short silence. Arthur was swinging his long legs backwards and forwards, and whistling softly to himself. I looked at him for a moment curiously. The words of an ancient proverb ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with an unresolved major ninth chord on the dominant of the dominant. So the frenzy of "In Blossom Time" is emotion of a human, rather than a botanical sort. "The Cradle Song" adapts the Siegfried Idyl, and the "Old Proverb" is rollicking. The two songs of opus 34 are fitted with words by Byron. The three songs of opus 44 also make use of this poet, now so little in vogue with composers. There are three songs in opus ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Talmudic method or rather want of method. But you have a real insight into metaphysical problems. And yet you have only read Wolff! You are evidently not a Chamor nose Sefarim (a donkey bearing books)." He used the Hebrew proverb to make the young Pole feel at home, and a half smile hovered around his sensitive lips. Even his German took on a winning touch of jargon in vocabulary and accentuation, though to kill the jargon was one of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Alban's. On May Day the watermen used to come to St. Paul's in order to sprinkle water and strew herbs upon this tomb—I know not why. Those who were out of work and went dinnerless were said to dine with Duke Humphrey: and there was a proverb—'Trash and trumpery is the way to Duke Humphrey.' Trumpery being used in its original meaning—tromperie—deceit. Among other tombs there were those of the Saxon Kings Sebbi and Ethelred. The first of ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... the moment that Solomon has any proverb on the subject," he said, still amused at the idea of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... West, rendered the supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed contemptible in comparison with ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... no accuser," said Archie Maine to himself. "There's a splendid proverb. It can't mean a wigging this time. But if that pompous old pump, that buckled-up basha, lets the Major know that he caught poor old Pegg in my room to-day, I'm sure to get a lecture about making too free with the men instead of going about amongst them perched up ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... gutter or the fish-market. The bathos is unthinkable. The universal intellect of Bacon shrank to the paltry pursuit of place. The disproportion between the intellectual capaciousness and the moral aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is far worse. It is not here a union of grasp of mind with an ignoble ambition, but the plunge of the moral nature itself from the highest heights to that despicable region of vulgar scurrility and libel, which is below the level of average ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Haviland Hicks, Jr., terror providing him with wings, as per proverb. Down the lane, at a pace that would have done credit to Barney Oldfield in his Blitzen Benz, the mosquito-like youth sprinted madly, and ever, closer, closer on his trail, sounded that awful "Woof! Woof!" from Caesar ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... take the field; or whether his dignity of Alderman has dulled him into prudence, and the love of feasting; but hitherto he has done nothing but go to City banquets and sermons, and sit at Guildhall as a sober magistrate. With an inversion of the proverb, "Si ex quovis Mercurio fit lignum!" What do you Italians think of Harlequin Potesta?[1] In truth, his party is crumbled away strangely. Lord Chatham has talked on the Middlesex election till nobody will answer him; and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... minorite seems in this chapter to have studied the old proverb, fas est ab hoste doceri; but except in the leading political advice of the section, he might have been better employed in following the adage ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... rest of the day peace reigned at Wood End House. Mr. Churton, whose absence at mealtime was never made the subject of remark, did not return to tea when the three ladies met again; for now, according to that proverb of the Peninsula which says "Tell me who you are with, and I will tell you who you are," Fan had ceased to belong to the extensive genus Young Person, and might only be classified as Young Lady, at all events for so long as she remained on a footing ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... dungeon, they locked him in a dismal little chamber, with some bread and water. Next day, Shrove Tuesday, while the Carnival was afoot, Jasmin felt very angry and very hungry. "Who sleeps eats," says the proverb. "But," said Jasmin, "the proverb lies: I did not sleep, and was consumed by hunger." Then he filled up the measure of his iniquity by ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... considerable sum, I can tell you. There has been a natural antipathy, an instinctive dislike, between Mrs. Major Hazleby and me, ever since she paid her first visit here, and, seeing me listening to something she was saying to Mamma, she turned round upon me with that odious proverb, "Little pitchers ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are, and I'm going to snaffle it or break my neck—and all your necks—in the deuced desperate attempt. Is that clear? Where the carcass is, there wheel the kites and there the jackals fight, as your proverb says. The easiest part will ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... contemporaneously used also by Olivier Mallard; J.Longis, "Nihil in charitate violentia"; Denys Janot, "Tout par amour, amour par tout, par tout amour, en tout bien"; the French rendering of a very old proverb in the mottoes of B.Aubri and D.Roce, "Al'aventure tout vient a point qui peut attendre"; J.Bignon, "Repos sans fin, sans fin repos"; the motto used conjointly by M.Fzandat and R.Granjon, "Ne la mort, ne le venin"; and the motto of Etienne Dolet, "Scabra et impolita ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian—everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the enjoyment—the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... thirty or more, were scattered between the billiard-room, the smaller drawing-room, where card-tables were set out, and the large drawing-room, given up to conversation and presently to the acting of a proverb by several of the younger people and Mademoiselle Moineau, who played the part of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... me to pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the Witch of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more than she bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in India, from a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember the sense. They Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a closed door, the devil will open it—excuse my mentioning such a thing; but Hindoos ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes of a hearse; when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good wind that blows ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... accompany him as far as the Pierre-Pointue, where the mule-path ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuade the Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over his ears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying to Tartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has the credit of getting up early may sleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard, he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, vai, Mont Blanc... what a humbug..." Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. had ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... speak very lightly about it. But now that the marriage is a thing accomplished, it is all right. I had destined my niece for another sphere than a painter's world. However, when you can't get a thrush, eat a blackbird, as the proverb says. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... The disturbance was due almost exclusively to a fierce imperial joy in the prospect of immediate wealth. The origin of the wealth scarcely affected him. The associations of the wealth scarcely affected him. He understood in a flash the deep wisdom of that old proverb (whose truth he had often hitherto denied) that money has no smell. Perhaps there might be forty good reasons against his accepting the inheritance, but they were all ridiculous. Was he to abandon his share ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... first whom a somewhat profounder student thereof—would take as a marrying one. He is "a little failed"; he thinks to rest himself while not foregoing his former delights, and he shuts eyes and ears to the proverb, as old as Greek in words and as old as the world in fact, that "the doer shall suffer." That he should consult Pantagruel is in the circumstances almost a necessity, and Pantagruel's conduct is exactly what one would expect from that good-natured, learned, admirable, but rather enigmatic personage. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... a man as well as ruins." And a little later, "I'm afraid he's only a boy, but he looks a nice boy, and there are occasions when the 'half a loaf' proverb ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... said Patsy, with very proper submission, yet with a twinkle in her eye, "we have a Scots proverb, 'He that will to Coupar, maun to Coupar'—which, being interpreted, means that if Louis wants to go to the Arlington, to the Arlington let him go—and for all I care, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... who would most eagerly have sought my life deemed me already dead, drowned in the fosse, and so would make no search for me. Yet, as soon as I went about my master's affairs, as needs I must, I would be known and taken; and, as we say in our country proverb, "my craig would ken the weight of my hurdies." {12} None the less, seeing that the soldiers deemed me dead, I might readily escape at once from Chinon, and take to the roads again, if but I could reach my master's house unseen, and ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... said his companion, "you have fallen on the most dangerous side.—You remember Swift's proverb, 'The more dirt, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides 130 him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me,—I'll ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Bourguignon, and requested a second dinner, but he was of too timid a character for that, and the result was, that he had to search among his stock of proverbs for the most consoling, and having found, between his situation and the proverb, "He who sleeps dines," an analogy which seemed to him most direct, he resolved to make use of it, and, as he could not dine, to endeavor at ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the name of Gostillon was familiar as a daily proverb to the people of Maisons. There were three or four branches of the family living in the neighbourhood, and well known as industrious and respectable members of the peasant class. When the earthquake comes, however, the cottage ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... of taste in snuff is accounted for by the proverb, "So many men to so many noses." Highland gentlemen of every degree are mostly fond of Gillespie; while operatives from the Lowlands generally prefer plain Scotch. When two Highlanders meet, they usually exchange a pinch of snuff, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... season was regularly set in, they meant to return to Bendigo for another spell at work. On representing to them the folly of not making better use of their hard-earned wages, the answer invariably was, "Plenty more to be got where this came from," an apt illustration of the proverb, "light come, light go." Two of these diggers had with them their licences for the current month, which they offered to sell for ten shillings each; two of our company purchased them. This, although a common ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... her into a deep pool, and calls to her to say "shaved." Utterance is impossible to her, but "she lifts one hand above the water and by means of two fingers makes signs to show that it was cut."[48] The story has even settled into a proverb. Of a contradictory woman the Russian peasants affirm that, "If you say 'shaved' she'll ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Perhaps the highest tribute that can be paid to the ability with which Miss Dunlop has discharged the responsible and complicated duties of her double office, lies in the fact that with the General Assembly of the State it has passed into a proverb that "The Woman's Reformatory is the best and most economically managed of the State institutions." The committees appointed to visit the penal institutions always report that "The accounts of the reformatory are kept so accurately that its financial status can always be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... then, to the prophets and proverb-makers of Israel, and then to the New Testament for the true teaching on the eye, I come, in the first place, on that so pungent saying of Solomon that 'the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.' Look at that born fool, says Solomon, who has his eyes ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... might be useful to the world, he determined to investigate thoroughly the contents of the mysterious desk, and make the public acquainted with its profound treasures. He found some documents which did not refer exactly to the subject of 'Polemical Mathematics;' but knowing the truth of the Hindoo proverb, 'The words of the wise are precious, and never to be disregarded,' and feeling sure that this Lady Professor of Girtham College was entitled to that appellation, he ventured to include them in this volume, and felt confident that in so doing he would be carrying out the intention of ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... the water's edge; but one part (as is often the case in life) was more singular than any of the Giaour's adventures. I never have, and never should have, alluded to it on my own authority, from respect to the ancient proverb on Travellers. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... us an opportunity for blessing. Then we must remember that in this world alone can we get the good that can come to us only through pain, for in the life beyond death there is to be no sorrow, no tears. An old Eastern proverb says, "Spread wide thy skirts when heaven is raining gold." Heaven is always raining gold when we are sitting under the shadow of the cross. We should diligently improve the opportunity, and learn the lessons he would teach and ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... bear!' Upon this Magnano faced about with great composure; and raising his staff, knocked down Bruin, then setting his arms a-kimbo, walked off very sedately; only saying, 'Let the bear beware of the tinker,' which is now become a proverb in those parts."—"Confusion Worse ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... long all Rimini will be ablaze. He'll kill me? Yes: what then? That's nothing new, Except to me; I'll bear for custom's sake. More blood will follow; like the royal sun, I shall go down in purple. Fools for luck; The proverb holds like iron. I must run, Ere laughter smother me.—O, ho, ho, ho! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... was the severest of any I had yet experienced. I literally shed a torrent of tears, in all the bitterness of unmixed despair; I could not reconcile myself to the humiliation which would make me a proverb to all my acquaintances, and the disgrace of my family. I passed a week in the most profound dejection, without being capable of gaining any information, or of occupying myself with anything but my own degradation. The remembrance even of Manon added nothing to my grief; it only occurred ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... A Chinese proverb informs us that "there are three hundred and forty-six subjects for elegant conversation," but during the trip down I think that Tommy and I confined ourselves almost exclusively to two. One was Mr. Bruce Latimer, and the other was Joyce's amazing discovery ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... others were brought up, and these, too, were drained; for there were folks present who could stand a good deal. To them might have been applied the old proverb, "The cattle know when to leave the pasture; but an unwise man never knows the depth of ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... better than a dead Lion.—I no not know whether your correspondent (No. 22. p. 352.) ever goes to church; but if he is not prevented by rain next St. Swithin's day, he will learn who was the author of this proverb. It will be a good thing, if your work should sometimes lead your readers to search the Scriptures, and give them credit for wisdom that has flowed from them so long, and far, and wide, that its source is forgotten; but this is not the place for a sermon, and ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... me tell thee, Beausant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens, And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... God and to Declan their own patron who caused the working of this miracle and of many other miracles besides. Next there arose a contention between Ultan and Declan concerning this miracle, for Ultan attributed it to Declan and Declan credited it to Ultan; and it has become a proverb since in Ireland when people hear of danger or jeopardy:—"The left hand of Ultan against you (the danger)." Ultan became, after the death of Declan, a miracle-working abbot of ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... you, monsieur, on the change of weather, for I should have been grieved as much as you would, had the brig been lost," said La Touche, coming up to me. "Still there's many a slip between the cup and the lip,"—he gave an equivalent proverb in French. "If one of our cruisers appears, you'll have to congratulate me, though I hope you'll receive the same courteous treatment that I have enjoyed from you, and for which I have ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... apparent in all men to differ among themselves, even concerning subjects which are simple and easily understood; while, on more difficult and complicated issues, this tendency is, of course, very much more pronounced. Hence, the well-known proverb: "Quot homines, tot sententiae"—there are as many ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... principal town of the Stannaries, wherein the court is held relating to those causes. There is an ancient castle, in which the courts are held; and offenders against the stannary laws were here confined, in a dreary and dismal dungeon, which gave rise to a proverb—"Lydford laws punish a criminal first, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... guessed!" cried every one; and amid the general felicitation that ensued the successful proverb-guessers were made room for in the magic circle, and Horace had a chance of exchanging "How ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... dullest of dramas, it is so brightened by brilliant legs that it dazzles every beholder. Why, then, should the stern advocate of the legitimate drama refuse to acknowledge that the Twelve Temptations has its redeeming legs? How runs the ancient proverb, "Singed milk is better than it looks;" or that equally ancient philosophical maxim, "There is no use in crying over spilt cats"? The stupid story of ULRIC'S folly is made more attractive than one would suppose that it could ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... an English proverb that says, 'He that would thrive must ask his wife.' It was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos'd to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me chearfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... those very interesting novels The Inner Shrine and The Wild Olive has in the new book dealt with a financial man's case of conscience. The story, which is laid for the most part in Boston, illustrates the New England proverb, 'By the street called straight'—should it not be strait?—'we come to ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Wit and Learning he is obliterating, or the worthy Authors, any more than when he shall have their Company: But I may venture to say, That good Things are not always respected as they ought to be: The People of the World will sometimes overlook a Jewel, to avoid a T—d, though the Proverb says, Sh - tt - n Luck is good Luck. Nay, I have even found some of the Spectator's Works in a Bog-house, Companion with Pocky-Bills and Fortune-telling Advertisements; but now, as Dr. R——ff ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... 19: Hesiod used the proverb in the following way: Heracles is represented as having constantly visited the house of Ceyx of Trachis and spoken thus: 'Of their own selves the good make ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... better understanding of his words, let me presume to paraphrase them: 'I know you will apply to me the proverb, Physician, heal thyself, requiring me to prove what is said of me in Capernaum, by doing the same here; but there is another proverb, No prophet is accepted in his own country. Unaccepted I do nothing wonderful. In the great famine, Elijah was sent to no widow of the many in Israel, but ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... the choice that once a simple Mother gave her son: she said: "Egg or rasher, which will I give thee?" And he said: "The rasher, mother, But with the egg upon it, prithee". "Both are best", so says the proverb. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... throughout Italian society. The Englishmen who came to know Italian society could not avoid being contaminated by the contact. The Italians themselves observed the effect and summed it up in their proverb, Inglese italianato e un diabolo incarnato. What struck the Italians must have been still more noticeable to Englishmen. We have a remarkable proof of this in an interpolation made by Roger Ascham at the end of the first part of his Schoolmaster, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... persons company, out of whom you will find advantage, and reserve some hours daily to examine yourself and fortune; for if you embark yourself in perpetual conversation or recreation, you will certainly shipwreck your mind and fortune. Remember the proverb—such as his company is, such is the man, and have glorious actions before your eyes, and think what shall be your portion in Heaven, as well as what you ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... fire of love my wounded bosom burns; Love knows not any ruth, all tender pity spurns; How true the proverb speaks that saith to him that yearns, "Where love is there is pain; thy pleasure love returns ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... "keeping a hotel"—a slang expression which has become a proverb—how well the women in Europe understand their business, and how poorly the women in America understand theirs! In England and all over the Continent the newly arrived stranger is received by a woman neatly dressed, with ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... by any possibility be seen from the deck of a steamer. The elevations in question are simply a low range of hills, called the Zhigulinskiya Gori. In Western Europe they would not attract much attention, but "in the kingdom of the blind," as the French proverb has it, "the one-eyed man is king"; and in a flat region like Eastern Russia these hills form a prominent feature. Though they have nothing of Alpine grandeur, yet their well-wooded slopes, coming down to the water's edge—especially when covered with the delicate tints of early spring, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
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