"Aphorism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... third imperishable Julie of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, Emma, ou la fiance, ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... merchant leaves as little to his clerks' honesty or honour as he can possibly help. In business he holds that 'Every man's hand is against his neighbour, and his neighbour's against him;' and he pushes the aphorism to its fullest logical conclusion, i.e., not merely to 'Believe every man to be a knave until you find he is honest,' but 'Believe that when a man is honest it is merely the more successfully to carry ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... lazy to take the trouble, Bourrienne. Besides, I'm a regular Janissary—what is to be, will be. Why the devil should I bother to form an opinion and battle for it. It's quite wearisome enough to have to live." And the young man enforced his favorite aphorism with a long yawn; then he added: "Do you think there will be ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... hands. The harpies could transform themselves in every other way, but their claws remained unchanged, and they were, consequently, obliged to cover them with gloves. "Beware the gloved hand," was a familiar aphorism among the wise women of the West Inch, and Constans, shaken in spite of himself by the remembrance of these old fables, felt the sweat break out upon his forehead, for all that the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... elected to the French Academy in succession to Languet de Gergy, Archbishop of Sens, and, at his reception on August 25 in the following year, pronounced the oration in which occurred the memorable aphorism, "Le style est l'homme meme" (The style is the very man). Buffon also anticipated Thomas Carlyle's definition of genius ("which means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all") by his famous axiom, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners," he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... occupied, and with such aims, must not attempt to pass his crudities upon the public. If I may parody a celebrated aphorism of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus reverentia(8):" in other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our species. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the most intelligent, a doctrine almost blasphemous. So incorporated with our education has the supposed aphorism become, that its belief is held to be part of our moral being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of religion. Still, seldom does Nature succeed ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... social animal," and the aphorism is especially true of his wife and daughter. As the lives of the wife and daughter are much more confined to the immediate surroundings of the domicile than is that of the man himself, so the question as ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... should be a variant of the stonework." One might take exception to the word "undisciplined"—Puvis was one of the most calculating painters that ever used a brush, and one of the most cerebral. His favourite aphorism was: "Beauty is character." His figures have been called immobile, his palette impoverished; the unfair sex abused his lean, lanky female creatures, and finally he was named a painter for Lent—for fast-days. Even the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that "God made the country, but man ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... sense of responsibility by some didactic remarks on the vicious tendencies of the working-classes, and concluded with the reflection that the more you did for them the less thanks you got. But when Amherst showed an unwillingness to let the matter rest on this time-honoured aphorism, the President retrenched himself behind ambiguities, suggestions that they should await Mrs. Westmore's return, and general considerations of a pessimistic nature, tapering off into a gloomy ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... speaking, Savarin had seated himself by the table, and his eye mechanically resting on the open manuscript lighted by chance upon a sentence—an aphorism—embodying a very delicate sentiment in very felicitous diction,—one of those choice condensations of thought, suggesting so much more than is said, which are never found in mediocre writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "desipere in loco," which he turned by the Scotch phrase "Weel-timed daffin';" a translation, however, which no one but a Scotchman could appreciate. The following humorous Scottish translation of an old Latin aphorism has been assigned to the late Dr. Hill of St. Andrews: "Qui bene cepit dimidium facti fecit" the witty Principal expressed in Scotch, "Weel saipet ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... had never set himself to be better; and the whole mountain-chain, therefore, of his notions sank and sank, until at length their loftiest peak was the maxim, Honesty is the best policy—a maxim which, true enough in fact, will no more make a man honest than the economic aphorism, The supply equals the demand, will teach him the niceties of social duty. Whoever makes policy the ground of his honesty will discover more and more exceptions to the rule. The career, therefore, of Turnbull of the high notions had been a gradual descent to the level of his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... "danced better than became a modest woman." He thought some of their displays were a little operatic, and that he had seen something like them at certain balls in Paris—not the balls of the Faubourg St. Germain. He thought that the historian's aphorism might be extended to the male part of the company,—and that they danced better than became intelligent men. He thought—but as he prudently kept thoughts to himself, and as some of his foreign prejudice ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... simply paying the penalty of a broken law, and it does not help them with a disappointed club committee, or in framing a telegram of regret, accompanied by a physician's certificate, to say that they have erred through ignorance. The aphorism that ignorance of the law is no excuse is just as valid in the court of the hygienic judge as in any common law court ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... aphorism, which says, "that the man who lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil." When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, and he would have been the first to laugh on hearing ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved methods ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed therewith; Bulk Delights Publishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in succession ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heard it stated—'tis an aphorism trite— That people who live neighborly in daily sound and sight Of each other's personality, habitually grow To look alike, and think alike, and act alike, and so Did Mr. Thomas Todgers and Miss Thomasina Tee, In the town ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... altruistic, amalgamate, amatory, ambiguity, ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, asperity, asphyxiate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Mr. Simp, with some dignity, "I have suffered and forgotten much in this establishment; we have an aphorism, relative to the last feather, in the English tongue. But lend me one hundred francs till my instalment arrives from Germany, and I will forgive even ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... and she leaned back in her chair laughing. "Oh, I don't know—perhaps—because one doesn't like to lose an aphorism even if it pops into one's head at ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... totally erroneous conception of what constituted classical culture was thus brought about. Where any distinction was actually made, for example, later Greek thought was enormously over-rated, and early Greek thought equally undervalued. Aphorism 44, together with the first half-dozen or so in the book, may be taken as typical specimens of Nietzsche's protest against ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 'primitive thought', when we come to analyse them, all seem to resolve themselves into one or other of the ordinary sorts of fallacy, as our own logic-books expound them. If the study of them proves anything at all, it is the familiar aphorism that, while there is only one right way of doing and thinking, there are countless ways of going wrong. Among the most reasonable people (at their highest) that the world has yet seen, there were some of the worst miscarriages of reason and of morals; and throughout their ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of Instinct.—The last thing here meant by the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is possible—to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism—to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... of a lying bankrupt's balance-sheet. ["Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success, will know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum."—Macaulay's Review of Basil Montagu's Edition ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... distribution, but also, if he is a really illuminated teacher, by reference, say, to the legend of David and Goliath, the fairy tale of Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eye, Little Three-Eye, and Lincoln's famous aphorism to the effect that the Lord must love the common people because he made so many of them. Sad experience advises that it is unsafe for an instructor any longer to assume that college sophomores are familiar with the Old Testament, classic myths, or Greek and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... taught acuteness, promptness, and discernment—for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and hardy habits—in indomitable patience—in quick sagacity. But there were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and those scarce so praiseworthy—viz., ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Like the aphorism 'Honesty is the best policy,' it reveals the difference between a fact and a truth. Both sayings are correct as facts, but as guides of conduct devilishly false, leading to dishonesty and treachery. To be true to the divine self in us, is indeed to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... those exceptional cases which recur from time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of Sansovino. His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous dread that something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior ...
— The American • Henry James
... there all the time. Mark Twain has not been recognized as a wit; for he was primarily a humorist, and only secondarily a wit. But the passion for brief and pungent formulation of an idea grew upon him; and Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar is a mine of homely and memorable aphorism, epigram, injunction. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... branches of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, i.e., the power which the king has carried over, in the teeth ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... day, to the neglect and impairment of my bodily health. But my opponents need fear nothing from my eloquence. If I have made any real advance therein, it is my aspirations rather than my attainments on which I must base my claim. Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius Caecilius be true, that innocence is eloquence itself, to that extent I may lay claim to eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on that assumption what living man could be more eloquent than myself? I have never even harboured ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... curious to find among the Serious Reflections a passage which may be taken as an apology for the practices into which Defoe, gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of conscience in ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... rebel by an occasional gaol-delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick—and it is the grand secret of political life—it takes all sort of people to make a 'party.' When you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... first promulgated the saying, that no wise traveller ever quits his hostel before the sun gets up, or remains out of it after the sun has gone to bed. "There were no steamers at six A.M. in those times," said I to myself, as I conned over the musty aphorism; "and travelling must have been done by this methodical person at a very slow pace." At this moment I heard the rattle of boards, and became aware that I was on a bridge: I instantly reined up, when, rattle! up tilts some loose plank, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the term as meaning mental or moral philosophy and metaphysics, as opposed to natural philosophy or physics, he takes a very high rank, and it is on this that perhaps his greatest fame rests. (He is the author, you may remember, of the famous aphorism, "Cogito, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... decision. In such a spirit I desire to approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... ballot, or one in the shape of ten or twenty Goulds, Vanderbilts, Huntingtons, Rockefellers, Sages, Dillons, and Brices who never die and whom it will be impossible to dislodge by the use of the ballot?" The particular Gould or Vanderbilt may die, as did that Vanderbilt to whom was ascribed the aphorism "The public be damned," but the spirit and power of the Goulds and Vanderbilts ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... said Gerald, hastily. "Great mistake to think; wastes the tissues awfully. Action first, thought afterward! aphorism! Or if you must indulge in the baneful pursuit, think how much poor Jerry wants you. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... Country Town. But each one, it will be noticed, has chosen for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to it ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... and the dense motherly horrors that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some quaint characters on ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... people then. There is a saying given to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, "Chaque homme qui pense est mechant." Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say that what has been well written has been ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... com: in 6. precepti explicaci: Bucer de regno Christi, 1. 2. c. 17. Theo: Beza, vol: 1. de hereti: puniendis, fol. 154. Zanch: in 3. praecept: Ursin: Pt. 4. explicat. contra John. Piscat: in Aphorismi Loc. de lege dei aphorism. 17. And more might be added. I forbear, for brevities sake, to set downe their very words; this being y^e constante & generall oppinion of y^e best devines, I will rest in this as undoubtedly true, though much more might ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... me, there are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own—or perhaps ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... attenuate and cool it, from time to time, by gentle purges, or by a very low diet, for two or three days together, if you would avoid fevers. Lord Bacon, who was a very great physician in both senses of the word, hath this aphorism in his "Essay upon Health," 'Nihil magis ad Sanitatem tribuit quam crebrae et domesticae purgationes'. By 'domesticae', he means those simple uncompounded purgatives which everybody can administer to themselves; such as senna-tea, stewed prunes and senria, chewing a little rhubarb, or dissolving ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... regime. "If we read the inscriptions, the sentiment which they exhibit is always one of satisfaction and gratitude.... See the collection of Orelli, the most frequent expressions are...." And the enumeration of the titles of respect given to the emperors ends with this strange aphorism: "It would show ignorance of human nature to see nothing but flattery in all this." There is not even flattery here; ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... exemplification of the aphorism that it is the unexpected which always happens. For all at once, after a long period of perfect silence, there was a peculiar grating sound at the back of the hut instead of at the front, and for a few moments both the defenders of the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, with respect ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... people,' but for 'you' and for himself. Had he read Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, he might there have learned that no man is a hero to his valet, not because he is not always great, but because that valet has a poor, flunkey, valet's soul. He who quotes such an aphorism as a truth, calls himself ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has contributed ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... "There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance"?(23) But no single phrase in the writings can compare for directness with the famous aphorism which has gone into the literature of all lands: "Life is short and Art is long; the Occasion fleeting, Experience ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... — N. maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm^; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot [Fr.], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis^. axiom, theorem, scholium^, truism, postulate. first principles, a priori ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Latin, and was acquainted with seven languages, and for whom mathematics held no secrets. She was devoted to algebra and geometry, which, she said, "are the only provinces of thought wherein peace reigns." Madame de Charriere expressed herself in an aphorism of the same order: "An hour or two of mathematics sets my mind at liberty, and puts me in good spirits; I feel that I can eat and sleep better when I have seen obvious and indisputable truths. This consoles me for the obscurities of religion and metaphysics, or rather makes me forget ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... gentleman and had not yet received his title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... smile on his lips as he broke into Marthasa's conversation. "One of the things that made me very curious today," he said, "was the general reaction of your people to the Idealist illusion that they have tamed you—as expressed in their aphorism about how was the ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Force," or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the "eternally existing essence," of Kapila—we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves "six rays" (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer of "seven things, which produced by it, become also producers," has a ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... into an alliance between the crown and church against the parliament, because parliament was beginning to give expression to democratic ideas of government in state and church which threatened the principle of personal rule common to monarchy and to episcopacy. "No Bishop, no King," was a shrewd aphorism of James I, which was in the making before he reached the throne. In other respects—such as monopolies, the power of the crown to levy indirect taxation without consent of parliament, to imprison subjects without cause shown, and to tamper with the privileges of the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... the piano, or in the solution of mathematical problems, a decided gain in skill and speed comes after what seems to be not only lack of progress but decided backsliding.[1] It is this which led William James to quote with approval the aphorism that one learns to skate in summer and swim ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... way, and he bellowed his merriment at its shape and colour. To her surprise Lady Tamworth found herself defending the style, and inveighing against the monotony of the fashions of the West End. Nor was this the only occasion on which she disagreed with her husband that evening. He launched an aphorism across the dinner-table which he had cogitated from the report of a divorce-suit in the evening papers. "It is a strange thing," he said, "that the woman who knows her influence over a man usually employs it to hurt him; ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... giving expression to this excellent aphorism, Madame Plumet, unable to contain herself ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... aphorism the brave man took a spoon to help the smoking fish and potatoes, when a knock at the door ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into 'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... has been found that a classification founded on any single character, however important that may be, has always failed; for no part of the organisation is invariably constant. The importance of an aggregate of characters, even when none are important, alone explains the aphorism enunciated by Linnaeus, namely, that the characters do not give the genus, but the genus gives the character; for this seems founded on the appreciation of many trifling points of resemblance, too slight to be defined. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, drames de recette. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients—description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... for victory, our real faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we act on the aphorism "Laborare est orare"; we admit that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship; and that, whether there be a Supernature or not, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... abolished by the extended education of the people. Brutal sports among boys are much less indulged than formerly, and the worrying of domestic animals almost invariably denotes a bad boy, in the worst sense of the phrase, likely to make a bad man; "so true to nature is the admirable aphorism of Wordsworth:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... This aphorism is placed by Sir John Herschel[119] at the head of his Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy: a book containing notions of discovery far beyond any of which Bacon ever dreamed; and this because it was written {81} after discovery, instead of before. Sir John ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... responses after our fashion instead of after people's own fashion, we ought to be disappointed. Any recognition of truth, whatever form it may take, whether that of poetic delight, intellectual corroboration, practical commonplace; or even vulgar aphorism, must be welcomed by the husbandmen of the God of growth. A response which jars against the peculiar pitch of our mental instrument, must not therefore be turned away from with dislike. Our mood of the moment is ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish Rabbins, "We are born that we may die, and die that we ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... man should be a good animal." I used to think that Herbert Spencer in voicing this aphorism struck twelve. But I am no longer enthusiastic about the remark. The senses of most dumb animals are far better developed than those of man. Hounds can trace footsteps over flat rocks, even though a shower has fallen in the interval; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... unnatural dormition—will blast and wear out of memory the most endearing obligations; and hence it was that some politicians in love have looked upon the former of these two as a main remedy against the fondness of that passion. But for my own part, my Lord, I shall deny this aphorism of the people, and beg leave to assure your Lordship, that, though these reputed obstacles have lain long in my way, yet neither of them could work upon me: for I am now—without adulation—as warm and sensible of those numerous favours and kind influences received ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... merit in living rich, so there is no virtue in dying poor. That a millionaire should desert his money-bags at his death is not a reproach to him if they be honestly filled. He has small chance of emptying them while he is on the earth. But Mr Carnegie has a reason for his aphorism. He aspires to be a philosopher as well as a millionaire, and he has decided that a posthumous bequest is of no value, moral or material. "Men who leave vast sums," says he, "may fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... within fifty miles of him, and commenced his arduous undertaking by cutting out roads, amidst much head-shaking from the sage, and sneering from the ignorant. He however never was a man who held as a part of his creed the wise aphorism, so often quoted in the present day, 'Vox populi vox Dei;' but held steadily on in the teeth of opposition, vexation, and disappointment, until after about fifteen years of unremitting labour and privation, it became so notorious in the province, that even the executive government at York ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... them in sight of the beautiful capital of the south of Italy. The modern aphorism, "See Naples and then die," was said in other words in old times, when the Caesars and Senators of the empire enriched its beautiful shores with superb villas. There is not in Europe a bluer sky and, true ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet is distinct from his poem—a truth which he has condensed into an aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the Deity such "separation" implies of necessity the self-limitation just spoken of. Just as a billion, minus the billionth fraction of a unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited though it be but by a hair's-breadth, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... greater general interest is the Sutta Pitaka, in which the sermons and discourses of the Buddha are collected. Sutta is equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sutra, literally a thread, which signifies among the Brahmans a brief rule or aphorism but in Pali a relatively short poem or narrative dealing with a single object. This Sutta Pitaka is divided into five collections called Nikayas. The first four are mainly in prose and contain discourses attributed to Gotama ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... XXXI. XXXII. From the same.— Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe. Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so; and why. Women like not novices; and why. Their vulgar aphorism animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them. Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's, No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach the women ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... appreciate the force of this analogy, and all the arguments against the origin of species by selection, based on the absence of transitional forms, fall to the ground. And Mr. Darwin's position might, we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism, "Natura non facit saltum," which turns up so often in his pages. We believe, as we have said above, that Nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor objections ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... now published is the name of the Duke of Bedford, who has sent 20l. His cause has been warmly espoused by the provincial journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his appeal gratuitously, with offers to receive and remit subscriptions. The aphorism, "he gives twice who gives quickly," could not receive a more cogent application than in the present instance, for the funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to commence business in his new undertaking, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Rex Iudæorum. The sages of Antiquity connected it with one of the greatest secrets of Nature, that of universal regeneration. They interpreted it thus, Igne Natura renovatur Integra; [entire nature is renovated by fire]: The Alchemical or Hermetic Masons framed for it this aphorism, Igne nitrum roris invenitur. And the Jesuits are charged with having applied to it this odious axiom, Justum necare reges impios. The four letters are the initials of the Hebrew words that represent the four elements—Iammim, the seas or water; Hour, fire; Rouach, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... I recommend the painter's aphorism to those who might like to discover man's origin in the Hog when the Ape has gone out of fashion. According to David, descent is proved ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... had redder blood and larger veins than others,—which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury and idleness. But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the bottom of society, and loses itself in measure as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons-table boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry—Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the cavity ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... students now, it is not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous burnous upon an ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... spectacle of material splendor—the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob—wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste and worshiper of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... their oars, their crews apparently holding a consultation. The fire-light which revealed their approach revealed to them also the fact that the occupants of the shipyard were fully prepared to emphatically dispute any attempt on their part to land; and the sight brought vividly to their minds the aphorism that "discretion is the better ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... would be necessarily imperfect, and even unintelligible in certain important respects, were I to ignore the deeply interesting history of the sixteen hundred thousand French Canadians, about thirty per cent of the total population of the Dominion. To apply to Canada an aphorism of Carlyle, "The present is the living sum-total of the whole past"; the sum-total not simply of the hundred and thirty years that have elapsed since the commencement of British dominion, but primarily of the century and a half that began with the coming ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... gleam of interest now in Brodrick's face. He was evidently, Jane thought, applying Tanqueray's aphorism ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... England because, however plague and pestilence and famine and the cruelties of man to man might darken life, still it loved these things. But there were no two views possible about what the Church thought of dancing; it was accurately summed up by one moralist in the aphorism, 'The Devil is the inventor and governor and disposer of dances and dancing.' Yet when we look into those accounts which Madame Eglentyne rendered (or did not render) to her nuns at the end of every year, we shall find payments for wassail at New Year and Twelfth Night, for May games, for bread ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... sat among them; sat doggedly in defeat. Gallantry is a noble quality when joined to wisdom and foresight; alone, it leads into pits and blind alleys. And these four men recognized with no small bitterness the truth of this aphorism. They had been ambushed scarce four hours from Quebec by a baud of marauding Oneidas. Only Jean Pauquet had escaped. They had been captives now for several weeks. Rage had begun to die out, fury to subside; apathy seized ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... good and evil. This indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... damned!' quoth the Manager, drily; 'we reproduce it, Sir—we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came on the stage, how timidly she advanced, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... foot God sends a little shoe," I told him, remembering the aphorism of my old Irish nurse. "And the sooner you get me home, Dinky-Dunk, the happier I'll be. For I'm tired of this place and the smell of the formalin and ether and I'm nearly worried to death about Dinkie. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Speaker's office attained its climax. The Republicans had a large majority in the House and the old war-horses felt like colts. They assumed their leadership, however, with that obliviousness to youth which usually characterizes old age. The gifted and attractive Reed had ruled often by aphorism and wit, but the unimaginative Cannon ruled by the gavel alone; and in the course of time he and his clique of veterans forgot entirely the difference between ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... celui qui sait attendre." So wrote the great Napoleon. The virtue of the aphorism consists in the little words 'qui sait'. All the world comes to him who KNOWS HOW to wait, I knew this, and I had waited, and my world—a world of vengeance—came to me ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the secret of his lucidity. In no one could Buffon's aphorism on style find a better illustration, Le style c'est l'homme meme. In him science and literature, too often divorced, were closely united; and literature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in motor habits, and makes a well-knit soul texture that admits concentration series in many directions and that can bring all its resources to bear at any point. The brain unorganized by training has, to recur to Richter's well-worn aphorism, saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, or all the ingredients of gunpowder, but never makes a grain of it because they never get together. Thus willed action is the language of complete men and the goal of education. When things are mechanized by right habituation, there is still further ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... better than truth. He gives as the primeval rule, to say what is true and what is pleasant, but not what is true and unpleasant, or what is pleasant and not true. The Vishnu-purana gives like counsel, adding the following aphorism: "A considerate man will always cultivate, in act, thought, and speech, that which is good for living beings, both in this world and in the next." About the same license appears to be used in this country and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... glaringly obvious in the Vicar of Wakefield, because this is a novel, and a very delightful one. The only point of direct contact with Rasselas is the knowledge of human nature, though in the one book this takes the form of melancholy aphorism and apophthegm, in the other that of felicitous trait and dialogue-utterance. There is plenty of story, though this has not been arranged so as to hit the taste of the martinet in "fable;" the book has endless character; the descriptions are Hogarth with less of peuple ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... dispute your aphorism," observed Koshchei, "inasmuch as matrimony was certainly not included in my doom. None the less, to a by-stander, the conduct of you both appears remarkable. I could not understand, for example, just how your wife proposed to have you keep out of her sight forever and still have supper ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... who wishes to find in the modern literature some aphorism to classify the characteristics of the people, in order to be able afterward to apply them to their fellow-men, must read "Children of ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... not long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston: "You may remember that Smith, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at me with his ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moment Linkheimer regarded Abe sorrowfully. There were few occasions to which Linkheimer could not do justice with a cut-and-dried sentiment or a well-worn aphorism, and he was about to expatiate on ingratitude in business ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... saying that it is possible for us to remember our previous existences. Those who have read "Raja Yoga" will recall that in the 18th aphorism of the third chapter it is said: "By perceiving the Samskaras one acquires the knowledge of past lives." Here the Samskaras mean the impressions of the past experience which lie dormant in our subliminal self, and are never lost. Memory is nothing but the awakening and rising ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she says, "His look frightens me ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... wide." And again: "When the ears of the student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to fill them with wisdom." But their customary attitude has always been strictly in accordance with the other Hermetic aphorism, also in The Kybalion: "The lips of Wisdom are closed, except to ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... back and hidden towards the centre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface, and buds out like the trees. This is as plain as a nose in a man's face; you know it by experience; you see it. And it was formerly found out by that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c. This world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe, bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... his preface with the aphorism: "Il est dangereux dans les sciences de conclure trop vite." I fear he must have forgotten this sound maxim by the time he had reached the discussion of the differences between men and apes, in the body of his work. No doubt, the excellent author of one ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to see differences," said Gregory, and he summed up the Lavingtons in the aphorism to himself as well as to Karen; "only to accept samenesses." He hoped indeed, by sacrificing the aesthetic quality of the Lavingtons, to win some approbation of their virtues; but Karen, though not inclined to proffer unasked ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... against instructing youth in moral philosophy was popularly accepted as an Aristotelian injunction. Sceptics about the obvious Shakespearean tradition have made much of the circumstance that Bacon, who cited the aphorism from Aristotle in his Advancement of Learning, substituted, like Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida, the epithet "moral" for "political." The proverbial currency of the emendation deprives the coincidence ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Upper Canada. Francis Gore and Sir Peregrine Maitland might successively posture as figure-heads under the title of Lieutenant-Governors, but the real depositaries of power were the Rector and the Chief Justice. Ominous combination! which falsified the aphorism of a great writer—now, unhappily, lost to us—about the inevitable incompatibility of law and gospel. Both of them had seats in the Executive Council, and, under the then-existing state of things, were official but irresponsible ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... ironstone "blow" without examination. Remember the pregnant Cornish saying with regard to mining and the current aphorism, "The iron hat covers the golden head." "Cousin Jack," put it "Iron rides a good horse." The ironstone outcrop may cover a gold, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... base reservation that he kept up a desultory conversation, in the course of which Signor Giardini's nose not infrequently interposed between two remarks. Whenever Gambara uttered some elegant repartee or some paradoxical aphorism, the cook put his head forward, to glance with pity at the musician and with meaning at the Count, muttering in his ear, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... This astonishing aphorism was almost too much for Nora's composure. She gave Mrs. Wickham an amused glance, to which that lady responded by beaming upon her in her ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all simplicity." Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very material to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at present was to construct a roundelay of which this should be the prevailing sentiment. He indulged the fancy that he might succeed in producing ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to exercise a meticulous care: "Brer Rabbit ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his, but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to evade it by an attempt at banter. "You can't make a tragedy, my dear girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few things bought for one's personal use, and not for sale. Why, nearly ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... own dull thoughts, he continued his copious monologue. In the smoking-room or at the supper-table he crushed conversation flat as a steam-roller crushes a road. He was quite irresistible. Trite anecdotes were sandwiched between aphorisms of the copybook; and whether anecdote or aphorism, all was delivered with the air of a man surprised by his own profundity. If you waited long enough, you had no longer the will power to run away, you sat caught in a web of sheer dulness. Only those, however, who did not know him waited long enough; the rest of his fellow-members ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... practical, sensible, reasonable. And that is why—as it would seem—they have more sympathy with Englishmen, if not with the English Government, than with any other Westerners. East may be East and West West, though I very much doubt it. But if there be any truth in the aphorism, we must define our terms. The East must be confined to India, and China included in the West. That as a preliminary correction. I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall have more to say, I hope, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... which to go. It can only be conjectured that Soliman, having discovered how unpopular that appointment had been amongst his high officers, did not care to risk the experiment the second time; and in consequence employed Sinan. To this officer the aphorism of Seignelay applies in its fullest force. He was as brave a man as ever drew a sword in the service of his master; he was, however, a hesitating and incompetent leader, with one eye ever fixed on that distant palace on the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... increased by the feelings of benevolence, than it could be by the gratification of avarice; but, though his understanding may perceive the demonstration of this moral theorem, though it is the remote principle of his whole conduct, it does not occur to his memory in the form of a prudential aphorism, whenever he is going to do a generous action. It is essential to our ideas of generosity, that no such reasoning should, at that moment, pass in his mind; we know that the feelings of generosity are associated with a number of enthusiastic ideas; we can sympathize with the virtuous insanity of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of St. Simon and Fourier, not one among their numerous disciples has attempted to give to the public a scientific demonstration of this grand maxim; and I would wager a hundred to one that no Fourierist even suspects that this biform aphorism is susceptible of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... not the boy saw the reasonableness of this paternal injunction is lost in the dust of the years. But the aphorism that the good die young has no significance so far ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Mercy had the gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with justice and rectitude. Masamune expressed it well in his oft-quoted aphorism—"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; Benevolence indulged ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... who knows his master would be saved, without the will being supreme in the matter, without the choosing to fulfill all righteousness, to resist the wrong, to do the right. Wingfold never built much on bed-repentance. The aphorism of the devil sick and the devil well, is only too true. But he welcomed the fresh opportunity for a beginning. He knew that pain and sickness do rub some dirt from the windows toward the infinite, and that things of the old unknown world whence we came, do sometimes look in at them, a moment now, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... thrifty themselves, are married to men who are nothing but an incubus to their wives and to their families. Small wonder, then, that Mrs. Hableton should condense all her knowledge of the male sex into the one bitter aphorism, "Men is brutes." ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... of Martyrs" and finished it to-day, and the sum of my opinion is, that tyranny and cruelty appear to be the inseparable companions of religious power, and the aphorism is not far from truth that says ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... humorous school who took for their motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in 1653,—"To despise flowers is to ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... p. 6. He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "God hath set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... this way, unperceived by others, have gone most deeply into my mind; and have most raised my opinion of his character. The sense that I was over rather than under valued, made me the more ready to acknowledge and feel my own deficiencies. I felt the truth of an aphorism of Lord Verulam's, which is now come down to the copy-books; that 'knowledge is power.' Having made this notable discovery, I set about with all my might to acquire knowledge. You may smile, and think that this was only in a new form the passion for power; no, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... aphorism which runs about this way, "Knock and the world knocks with you; boost and you boost alone." Like most popular sayings this is truth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... division on which was unfavourable to him, he, with a number of friends and sympathisers withdraw from the Confederation. Seven days afterwards, he issued the first number of a newspaper, bearing the significant title of The United Irishman, and having for its motto the following aphorism, quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... come a word of explanation. I have been asked why I use the word Sutras, for these rules of Patanjali's system, when the word Aphorism has been connected with them in our minds fora generation. The reason is this: the name Aphorism suggests, to me at least, a pithy sentence of very general application; a piece of proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of circumstance, and ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Republic." That is obviously true, though I admit that the drafters of the American Constitution made an attempt—in some ways very successful—to implant some of the advantages of a Monarchy upon their Republic. The reason behind the aphorism of "Burke out of Bolingbroke" is obvious. The stock on which the graft is made is not the thing which you wish to fructify. It is the inactive base. Constitutional Monarchy is just the stock you want. In the first place, it is permanent—that is, its roots are ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... development of the idea of contract, i.e. of the capacity of the individual to enter into independent agreements with strangers to his family-group by which he was legally bound—an historical process which Maine sums up in his famous aphorism that the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... SO PASSIONATELY (si declamatoirement)?" The italics in the text, not those in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Lord Blandamer said. "Architecture is poetry turned into stone, according to the old aphorism, and you, no doubt, have something ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... be allowed a very extraordinary Aphorism from a Country Shepherd, but at the same Time it is very agreeable to the Observations of Dr. Hooke, Dr. Derham, Dr. Grew, and other able Naturalists, who with unwearied Pains and Diligence have calculated ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the mercy of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is the number of these particles and the rate of their motion that determines the nature of the atom, whether, for instance, it will be an atom of iron or an atom of hydrogen, and thus we are brought back to Plato's old aphorism that the Universe consists ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... also, that the constant appearance of money in every exchange has overturned and misled all our ideas: men have ended in thinking that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. Hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorism, "What one gains the other loses;" and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and embrued it with blood.[2] After much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in order ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... up my observations on Orchids by saying that nature "abhors perpetual self-fertilisation." If the word perpetual had been omitted, the aphorism would have been false. As it stands, I believe that it is true, though perhaps rather too strongly expressed; and I should have added the self-evident proposition that the propagation of the species, whether by self-fertilisation or by cross-fertilisation, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... of Justice again. He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism: "It's only in the Government service you learn the truth." He had a little wife with a wrinkled face, who was very jealous of him, and five weedy-looking children. He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his children when he ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... would be Thursday, and he could go away, his business done. The prospect was rich recompense for everything. It came to him, suddenly and for the first time, that he hated his mission in Hunston with a disheartening and sickening hatred. And formulating this thought, polishing it to aphorism and sharpening it to epigram, he slumbered and slept for the last time ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... also incidentally shown that they did not profess to be miracles in the proper meaning of the word, that is, evident innovations on the laws of nature. At the utmost they do but exemplify the aphorism, "Knowledge is power."[343] Such as are within the range of human knowledge are no miracles. Those of them, on the contrary, which are beyond it, will be found on inspection to be unintelligible, and to convey no ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... carrying to the uttermost length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,' has said, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying, mad as it looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason? For ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... environment be favourable. But, even after the spring-time of youth is past, there are occasions when the mind is peculiarly susceptible to the force of a pithy maxim, which may tend to the reforming of one's way of life. There is commonly more practical wisdom in a striking aphorism than in a round dozen of "goody" books—that is to say, books which are not good in the highest sense, because their themes are overlaid ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... but here the aphorism is falsified. In this brief hour, the lover is so thoroughly "blest" as to have but one desire left—that it should last forever! Clouds, surcharged with tears that will not flow, gather into our eyes as we look back ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... for one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... understand (what I really mean) that, in all my remarks, I do not pretend to the level of an original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, 'Taste is the Feminine of Genius.' However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not as Literary Essays only, but comprehending ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... continually in my profession," Dr. Galbraith rejoined. "It depends entirely as a rule upon how the thing is said, and why. If it be a matter of inclination only, controlled by fear of the law or public opinion which is expressed, the aphorism would hold, probably; but language which is the outcome of moods or phases that are transient makes no permanent mark upon ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... worst book on Greek history and philology that ever was printed; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism with an apothegm, and that when, in his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers with four ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance, the following quotation, from his preface to the treatise on the smallpox, will afford a specimen; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... modifications. Henry George, however, although he outdid most socialists in his attack on private wealth of one particular kind—that is to say, the rent of land—was equally vehement in his defence of the interest of industrial capital. Socialists say—and the aphorism is constantly repeated—"A man can get an income only by working or stealing; there is no third way." In answer to this, it was pointed out by George that one kind of wealth, at all events—and we ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... opened the door for Meredith, but he did not score a success until he wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, two years later. Despite its faults, this is his greatest book, and it is the one which readers should begin with. It is overloaded with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's Scrip," which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, the father of Richard. The boy is trained to cut women out of his life, and just when the father's theory seems to have succeeded Richard meets ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch |
