"Proverbs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself. (18) His wisdom, the Scriptures testify, was greater than the wisdom of Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the three sons of Mahol. This means that he was wiser than Abraham, (19) Moses, (20) Joseph, (21) and the generation of the desert. (22) He excelled even Adam. (23) His proverbs which have come down to us are barely eight hundred in number. Nevertheless the Scripture counts them equal to three thousand, for the reason that each verse in his book admits of a double and a triple interpretation. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... you mustn't confound French proverbs with quotations from the Scriptures. They're not at ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... seasons, its migrants and residents, of whom a housetop calendar might be made. The fine old roofs which have just been mentioned are often associated with historic events and the rise of families; and the roof-tree, like the hearth, has a range of proverbs or sayings and ancient lore to itself. More than one great monarch has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother who, with her ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... the fables and the sayings of the sea,—the proverbs about its deafness, its avarice, its treachery, its terrific power,—especially one that haunted her for all time thereafter: Si quieres aprender a orar, entra en el mar (If thou wouldst learn to pray, go to the sea). She learned why the sea is salt,—how "the tears of women made the ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are traced to a common fountain,—Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in those venerable classics I could have ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... furtherance of the cause. To do this, while it was yet time, he solemnly warned them "before God, the fatherland, and the world." After the title of this paper were cited the 28th, 29th, and 30th verses of the tenth chapter of Proverbs. The favorite motto of the Prince, "pro lege, rege, grege," was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Inquisition in Spain at one stroke annihilated all the genius of the country. Cervantes said that the Inquisition had spoilt many of his most delightful inventions; and unquestionably it silenced the wit and invention of a nation whose proverbs attest they possessed them even to luxuriance. All the continental nations have boasted great native painters and architects, while these arts were long truly foreign to us. Theoretical critics, at a loss ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Gray preached at the church, from Proverbs 6 c., 3v., 'Humble thyself and make sure thy friend.'" Mr. Gray was probably ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... three general kinds: the CHIEF, both in antiquity and excellency, which they that did imitate the inconceivable excellencies of God; such were David in the Psalms; Solomon in the Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs; Moses and Deborah in their hymns; and the writer of Job; which, beside others, the learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. Junius do entitle the poetical part of the scripture; against these none will speak that hath ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... crowned with success,—that true love rarely was crowned with success except by perseverance. Such a simple little tale of boy's passion as that told him by his cousin had no attraction for him. A wife would hardly be worth having, and worth keeping, so won. And all proverbs were on his side. "None but the brave deserve the fair," said his cousin. "I shall stick to it," said Tom Spooner. "Labor omnia vincit," said his cousin. But what should be his next step? Gerard Maule had been ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... this little book will be apt to notice very soon that though its title is Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading, the verse occupies nine tenths, the prose being confined to about two hundred proverbs and familiar sayings—some of them, indeed, in rhyme—scattered in groups throughout the book. The reason for this will be apparent as soon as one considers the end in view in the preparation of ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... soon became manifest that the boy was not less wonderful than his wonderful mother. In the third month of his age he could speak; in the seventh month he could repeat by heart the proverbs of the sages, and recite the holy prayers; before the eleventh month he could use the writing-brush with skill, and copy in shapely characters the precepts of Lao-tseu. And the priests of the temples came to behold ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... Solomon that he spoke most, and he seemed to have the sayings of the wise king all by heart. A Hebrew physician whom he had once known used, he said, to write one of Solomon's proverbs on the lid of every box of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... stoop to bandying proverbs," retaliated Adrian, "there's a proverb about a penny." He raised his bunch of poppies, and posed it aloft before him, eyeing it, his head cocked a little to one side, in critical enjoyment. "Shall we set out for the house?" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... inherent or inculcated; all knowledge spiritual and intellectual, acquired; all precepts, maxims, proverbs, axioms incorporated and lately a part of me, seem trivial, empty, meaningless in sound and in form compared to the plain truths of Death. For never until now did I understand that we walk always arm in arm with Death, that he squires us at ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... is not very clear—but obscurity is a common complaint of rhymed proverbs. Another rhyme, however, in which rue appears, has a more ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the speech of the genuine Florentine. Quaint proverbs, not always of scrupulous refinement, old-world phrases, local allusions, are stuffed into the conversation of your real citizen or citizeness of Firenze la Gentile as thickly as the beads in the vezzo di corallo on the neck of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... inexhaustible subject of the truth of proverbs," answered Balsamides. "I only doubt whether Madame Patoff will be happy now that she is sane, and whether the uncertainty of the issue of our search may not drive her mad again. She will probably spoil everything by chattering at all the embassies. By the by, since we are on the subject ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... medicine books, riddle books, almanacs, craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, romances and the like, hawked ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... professor, the man who has been behind the scenes at Creation, and knows to a T how the world was made, and how long it took to make it. There's the other fellow, too: mind we don't forget the modern Solomon, who has left his proverbs behind him—the brand-new philosopher who considers the consolations of religion in the light of harmless playthings, and who is kind enough to say that he might have been all the happier if he could only have ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... slaves, a dependent of the abjectly poor. When men passed through the stage where woman's life might be taken at a whim, she remained a creature without rights of the wider kind. Men debated whether she had a soul, made cynical proverbs about her, called her the "weaker vessel," and debarred her from political and economic equality, classing her up to this very moment in rights with the idiot, the imbecile, and the criminal. Worse ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... to the hidden mysteries of fluxions! May one feeble ray of that light of wisdom which darts from thy sensorium, straight as the arrow of heaven, and bright as the meteor of inspiration, may it be my portion, so that I may be less unworthy of the face and favour of that father of proverbs and master of maxims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among the sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicol! Amen! ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... among other things, he composes comments on between thirty and forty of what he calls the Aphorisms or Proverbs of Solomon, which he truly describes as containing, besides those of a theological character, "not a few excellent civil precepts and cautions, springing from the inmost recesses of wisdom, and extending to much variety of occasions." I know not where else to find ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... a splendid time! Modern young people would have been bored, and voted it "no spread at all." They played Proverbs, and What is my thought like? and everybody tried to bring out their very best, and be as bright and witty and joyous as possible. They had plain cake and fancy cake, and a new kind of dainty crisp crackers; candies, nuts, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... blind" and "Marriage is a lottery," in the opinion of proverbial lore. But as usual the proverbs do not tell the whole truth. Mating is not wholly a matter of chance; there is and always has been a considerable amount of selection involved. This selection must of course be with respect to individual traits, a man or woman being ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... are not allowed to ply their trade on the traghetto, except by stipulation with their masters. Then they may take their place one night out of every six in the rank and file. The gondoliers have two proverbs, which show how desirable it is, while taking a fixed engagement, to keep their hold on the traghetto. One is to this effect: il traghetto e un buon padrone. The other satirises the meanness of the poverty-stricken ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... there's no delay. But, the sword drawn, to fling the sheath away; Let not the fear of hell his spirit grieve, The tomb is still, whatever fools believe: Laugh at the tales which withered sages bring, Proverbs and morals; let the waxen king, That rules the hive, be born without a sting; Let Guise by blood resolve to mount to power. And he is great as Mecca's emperor. He comes; bid him not stand on altar-vows, But ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... For, He has said, "Yet if thou wilt arise early to God and wilt beseech the Almighty... He will presently awake unto thee and make the dwelling of thy justice peaceable" (Job, viii. 5-6). "I love them that love me; and they that in the morning early watch for me shall find me" (Proverbs viii. 17). ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Proverbs are found among the Babylonians, as among all peoples. Comparatively few have been discovered, and these present nothing of peculiar interest. The following may serve as specimens:—"What is that which becomes pregnant without conceiving, fat without eating?" The answer seems to be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Carron-shore. Well received everywhere. Truly a pleasant labor. Cheered me much. Preached to them afterwards from Proverbs 1." ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... 'l Abbas al-Rakshi, a poet of the time. The saying became proverbial (Burckhardt's A. Proverbs No. 561) and there are variants, e.g. The night's promise is spread with butter that melteth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... who profess to give instructions in the wisdom of life are specially urgent in commending the practice of silence, and assign manifold reasons why it should be observed; so it is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the subject any further. However, I may just add one or two little known Arabian proverbs, which occur ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... "Where shall I find her'?" "You will find a description of her," replied Charity, "in Proverbs, sixth chapter, sixth, seventh, and eighth verses, which read as follows: 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provided her meat in summer, and gathereth her ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Every one knoweth that great wealth is not to be drawn from literature, and that those who are best posted in good books do not always have a great fire in winter. The advocate's trade taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire! clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of so great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after God in the dark. Compassion, which is the same ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... written for the purpose of communicating to the public the grand secret of making money. But there is no secret whatever about it, as the proverbs of every nation abundantly testify. "Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves." "Diligence is the mother of good luck." "No pains, no gains." "No sweat, no sweet." "Work and thou shalt have." "The world is his who has ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... "The owl flies;" whereas these others hit properly, wise men "born in the fourth month;" and again, "He rides Sejanus's his horse;" and "gold of Toulouse," signifying thereby the extremity of ill fortune. But I forbear the further threading of proverbs, lest I seem to have pilfered my friend Erasmus' adages. Fortune loves those that have least wit and most confidence and such as like that saying of Caesar, "The die is thrown." But wisdom makes men bashful, which is the reason that those wise ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... place, or persons, or occasions. He commonly loseth himself in his tale, and flutters up and down windless without recovery, and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon, and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... has gone a long way from his text for his material tonight," said Robert Davis. "He took what we boys used to call a 'running jump.' The text he quoted from Proverbs proves nothing whatever against a holy life. No man can save himself, for salvation is by faith, not by works. But, again, let me remind Mr. Newby that Christ has come since Solomon spoke, and surely Christ has done something for us. The other texts he quoted are ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... he had supped, and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the apartment. All this may be told without shame to any one. But what follows I could hardly tell you if I were sober. Yet as the proverb says, 'In vino veritas,' whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two proverbs.); and therefore I must speak. Nor, again, should I be justified in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him. Moreover I have felt the serpent's sting; and he who has suffered, as they say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, ...
— Symposium • Plato
... the poets in England, and still less for their wives. But the Sieur Grimod is made of different metal. Less lead, but a great deal more brass—more polished, but less useful—a pinchbeck imitation of the lords and ladies who were waltzing, flirting, acting proverbs, and writing pasquinades, at the very moment when the first great throes of the "portentous doom" were beginning to shake France to her foundations, and the cloud was gathering that was to fall down in the blood and horror of the Revolution. A sub-collector ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... I, one day, 'what under the sun is the use of them old, musty, fusty proverbs. A boy might as well wear his father's boots, and ride in his long stirrups, as talk in maxims, it would only set other boys ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... ii: "My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with God the Father, Jesus Christ, Who is the propitiation of all our sins." And Wisdom xv: "For if we sin, we are Thine, knowing Thy power." And Proverbs xxiv: "For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again." Yes, this confidence and faith must be so high and strong that the man knows that all his life and works are nothing but damnable sins before God's judgment, as it is written, Psalm cxliii: "In thy sight shall no ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... Proverbs ought to be respected; 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... power of attention, far surpassing ordinary observation, which we may, if we will, summon up and force on ourselves, just as we can by special effort see or hear far better at times than usually. The Romans show by such a phrase as animum adjicere, and numerous proverbs and synonyms, that they had learned to bend their attention energetically. They were good listeners, therefore ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, [the Hebrew word translated servant means slave] though he be lord of all." Gal. iv. 1. Again; "A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren." Proverbs, xvii. 2. The wealthy patriarch Abraham, before the birth of Isaac, designed to make his head servant, Eleazer of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... before you the whole vanity of your past lives, and when you have felt 'I have played the fool, and erred exceedingly'? And yet, what has come of it all with some of you? Why, what comes of it with the drunkard in the Book of Proverbs, who, as soon as he has got over the bruises and the sickness of his last debauch, says, 'I will seek it yet again.' 'A deceived heart hath turned ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... even hit the side of a barn, so they say. But I expect you girls that grow up with athletics and basket ball, and such things, put the old proverbs to rout." ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... the medieval crafts and mysteries undoubtedly had embodied in their maxims, proverbs, traditional methods, and teachings, many economic principles suitable to their comparatively simple and unchanging conditions. The rapid changes that have occurred, especially in the last half century, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... together more easily than one by itself, as a housemaid can carry two pails of water with a hoop more easily than one without it. You can remember a man's face, made up of many features, better than you can his nose or his mouth or his eye-brow. Scores of proverbs show you that you can remember two lines that rhyme better than one without the jingle. The ancients, who knew the laws of memory, grouped the seven cities that contended for the honor of being Homer's birthplace in a line ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are made to flax in the Bible, notably in the Book of Proverbs; and the methods of growing and preparing flax by the ancient Egyptians were precisely the same as those of the American colonist a hundred years ago, of the Finn, Lapp, Norwegian, and Belgian flax-growers to-day. This ancient skill was not confined to flax-working. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... of the Proverbs of Scotland has occupied the attention of several collectors. The earliest work on the subject which has been traced is that of Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, who, about the time of the Reformation, made a small collection. The definite information which we have of this work is so very slight, ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... to adorn. Hence both the French and English forms have an unexplained h-, the earlier achement being nearer the original. French omelette has a bewildering history, but we can trace it almost to its present form. To begin with, an omelet, in spite of proverbs, is not necessarily associated with eggs. The origin is to be found in Lat. lamella, a thin plate,[101] which gave Old Fr. lamelle. Then la lamelle was taken as l'alamelle, and the new alamelle ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... interesting Buschgroszmutter, "bush grandmother," as the "Queen of the Wood-Folk" is called. Here the mother-feeling has been so strong as to grant to even the devil a mother and a grandmother, who figure in many proverbs and folk-locutions. When the question is asked a Mecklenburger, concerning a social gathering: "Who was there?" he may answer: "The devil and his mother (mom)"; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is: "The Devil is dancing ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... homeliness, by which he gained a hearing from plain men and women; but he had not Franklin's crystal style, his instinct for the fewest and best words, his happy use of a language which seemed made for his thoughts. We noticed that in the spelling-book he displayed a fondness for the wisdom of proverbs and familiar sayings, and among his earliest writings were a series of pithy homilies to the people upon questions of morals and manners, published first in the Connecticut "Courant," but early collected into a volume entitled "The Prompter;" ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... struck by her wondrous beauty, her gentle manners, and her ingenuousness; but he became only so much the more desirous to confuse her senses and entrap her. She placed her enthusiastic eye to the window of the box. The Devil preluded with a few proverbs and wise saws, and unfolded to her view scenes of love, in which he led her fancy so adroitly from the spiritual to the carnal, that she was scarcely aware of the gradation. If she were about to turn away her eyes with shame, the offensive object changed itself at once ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... the stomach; but it did not; and neither word nor wittens of it have been seen or heard tell of from that to this day. So, in two or three minutes, we had some few good songs, and a round of Scotch proverbs, when the clock chapped eleven. We were all getting, I must confess, a thought noisy; Johnny Soutter having broken a dram-glass, and Willie Fegs couped a bottle on the bit table-cloth; all noisy, I say, except Deacon Paunch, douce man, who had fallen ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... in India, in general, wash their linen at the ghats, and their dogs of course wander thither from home after them, and back again. This is one of their proverbs, and answers to ours of ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... dear. What I see, is a regiment of Proverbs, bearing placards instead of guns, and each one a taunt at women, especially at widows. They march; they form square; they enclose me in the middle, and I have their inscriptions to digest. Read that crazy letter from Mary Paynham while I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteem of most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keep it. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting on them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of course such a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. His ships coasted the shores of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan; ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... mistaken translation of a verse in the book of Proverbs, Origen presented as a basis for his main structure the idea of a threefold sense of Scripture: the literal, the moral, and the mystic—corresponding to the Platonic conception of the threefold nature of man. As results of this we have such masterpieces as his proof, from the fifth verse of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... does not constitute proof, yet it is often valuable as a means of illustration. Truths frequently need illumination more than verification, and in such cases this sort of comparison may be very useful. Many proverbs are condensed arguments from analogy, their strength depending upon the similarity between the known case and the case in hand. It is not hard to find the analogy in these expressions: "Lightning never strikes twice ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... mankind is man, the old proverb says, but like many other proverbs there is a full measure of unreality in it. It takes a good amount of arrogance and conceit for one to fancy he is going to study and understand men. No man can understand himself, and by no amount of experience or study will he ever come ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... all these plays is racy of the soil, and when it need be, eloquent with the eloquence that is almost always in the English of the Irish. It is full of wise saws and proverbs, quips and quirks of expression, the picturesquenesses and homelinesses of speech that are characteristic of a peasant to whom talk is the half of life. These range from sayings like those of the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... central and commanding, more ultimate and final, and of more universal application than are to be found within the same compass in the literature of any age or time, thoughts which rise to the mind as naturally and spontaneously when the deeper secrets of life are in question, as proverbs do in its more obvious and superficial aspects.... Nowhere, indeed, will you find greater penetration and profundity, or greater refinement and delicacy than in these essays (of Emerson).... After a lapse of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... mischief done from putting off; and if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing at once; take my advice—'There's no time like the present;' 'Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day;' these are two good proverbs. I've found them of immense value in my ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... was all that he boasted. He chose as his text a verse out of the Book of Proverbs which compares any one who meddles unnecessarily with strife to a man who takes a dog by the ears. He spoke feelingly, from what appeared to be the recollection of unpleasant experience, of the way in which spirited dogs behave when any one takes them forcibly by the ears. He explained ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... curious production called Alcilia, by J. C., who gives the name of sonnets to a series of six-line stanzas, varied occasionally by other forms, such as that of the following pretty verses. It may be noted that the citation of proverbs ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a horn, which is a signal for all within hearing to lay hold of something that cannot be blown away, and cling to it till the wind falls. This may happen in three days or in nine, according to the popular proverbs. "The spectacle of the sea," says Dall' Ongaro, in a note to one of his ballads, "while the Bora blows, is sublime, and when it ceases the prospect of the surrounding hills is delightful. The air, purified by the rapid current, clothes them with a rosy veil, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... fables,—pithy wisdom, ingenious moral instances, homely illustrations, easy colloquial dialogue; and the ethical teaching has a striking superficial likeness to the common-sense morality of prudence and content, which fables, like proverbs, habitually expound. "Cultivate your garden, don't trouble your head about insoluble riddles, accept your ignorance and your limitations, assume your good to be good and your evil to be evil, be ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Agriculture, Horticulture, and Navigation,[6] all of which subjects I have had to 'read up' accordingly, and this takes time. Moreover, I have had my class of workmen out sketching every week in the fields during the summer; and have been studying Spanish proverbs with my father's partner, who came over from Spain to see the Great Exhibition. I have also designed and drawn a window for the Museum at Oxford; and have every now and then had to look over a parcel of five ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Proverbs of the market every people has of its own. "It is nought, it is nought, saith the buyer, but, after he is gone his way, then he boasteth." And the seller has all the variants of caveat emptor ready to retort. In antiquity, and in the East to-day, apart from machine-made things, we find ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... than I or my fellow-preachers can do by all our words. It is all very well to lecture about the efficiency of a machine; let us see it at work, and that will convince people. We preach; but you preach far more eloquently, and far more effectively, by your lives. 'In all labour,' says the Book of Proverbs, 'there is profit'—which we may divert from its original meaning to signify that in all Christian living there is force to attract—'but the talk of the lips tendeth only to poverty.' Oh! if the Christian men and women of England would live their Christianity, they would do more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and Proverbs, intended for the Parlor or Saloon, and requiring no Expensive Apparatus, or Scenery, or Properties for their Performance. By S. Annie Frost. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... I quoted, say rather," returned Adam. "Proverbs often bear a double meaning, and can be interpreted as well one way as the other. The ancients were cunning fellows in this respect, and were determined to make themselves true prophets ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... have proceeded to further defend herself and family from the charge of rollicking, and to draw uncomplimentary parallels from the Proverbs between the laughter of certain persons and the crackling of thorns under a pot, when a timely diversion was effected by a sounding knock at the little front door. The maid put down the dish she was handing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the fact that it was a bard named Taillefer who first broke the English ranks at the battle of Hastings. After him came Philippe de Thaun, who tried to set to song the science of his day; Thorold, the author of a romance entitled 'Roland;' Samson de Nauteuil, the translator of Solomon's Proverbs into French verse; Geoffrey Gaimar, who wrote a Chronicle of the Saxon kings; and one David, a minstrel of no little note and power in his day. But a more remarkable writer succeeded, and his work, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up all the productions of these ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the croaking, you fellows," admonished Bert. "Or, if you're dead set on proverbs, remember that 'it's no use crying over spilt milk.' We're up against it good and plenty, but that's all the more reason to get together and try to ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... in the sense of "an offering of incense" in which it occurs exclusively and very frequently in the Priestly Code, is first found in Ezekiel (viii. 11, xvi. 18, xxiii. 41) and often afterwards in Chronicles, but in the rest of the Old Testament only in Proverbs xxvii. 9, but there in a profane sense. Elsewhere never, not even in passages so late as 1Samuel ii.28; Psalms lxvi. 15, cxli. 2. In authors of a certainly pre-exilian date tbe word occurs only twice, both ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O Sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man' Proverbs, ch. vi. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... no longer had the right of entrance to the royal apartments, and stood in two hedges on either side. Gondi, who watched them while the queen-mother talked with the Lorraine princes, whispered in her ear, in good Tuscan, two words which afterwards became proverbs,—words which are the keynote to one aspect of her regal character: "Odiate ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... boy. Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today. One of my favorite proverbs. We shall begin immediately—" Here the Phoenix caught sight of the bag in David's hand and added hastily: "But, of course, we must not forget ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... do." [Jer. 18:8] Once more from I. John i, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." [1 John 1:9] The true definition of the righteous man is found in Proverbs xviii, "The righteous man is his own first accuser," [2] [Prov.18:17] that is to say, he is righteous because he accuses himself. The verse goes on to say, "His neighbor (i. e., Christ) cometh and searcheth him," that is, He seeketh him, and suffereth ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... of your making a respectable figure in the world. But never forget the maxim that I now lay down for your future guidance; recollect that 'a man can never dirt his hands about his own business;' and always bear in mind these three old Italian proverbs—first, 'Never do that by proxy, which you can do yourself.'—Second, 'Never defer till to-morrow that which can be done well to-day.'—Third, 'Never neglect small matters ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it any ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Morale Proverbs of Cristyne; translated from the French (1390) by Earl Rivers, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... remarks in his 'Grammaire Wolof,' the [Footnote: He was Instituteur de l'Ecole Wolof-Francaise du Senegal, and published in 1826. It is still said that no one will speak Wolof like him, the result of the new regime of compulsory French instruction. I printed 226 of his proverbs in Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (London, Tinsleys, 1865). It is curious to compare them with those of the pagan negroes ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... good example of this social force is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments which the language of the people expresses. Proverbs, words, and grammar-inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... good-nature of her eyes; she knew human nature, although no one judged it with more charity than she. Her old men were her brothers, her young men were her sons, all children were her children. Solomon foresaw her in the most engaging of his Proverbs. Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and called her blessed, for though her rule was strict it was just and loving. She was at once the mistress and the friend of her household; no Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic so cold as not to be melted ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... matter?" he growled. Grodman was not an early bird, now that he had no worms to catch. He could afford to despise proverbs now, for the house in which he lived was his, and he lived in it because several other houses in the street were also his, and it is well for the landlord to be about his own estate in Bow, where poachers often shoot the moon. Perhaps the desire to enjoy his greatness among his ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... volume the treasures of a most original and noble literature unrolled before them; stirring history and romantic legend, cosmical theories and priestly injunctions, profound metaphysics and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... impressive monuments of antiquity to tell the tales of glory and of shame. In moral wisdom it is vastly inferior to Shakspeare, and it is not rich in those wise and striking lines which pass into the proverbs of the world; but it has the glow of a poetic soul, longing for fame, craving love, and not unmindful of immortality. Its most beautiful stanzas are full of tenderness and sadness for lost or unrequited affections; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... visited their home. The future was veiled from them. The Forbidden City, surrounded by its great crenelated wall, may have seemed more like a prison than like a palace. True, they had other children, and she was "only a girl, but even girls are a small blessing," as they tell us in their proverbs. She had grown old enough to be useful in the home, and they no doubt had cherished plans of betrothing her to the son of some merchant or official who would add wealth or honour to their family. Neither father nor mother, brother nor sister, could have conceived of ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... and this plan will be found most easy for reference, but the sections may be placed in any order. In the case of number 2, the above arrangement gives a clue to the proverb, and therefore in writing out your "sections" it will be found that for short proverbs it will be desirable to place the syllables in such a manner as to give the slightest indication of the sentence; whilst in longer proverbs the alphabetical ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... that which Masonry is ordained of God to bestow on its votaries: not sectarianism and religious dogma; not a rudimental morality, that may be found in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Seneca, and the Rabbis, in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; not a little and cheap common-school knowledge; but manhood and science ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... also dim recollections Of pedlars tramping on their rounds; Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections 430 Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections Old ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... out of their natures by modern education. Yet they relish a fine line or expression. And again, their own language is full of aphorisms, bitter and stinging enough, we know, but sometimes exquisite as befits a nation whose forefathers lived in tents of skins. Now give them a few of the thousand proverbs of Solomon, and they will chew them as a cow chews the cud. But I should go on ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... stories and instruction, so that they should be stamped the better on the memory; representations of common objects and animals; geographical maps purposely made with large names and painted in bright colors; proverbs, grammatical rules, and precepts very plainly printed. Only one thing ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... of law are grand things—the proverbs of justice; yet has not each case its specialities, requiring to be argued with much circumstance, and capable of different interpretations? Words cannot be ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... and gardens, that he did not know all about and could not hold discourse about. And then, after he had taken you all over his house, with its significant rooms and woods and gardens, he was full all supper-time of all wise saws and witty proverbs. 'One leak will sink a ship,' he said that night, 'and one sin will destroy a sinner.' And all their days the pilgrims remembered that word from the Interpreter's lips, and they often said it to themselves as they thought of their own besetting sin. Now, if it is indeed so, that every gospel ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... transaction more of the appearance of an outward one, should have chosen names usual at that time; just as, in a similar manner, poetry would not be satisfied with invented names used only in certain formulas and proverbs, but makes use of names which would not, at once, be recognised by every one as mere fictions.—[Hebrew: gmr] can only mean "completion" in the passive sense. For Segolate-forms in o are only used to express ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... 'Where's Sarah got to?' That made me look round, and I can tell you I was pretty sick when I couldn't see you. Just fancy a chap sleeping away through it all! Why, the ant and the sluggard," said Langrish, getting a little mixed in his proverbs, "weren't in it with you. So I yelled 'Sarah!' with all my might. You should have seen the chaps sit up when they heard your name. Then old Tempest, with his mouth shut and looking middling pasty about the face, broke through the scrimmage and sent us right ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... fallacious. Nevertheless this vast repertoire of words is in itself an amazing phenomenon. Still more amazing is the consummate tact with which he makes use of them, in sentences so terse and clear that they increasingly pass into the proverbs of everyday. And most amazing is that, with all his characters, and all their speeches, he never repeats himself. No better proof could be given that the speaker is for the moment not Shakespeare, but the character in which he has sunk himself. We need not pretend that he does not sometimes run ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... we have already noticed in the style of scenical effort manifested by most foreigners. To be a "conteur," to figure in "proverbs," to attitudinize, to produce a "sensation"—all these are purposes of ambition in foreign circles. Such a current we have noticed in the general determination of the Continent towards French tastes; and that is a worse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... obscurity: "These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... really what one would call a prudent pretty sort of woman, I did not think it had been in her: she is certainly right, there is danger in delay; she has a thousand proverbs on her side; I thought what all her fine sentiments would come to; she should at least have waited for mamma's consent; this hurry is not quite consistent with that extreme delicacy on which she piques herself; it looks exceedingly as if ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... who was thought not to entertain much stricter notions concerning the difference of meum and tuum than the young gentleman himself. And hence this friendship gave occasion to many sarcastical remarks among the domestics, most of which were either proverbs before, or at least are become so now; and indeed, the wit of them all may be comprised in that short Latin proverb, "Noscitur a socio," which I think is thus exprest in English: "You may know him by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... never flattering, but he has had much time to think—he is like one of the old prophets—so that, indeed, I sometimes feel that he ought to sing his sentences like David, instead of saying wise things in an ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a collection, he is making a book of them, and he digs into old volumes in all sorts of languages—oh, some day ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... into the inmost recesses of the Miscellany, where she found much that was interesting and much that she did not understand. There were all sorts of queer things in it. Anecdotes of celebrated misers, maxims and proverbs, legends and pieces of poetry, receipts for making pickles and jams, all mixed up together, so that you could never tell what you might find on the next page. She thought it a most wonderful and attractive book, and ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority of careless readers come to look upon these phrases as belonging to the language, and traceable to no distinct proprietor any more than proverbs: and thus, on afterwards observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him in the light of one accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from the common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own. Many expressions ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of instinctive action, rather than reflection—of poetry and feeling, rather than analytic thought. The rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions. Morality was immediately associated with the religion of the state, and the will of the gods was the highest law for men. "Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, constituted the educational course," to which may be ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... beckoned to Leonard to follow him into the parlor; and after conversing with him kindly, and at some length, and packing up, as it were, a considerable provision of wisdom in the portable shape of aphorisms and proverbs, the sage left him alone for a few moments. Riccabocca then returned with his wife, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to lift the other which he threw down. It was not until the reign of George II. that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed. As for the English Court of Chancery, we know that its antiquated abuses form one of the staples of common proverbs and popular literature. So the laws and the lawyers have to be watched perpetually by public opinion as much as ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Of course she had broken eggs. She had broken four eggs—she had broken the entire household stock of eggs. And he had employed that proverb scores, hundreds of times! It was one of half-a-dozen favourite proverbs which he flung at the less sagacious and prudent of his tenants. And yet it had never occurred to him to wonder what an omelette was! Now he knew. At any rate, he knew what it looked like; and he was shortly to know what it ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... dialogue, containing the number in effect of all the proverbs in the English tongue, compact in a matter concerning two manner of marriages. London 1547, and 1598, in two parts in quarto, all writ in old English verse, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber |
