"Aphorism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commemorated by Sallust, who "danced better than became a modest woman." He thought some of their displays were a little operatic, and that he had seen something like them at certain balls in Paris—not the balls of the Faubourg St. Germain. He thought that the historian's aphorism might be extended to the male part of the company,—and that they danced better than became intelligent men. He thought—but as he prudently kept thoughts to himself, and as some of his foreign prejudice ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... balance-sheet. ["Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success, will know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum."—Macaulay's Review of Basil Montagu's Edition ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until the abdomen itself, the seat of the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... could pardon the slavery thou inflictest on my life, didst thou but leave unshackled my intelligence. But each vast scheme to be thwarted, every thought for thine own aggrandisement beyond thy barren rocks, met and inexorably baffled by a selfish aphorism, a cramping saw—'Sparta is wide eno' for Spartans.'—'Ocean is the element of the fickle.'—'What matters the ascendancy of Athens?—it does not cross the Isthmus.'—'Venture nothing where I want ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... stated that if a Ceylon elephant be introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and raising them reverentially. This passage has been so repeatedly quoted in works on Ceylon that it has passed into an aphorism, and is always adduced as a testimony to the surpassing intelligence of the elephants of that island; although a reference to the original shows that Tavernier's observations are not only fanciful in themselves, but are restricted to the supposed excellence of the Ceylon animal in war.[2] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... XXX. XXXI. XXXII. From the same.— Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe. Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so; and why. Women like not novices; and why. Their vulgar aphorism animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them. Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's, No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... easy to adopt "attractive industry," another of Fourier's mottoes, for were they not trying mind and body to make it so? And finally, it was easy to adopt the aphorism that the attractions of life in the universe are in proportion to the destinies they assist in accomplishing—"attractions are proportionate to destinies," as it is translated. Certainly it was simple and easy to grasp and believe, when ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... had not yet received his title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... idea; it is intimately united with the idea of carnal pleasure. Stendhal obscurely perceived this when he defined beauty as 'a promise of happiness.' Beauty is a woman, and women themselves have carried docility to men so far as to accept this aphorism which they can only understand in extreme sexual perversion.... Beauty is so sexual that the only uncontested works of art are those that simply show the human body in its nudity. By its perseverance in remaining purely sexual Greek statuary has placed itself forever above all discussion. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... piano, or in the solution of mathematical problems, a decided gain in skill and speed comes after what seems to be not only lack of progress but decided backsliding.[1] It is this which led William James to quote with approval the aphorism that one learns to skate in summer ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... useful Synthetic Summary of the Influence of the Environment upon the Organism (1887) takes for its text Spencer's aphorism, that the direct action of the medium was the primordial factor of organic evolution. Professor Geddes relies on the changes in the soil and climate to account for the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... said Gerald, hastily. "Great mistake to think; wastes the tissues awfully. Action first, thought afterward! aphorism! Or if you must indulge in the baneful pursuit, think how much poor Jerry wants you. Poor ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sentinels to do with the sciences or the arts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and discernment—for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and hardy habits—in indomitable patience—in quick sagacity. But there were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and those scarce so praiseworthy—viz., craft and simulation. He ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here is something better than the scenery. There is a Beethoven melody and a piece by Liszt called 'Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude.' Certainly we have no solitude, but if you turn the pages of Albert Samain's poems you will find an aphorism by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: 'Know that there will always be solitude on earth for those who are worthy of it.' This solitude of a soul that can ignore all that is not in tune ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to how the barbarians pass their time, when not employed in affairs of commerce or in worshipping their ancestors, has inspired me to examine the matter more fully. At the same time your pleasantly-composed aphorism that the interior nature of persons does not vary with the colour of their eyes, and that if I searched I should find the old flying kites and the younger kicking feather balls or working embroidery, according to their sex, does not appear to ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... object of this verse is to show the utility and necessity of acts. Without acting no one, however clever, can earn any fruit. Both the vernacular translators give ridiculous versions of this plain aphorism. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... coquetting with communism, and the model working-man and the rebel by an occasional gaol-delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick—and it is the grand secret of political life—it takes all sort of people to make a 'party.' When you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... pass an ironstone "blow" without examination. Remember the pregnant Cornish saying with regard to mining and the current aphorism, "The iron hat covers the golden head." "Cousin Jack," put it "Iron rides a good horse." The ironstone outcrop may cover a gold, silver, copper ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... parties only was the love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do really ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His umbrae, who have put but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal banter, the party breaks up, and we are glad ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... aphorism 'Honesty is the best policy,' it reveals the difference between a fact and a truth. Both sayings are correct as facts, but as guides of conduct devilishly false, leading to dishonesty and treachery. To ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... of such proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table-boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry——Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... not long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George Ticknor ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... impracticable without serious modifications. Henry George, however, although he outdid most socialists in his attack on private wealth of one particular kind—that is to say, the rent of land—was equally vehement in his defence of the interest of industrial capital. Socialists say—and the aphorism is constantly repeated—"A man can get an income only by working or stealing; there is no third way." In answer to this, it was pointed out by George that one kind of wealth, at all events—and we may add that here we have wealth in its oldest form—consists ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... on which was unfavourable to him, he, with a number of friends and sympathisers withdraw from the Confederation. Seven days afterwards, he issued the first number of a newspaper, bearing the significant title of The United Irishman, and having for its motto the following aphorism, quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of the aphorism that it is the unexpected which always happens. For all at once, after a long period of perfect silence, there was a peculiar grating sound at the back of the hut instead of at the front, and for a few moments both the defenders of ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I intended them to convey. I said that it is not more than an hyperbolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the nearest approach to truth. Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one of such cases as are contemplated in that proposition. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... canon of his work; it might come in anywhere and so might everything else that he wrote. From the beginning his craftsmanship was perfect; from the beginning he took his subject-matter from others as he found it and worked it up into aphorism and epigram till each line shone like a cut jewel and the essential commonplaceness and poverty of his material was obscured by the glitter the craftsmanship lent to it. Subject apart, however, he was quite sure of his medium from the beginning; it was not long before ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... herself defending the style, and inveighing against the monotony of the fashions of the West End. Nor was this the only occasion on which she disagreed with her husband that evening. He launched an aphorism across the dinner-table which he had cogitated from the report of a divorce-suit in the evening papers. "It is a strange thing," he said, "that the woman who knows her influence over a man usually employs it to hurt him; the woman who doesn't, employs it unconsciously ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... man" is an ancient aphorism that has a very wide application. While the forms and standards of what constitute good manners change with the times, their essential basis is always the same—a deference to, and consideration for, those with whom one is thrown in contact. Courtesy, politeness, helpfulness, and other evidences ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... New Jersey or the ornithologist of Esopus-on-Hudson is expected to give an affirmative reply to similar questions concerning his chosen hunting-grounds, if, indeed, he does not avail himself of that happy aphorism with which Gilbert White was wont to instruct his questioners concerning the natural-history harvest of his beloved Selborne: "That locality is always ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... many proverbs and aphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmitted from one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitable axioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we have an instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams images appear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue to be mere ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... that such a secret should have been first penetrated by an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... all clear what this valuable aphorism had to do with the subject in hand, but it impressed the two ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... horrors that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own—or perhaps ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... never perceived but one fault in you, and that you have grievously, viz. modesty; you form an exception to Sydney Smith's aphorism, that merit and modesty have no other connection, except in their ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... or as the appurtenances of the fool. Loyalty is a phrase little understood, and the merchant leaves as little to his clerks' honesty or honour as he can possibly help. In business he holds that 'Every man's hand is against his neighbour, and his neighbour's against him;' and he pushes the aphorism to its fullest logical conclusion, i.e., not merely to 'Believe every man to be a knave until you find he is honest,' but 'Believe that when a man is honest it is merely the more successfully to carry ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... prose writer. His two chief works in this kind are his English Grammar, in which a sound knowledge of the rules of English writing is discovered, and the quaintly named Explorata or Discoveries and Timber—a collection of notes varying from a mere aphorism to a respectable essay. In these latter a singular power of writing prose appears. The book was not published till after Ben's death, and is thought to have been in part at least written during the last years of his life. But there can be no greater contrast than exists between ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... people then. There is a saying given to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, "Chaque homme qui pense est mechant." Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say that what has been well written has ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... This aphorism, so uttered by Thekla, provoked a yell from Primrose, echoed by Fergus; and Primrose, getting her breath, declared that dear Miss Winter was a great darling, and since she had gone away, more's the pity, mamma was real governess to herself, Valetta, and Mysie, and she always looked at their translations ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "The aphorism, 'Equal rights to all and special privileges to none,' will be lived out, because no one who is living the thought that all are Divine, will wish to have opportunities that they ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... 'we reproduce it, Sir—we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor—the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob—wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning shores of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... logical definitions from some that are excluded; but so far am I from considering this a defect, that I deem it a necessary result of the impalpable infinitesimal graduation by which the fully-formed parable glides down into the brief detached metaphorical aphorism, in the words of the Lord Jesus during ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... his preface with the aphorism: "Il est dangereux dans les sciences de conclure trop vite." I fear he must have forgotten this sound maxim by the time he had reached the discussion of the differences between men and apes, in the body of his work. No doubt, the excellent author of one of the most remarkable ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley
... God sends a little shoe," I told him, remembering the aphorism of my old Irish nurse. "And the sooner you get me home, Dinky-Dunk, the happier I'll be. For I'm tired of this place and the smell of the formalin and ether and I'm nearly worried to death about Dinkie. And in all the wide world, O Kaikobad, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that "God made the country, but man made ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... bought, a mob may, in any hour, become the master. An honest people and a weak mob,—a corrupt people and a strong mob," said the other, rather to himself than to his comrade, and scarce, perhaps, conscious of the eternal truth of his aphorism. "He is no mere brawler, this Rienzi, I suspect—I must see to it. Hark! what noise is that? By the Holy Sepulchre, it is the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at me with his grave bright eyes ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his, but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to evade it by an attempt at banter. "You can't make a tragedy, my dear girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... to defend this action on strictly moral grounds," I continued, peeling off his coat and waistcoat with the celerity of a skilful butcher skinning a sheep for a bet. "I think we may regard the transaction as a pertinent illustration of Pandulph's aphorism—to wit, that 'He who stands upon a slippery place, makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.' When the hurly-burly's done, I must get you to favour me with your address, so that"—— Here ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... will be noticed, has chosen for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to it ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive temper, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... wrong in undertaking a task beyond your capacity. Have you progressed one step since you started this affair? No. That shows that, although you are incomparable as a lieutenant, you do not possess the qualities of a general. I am going to present you with an aphorism; remember it, and let it be your guide in the future: A man can shine in the second rank, who would be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... of Sir Henry Wotton's being designed for the employment of an ambassador, came to Eton, and requested from him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations; to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible aphorism,—that, to be in safety himself, and serviceable to his country, he should always, and upon all occasions, speak the truth (it seems a state paradox). "For," says Sir Henry Wotton, "you shall never be believed; and by this means your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... criticism, and by not a few of his colleagues he was considered directly responsible for the want of combination which had marred McClellan's plan of attack. More than once Mr. Lincoln infringed his own famous aphorism, "Never swap horses when crossing a stream," but when he transferred the destinies of the Army of the Potomac from McClellan to Burnside he did more—he selected the weakest of his team of generals to bear ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... after tasting no food or drink for three and a half hours, he gave utterance to what was afterwards known as the First Revelation. It ran to this effect: "The Man-God is the Man-God, and not the God-Man." Asked how he arrived at so stupendous an aphorism, he answered that it just came to him. There were troubles in the neighbourhood over the audacity of this utterance; some called it a divine inspiration, to the majority it was known as the Unnamable Heresy. For a brief while the town was formed into two camps, and the Chief ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... weather, and an unnatural dormition—will blast and wear out of memory the most endearing obligations; and hence it was that some politicians in love have looked upon the former of these two as a main remedy against the fondness of that passion. But for my own part, my Lord, I shall deny this aphorism of the people, and beg leave to assure your Lordship, that, though these reputed obstacles have lain long in my way, yet neither of them could work upon me: for I am now—without adulation—as warm and sensible of those numerous favours and kind influences received sometimes ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... man a good character, and not the other. Instances of this kind occur out of number to confirm the rogues in their preconceived notions of the uncertainty of punishment, and that "the greatest crimes come off the best." This is an aphorism among the thieves. I have seen some of them, after being sentenced by the court, dance for hours, calling out continuously, "Did I not tell you all, the biggest rogues get off the best?" The scene in the several yards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... is not difficult to understand, although there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning, although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing illustration of Fichte's dictum, that ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it tones down ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... then, except by military students now, it is not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous burnous upon ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... 6. He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "God hath set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture which is ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... giving expression to this excellent aphorism, Madame Plumet, unable to contain herself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sleep, and beds not too soft, early retiring and rising, and cold baths, are means prescribed to harden the body and prepare it to resist the attacks of disease. "A sound mind in a sound body" is the celebrated aphorism which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, drames de recette. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients—description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... would lead a happy married life, First learn to rule, and then to have, a wife," say Beaumont and Fletcher—and a pleasant aphorism it is too—and a wise and useful—but with a slight alteration, a periphrasis comprehending advice not less to the purpose may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... I summed up my observations on Orchids by saying that nature "abhors perpetual self-fertilisation." If the word perpetual had been omitted, the aphorism would have been false. As it stands, I believe that it is true, though perhaps rather too strongly expressed; and I should have added the self-evident proposition that the propagation of the species, whether by self-fertilisation or by cross-fertilisation, or asexually by buds, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... ambrosial, ameliorate, amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an aesthetic aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by the poet, on an interplay ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... observing the creature's hands. The harpies could transform themselves in every other way, but their claws remained unchanged, and they were, consequently, obliged to cover them with gloves. "Beware the gloved hand," was a familiar aphorism among the wise women of the West Inch, and Constans, shaken in spite of himself by the remembrance of these old fables, felt the sweat break out upon his forehead, for all that the wind blew ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of Roosevelt's epigrammatic sayings is, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The public, with its instinctive preference for the dramatic over the significant, promptly seized upon the "big stick" half of the aphorism and ignored the other half. But a study of the various acts of Roosevelt when he was President readily shows that in his mind the "big stick" was purely subordinate. It was merely the ultima ratio, the possession ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much in trying to be small.—Tozer, what do ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... also knew I could move my arm, so what did it matter? I told myself to wait till we got to the ship. Had we stayed there longer, we might all have stopped bullets—and some bullets might have stopped us." He grinned, as if the aphorism amused him, and added: "To know when to run is the perfection ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... pen and pencil and in the very presence of the jury copying handwriting which was given her for that purpose by various members of the yellow press who crowded close behind the rail. From time to time she would dash off an aphorism or a paragraph in regard to the trial which she handed to a reporter. If satisfactory this was elaborated and sometimes even illustrated by her for the evening edition ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Maxim.— N. maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm[obs3]; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot[Fr], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis[obs3]. axiom, theorem, scholium[obs3], truism, postulate. first principles, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... civilization, public happiness, security to society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... with seven languages, and for whom mathematics held no secrets. She was devoted to algebra and geometry, which, she said, "are the only provinces of thought wherein peace reigns." Madame de Charriere expressed herself in an aphorism of the same order: "An hour or two of mathematics sets my mind at liberty, and puts me in good spirits; I feel that I can eat and sleep better when I have seen obvious and indisputable truths. This consoles me for the obscurities of religion and metaphysics, or rather makes me ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... prophecies are ridiculous, your fears are vain, you see how little of the mischiefs which you formerly foreboded are come to pass." Thus, by degrees, that artful softening of all arbitrary power, the alleged infrequency or narrow extent of its operation, will be received as a sort of aphorism,—and Mr. Hume will not be singular in telling us, that the felicity of mankind is no more disturbed by it than by earthquakes or thunder, or the other more ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... come a word of explanation. I have been asked why I use the word Sutras, for these rules of Patanjali's system, when the word Aphorism has been connected with them in our minds fora generation. The reason is this: the name Aphorism suggests, to me at least, a pithy sentence of very general application; a piece of proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of circumstance, and which will almost bear on its face ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... men sat among them; sat doggedly in defeat. Gallantry is a noble quality when joined to wisdom and foresight; alone, it leads into pits and blind alleys. And these four men recognized with no small bitterness the truth of this aphorism. They had been ambushed scarce four hours from Quebec by a baud of marauding Oneidas. Only Jean Pauquet had escaped. They had been captives now for several weeks. Rage had begun to die out, fury to subside; apathy seized them in its listless embrace. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could reason out for himself,—under which third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted by ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... natural, humorous school who took for their motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in 1653,—"To despise flowers ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... in every exchange has overturned and misled all our ideas: men have ended in thinking that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. Hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorism, "What one gains the other loses;" and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and embrued it with blood.[2] After much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... respects ill chosen, though it may, in some degree, denote the exquisite triumphs which art has here accomplished. The Illustrations consist of eighteen portraits of every order of beauty, of variety enough to realize Sir Philip Sidney's aphorism, that "whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful." But here all must be liked; therefore all are beautiful. The very names would make out a sort of court-roll of Venus, and the book itself the enchanting effect of the goddess' embroidered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... i.e. of the capacity of the individual to enter into independent agreements with strangers to his family-group by which he was legally bound—an historical process which Maine sums up in his famous aphorism that the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... fundamental social fact. This is the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park |
