"Proverb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain —adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wished for comes when your hands are tied," says the Turkish proverb. Win had been yearning for a spin. She kept silence and sped on, wondering whether she could surprise the enemy by executing ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... organs, together with its corollary, hygiene, the care of the health. From ancient times psychology and physiology have been considered as equally associated and of prime importance. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old Latin proverb. The need of every one to "know himself," both in mind and body, was taught by the earliest "Wise Men" of Greece. The Roman emperor Tiberius said that any one who had reached the age of thirty in ignorance of his physical constitution ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... No proverb is too hackneyed to be comforting at times, and the girl reminded herself that blood is thicker than water as she looked among her mother's papers for the Menotti address. They were her cousins, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... literature and the schools of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy, "Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the life of Francis was the inspiration of the early Italian art. Cimabue and Giotto drew from the inspiration of that unique and lovely life the pictorial conceptions that have made Assisi the cradle of Italian painting. The great works of Giotto ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... a proverb: "She wove her shroud, and wore it in her lifetime." In the nocturnes the shroud is not far away. Chopin wove his to the day of his death, and he wore it sometimes but ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... my head on his arm, and he went on: "By and by, the Southdowns will be changed up here, and the Shropshires will go down to the orchard. I like to keep one flock under my fruit trees. You know there is an old proverb 'The sheep has a golden hoof.' They save me the trouble of ploughing. I haven't ploughed my orchard for ten years, and don't expect to plough it for ten years more. Then your Aunt Hattie's hens are so obliging that they keep me from the worry of finding ticks at shearing time. ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... for them. I quit then, after giving him my opinion of him and of the chances of his shop. I do not know where he may be now, but wherever he is, I will warrant that my prediction came true. There is in Danish an old proverb, "Falsk slaar sin egen Herre paa Hals," which is to say that chickens come home to roost, and that right in the end does prevail over might. The Lord Chief Justice over all is not to be tricked. If the labor men will only remember that, and devote, let us say, as much time to their duties as to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... proverb, would have chucked me out on account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in elevated language, and...you, too," he said, addressing Karenin and forgetting his name, "at first would have ejected me on the ground of the old ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... had my share of the ills to which we all are heir, I must date my real unhappiness from the first month after I took possession. With your permission, I will enter into my history, as it may prove a warning to others, who will not remember the old proverb of "Let ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 'ministry', 'perjury'. Many words of this class have been further abbreviated in their passage through French. Such are 'benefice', 'divorce', 'office', 'presage', 'suffrage', 'vestige', 'adverb', 'homicide', 'proverb'. The stress in 'div['o]rce' is due to the long vowel and the two consonants. A few of these words have been borrowed bodily from Latin, as 'odium', ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... of myself, that I have been better since I wrote to you. Mazzinghi {14} tells me that November weather breeds Blue Devils—so that there is a French proverb, 'In October, de Englishman shoot de pheasant: in November he shoot himself.' This I suppose is the case with me: so away with November, as soon as may be. 'Canst thou my Clora' is being put in proper musical trim: and I will write it out for you when ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... represent various races. The Bundelas—the race who gave the name to the country—still maintain their dignity as chieftains, by disdaining to cultivate the soil, although by no means conspicuous for lofty sentiments of honour or morality. An Indian proverb avers that "one native of Bundelkhand commits as much fraud as a hundred Dandis" (weighers of grain and notorious rogues). About Datia and Jhansi the inhabitants are a stout and handsome race of men, well ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... distinguished for his large benevolence, commenced his mercantile career by peddling goods that he carried in a band-box from one milliner's shop to another. "You must creep before you can walk," is an old maxim, and the lives of all distinguished men verify the proverb. He who creeps well, will walk so much the better by and by; but he who is ashamed to creep, must never expect to walk. We know a successful merchant who commenced the work of an errand-boy in a large mercantile house, when he was about twelve years old. He was not mortified to ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... you, sweet lady, that love would find a way?" he said. "We have a proverb in Spain that the way to make sure of winning a girl is to make love to her mother. As you have no mother, I made love last night to Lady Fermanagh, who, I was told, is your guardian, and she invited me to call. Hence my presence here. The fates are kind, and now ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the tuneful Muses' hapless train, Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main! Their hearts no selfish stern absorbent stuff, That never gives—tho' humbly takes enough; The little fate allows, they share as soon, Unlike sage proverb'd Wisdom's hard-wrung boon: The world were blest did bliss on them depend, Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a friend!" Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son, Who life and wisdom at one race ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... old proverb may be fin de siecle, but it does not suit my notions," muttered Ogilvie, sitting ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... he might attempt to read in the sitting-room, and would find it impossible with the inefficient light of one candle. The hostess, seeing his dilemma, would say: "It is rather difficult to read here evenings; the proverb says 'you must have a ship at sea in order to be able to burn two candles at once;' we never have an extra candle except on extra occasions." These extra occasions occur, perhaps, twice a year. In this way the good woman ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... history receiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: 'The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.' He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our intellectual desires after truth, all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic self is misery, because it makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the desire to find like satisfaction again. The appetite comes in eating, as the proverb says, and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic self, torn with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... well as they can, and sleep too; but the proverb, "He who sleeps dines," does not apply to this elevation, for one cannot seriously do the one or ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... cronies down in Frenchtown, who know everything, and can recite you many a story, tell of one sad heart on Mardi Gras years ago. It was a woman's, of course; for "Il est toujours les femmes qui sont malheureuses," says an old proverb, and perhaps it is right. This woman—a child, she would be called elsewhere, save in this land of tropical growth and precocity—lost her heart to one who never knew, a very common story, by the way, but one which ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... greater part of the results hitherto obtained in the field of Indo-Germanic comparative mythology to be, as yet, a failure, premature or incomplete, my own efforts in German Myths (1858) included. That I do not, however, "throw out the babe with the bath," as the proverb goes, my essay on Lettish sun myths in Bastian-Hartmann's Ethnological ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... I didn't make a very hearty meal. After that the weather began to get bad, and continued getting bad for a long time. Then for some days, as sure as I went down below for a meal I did violence to the sentiment of the old proverb "wilful waste makes woeful want." However, in a few days I recovered sufficiently to withstand the noxious influences of the saloon long enough to satisfy my hunger. We had bad weather, more or less the whole way across ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... doing, we are to build a regular yard and sheds for all the animals close to the house, and palisaded round as the house now is, with a passage from one palisade to the other. Then it will be very convenient; but 'Rome was not built in a day,' as the proverb says; and we must, therefore, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... this added, that by original constitution they were as strong as Meux's dray-horses; and thus, after all, they may simply illustrate the old logical dictum ascribed to some medical man, that the reason why London children of the wealthier classes are noticeable even to a proverb for their robustness and bloom, is because none but those who are already vigorous to excess, and who start with advantages of health far beyond the average scale, have much chance of surviving that most searching quarantine, which, in such [Footnote: For myself, meantime, I am far from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to the water mill, through all the livelong day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour away; How languidly the autumn wind does stir the withered leaves As in the fields the reapers sing, while binding up their sheaves! A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... discussion of a case which has and is now agitating this good County of Brome, that spirit of British fair play which has attained to the dignity of a proverb has been lost sight of to a marked degree. I refer to the alleged assault on Mr. W. W. Smith, at Sutton Junction, in July last. The Dominion Temperance Alliance and its friends are doing their best, by means of the press and otherwise, to poison ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... nights Moses now devoted to the study of the Torah, and in all the time he ate no bread and drank no water, acting in accordance with the proverb, "If thou enterest a city, observe its laws." The angels followed this maxim when they visited Abraham, for they there ate like men; and so did Moses, who being among angels, like the angels partook of no food. He received nourishment from radiance of the Shekinah, which also sustains the holy Hayyot ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," has so long ago become a proverb, that it seems almost idle to repeat the sentiment. And yet it is to be feared that very few receive it as a practical truth, in the management of children. Now nothing is more certain than that it is easier, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... of the deep hollow lane together. Necessarily it would seem, for this lane appeared to defy the proverb and have no turning. But that it had one we know—and to it the little party came at last. A gate led to some fields belonging to the estate of the Hazels—Lettice and the nurse prepared ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... faith, my lord," returns father, "but have a care lest we translate the proverb, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... never be decided, for as the Spanish proverb says, sobre los gustos no hai disputa. Every one is effected in his own way. These fugitive sensations can be expressed by no known character, and there is no scale to measure if a CAT-FISH (!), a sole, or a turbot ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... Herculem.—I shall feel much obliged if any of your correspondents or readers can inform me of the origin of the proverb "Ex pede Herculem." In what classical author is it to be found? I have looked in vain through Erasmi Adagia ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... challenge of trailing the coat-tails, and believers in hereditary might, perhaps, be justified in assuming a strictly celibate sainthood. Be that as it may, Irish people have ever been prone to extremes, and, in spite of the proverb, there are some extremes that never touch, and chief among them are those that concern religion. Religion, or rather, difference of religion, is a factor in every-day Irish life of infinitely more potency than it is, perhaps, in any other ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... much sympathy from modern readers, who quite overlook all the extenuating circumstances in his case.[FN643] Nor do we always find the Jew famous for 'cuteness in folk-tales. This phase of his reputation is comparatively modern, and in the time of Horace, "Credat Judaeus" was a Roman proverb, which means, freely translated, "Nobody would be fool enough to believe it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, "He who never reveals a secret keeps it best," is thus finely amplified by Saadi: "The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... work. Do not say, 'Four months and then comes the harvest'; I say to you, lift up your eyes and see these fields white for the harvest! Already the reaper is receiving his wages and gathering in a crop for eternal life, that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the proverb holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap a harvest for which you had not toiled; other men have toiled and you are sharing the results ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... a sort of proverb in the little village where Caroline resided, when any one was not very generous, "She's almost as selfish as Carrie Rose," I don't know whether she knew how she was regarded among boys and girls of her ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... and the heart of a female quail carried about a woman, causes natural love and fruitfulness. Let them, also, that would increase their seed, eat and drink of the best, as much as they can; for sine Cerere el Libero, friget Venus, is an old proverb, which is, "without good meat and drink, Venus ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... could outrun our adversary, would we hamstring him at the starting-post? It was accounted by all men, in all ages, an unmanly thing to steal, and a yet more unmanly thing to steal from the weak; so that it has passed into a proverb, 'Only a dog would steal the blind man's dinner.' And yet," he said, "we are willing to steal the vote of the ignorant, the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... from him, brought all the inhabitants of the house and neighbourhood to the spot, and poor bruin was soon dispatched by shots from the windows. He has, however, immortalized his memory, and become a proverb amongst the town's people, for when any one injures himself by his own violence, they call him ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... points with great delicacy, it was as a seaman talking to seamen, and he could not entirely throw aside the frankness of the profession. Ashore, men live in the privacy of their own domestic circles, and their secrets, and secret thoughts, are "family secrets," of which it has passed into a proverb to say, that there are always some, even in the best of these communities. On shipboard, or in the camp, it is very different. The close contact in which men are brought with each other, the necessity that exists for opening the heart and expanding the charities, gets in time to influence ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wealth." This proverb has been repeated to most of us until we are either tired of it or careless of it, but it is well to remember that a saying becomes a proverb because of its truth and significance. Many a man has proved that if economy is not actual wealth, it is, in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... first men went naked, or at most loosely clad in the skin of some animal. Vide Mart. Hist. p. 18. This proverb is applied to inculcate the necessity of accommodating one's self to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... you a new proverb, one I have found useful at times. Put not thy finger into thy neighbor's pie, lest it get ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... revelation was completed with these writings which follow the Gospels in our New Testament. But Christ's teaching brings us up to the understanding of the facts and of the commentary upon them which Scripture contains, so that what was parable or proverb, dimly apprehended, mysterious and enigmatical when it was spoken, and what remains mysterious and enigmatical to us until we grow up to it, gradually becomes full of significance and weighty with a plain and certain meaning. This is the teaching which goes on through ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... accomplished in a little more than twenty-seven days. Neither is much weight due to the fanciful comparison of Gubernatis: "The moon is the watcher of the sky, that is to say, she sleeps with her eyes open; so also does the hare, whence the somnus leporinus became a proverb." [89] The same author says on another page, and here we follow him: "The mythical hare is undoubtedly the moon. In the first story of the third book of the Pancatantram, the hares dwell upon the shore of the lake Candrasaras, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... go to the depth of a desert, to the jungles of an Indian archipelago, to the woods at Caffraria, to the desert plains of North America, or to the Cordilleras, you will not escape from the miserable spectacles of human hypocrisy. The Turks have a proverb which says, 'Cure the hand you cannot spare.' Now we can add to this maxim, 'Cure the hand which can serve you, satisfy your pride, avarice and egotism.' Young and happy when you first entered on life, dear Ireneus, you have seen much. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... lost nothing with the passing seasons, but grew more perfect, even under the inexplicable shade of dissatisfaction that sometimes veiled it. "Fair as the wife of Hermas" was a proverb in Antioch; and soon men began to add to it, "Beautiful as the son of Hermas"; for the child developed swiftly in that favouring clime. At nine years of age he was straight and strong, firm of limb and clear of eye. His brown head was on a level ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Moss, still keeping his seat, made a little speech. "I think if Miss O'Mahony would allow me, I would counsel her against too rigid an economy. She will have heard of the old proverb,—'A penny wise and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... still more so in the present reign of Frol Zverev. In fact, Ilya Simonov was not alone in Party circles in wondering whether or not discipline had been allowed to slip too far. It is easier, the old Russian proverb goes, to hang onto the reins than to regain them ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a queer way about it. I reckon you think with the old saw, [Proverb.] 'The nearer the church the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] Degradation of freemen into serfs remained ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... from being the pleasantest and most genial of fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a significant proverb,—"Silks and satins put out the kitchen fire." Silks and satins—meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping—often put out not only the parlor fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of domestic love. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... some only of these measures are adopted, the nation as a whole cannot fail to benefit mentally, morally and physically. The success of the measures, of course, depends to some extent on their being taken in time, but in this, as in many other directions, the old proverb holds good: Better late ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... muscle in his broad back and arms was strained to the uttermost; so also were the muscles of his companions, and the canoe seemed to advance by a series of rapid leaps and bounds. Yet the sound of the pursuers' oars seemed to increase, and soon the proverb "it is the pace that kills" received illustration, for the speed of the canoe began to decrease a little—very little at first—while the pursuers, with fresh hands at the oars, gradually overhauled ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... as has just been observed, is apt to overreach itself, has passed into a proverb; and the case of Jacopo and his employers was one in point to prove its truth. The unusual silence of those who ordinarily sought him on similar occasions, had not been lost on the agent; and the sight of the felucca, as he strayed along the quays, gave an accidental ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we know nothing as yet. We'll see what news Pavel brings back. In our calling one must be brave. The English have a proverb 'Never say die.' A very good proverb, I think, much better than our Russian, 'When trouble knocks, open the gates wide!' We mustn't ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... doors closed against them;—were shut occasionally to those whom she most specially wished to see within them. She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it. We are told by the Latin proverb that he who gives quickly gives twice; but I say that she who gives quickly seldom gives more than half. When in the early spring the Duke of Omnium first knocked at Madame Max Goesler's door, he was informed that she was not at home. The Duke felt very cross ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... "Standard" Work (in the Press), New Edition of Allsopp's Fables. N.B.—This volume will contain two extra Fables, illustrating the proverb of "Allsopps to Cerberus," and "There's many a slip between the mug and the Hind-lip." Many ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... Napoleon promised to reconstitute her, and the Poles fought by thousands in his armies and won many victories for him. Then came the campaign of Russia and ended all that. To-day, Poland is remembered in France only by a proverb, 'Saoul comme un Polonais,' 'Drunk as a Pole.' It is so we think of them, when we think of them at all, which is not often. This disdain, this forgetfulness, has been carefully fostered by Germany and Russia. No one thinks it worth while to interfere. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... by the character they produce, not by the logical consistency of their tenets—had spread throughout Italian society. The Englishmen who came to know Italian society could not avoid being contaminated by the contact. The Italians themselves observed the effect and summed it up in their proverb, Inglese italianato e un diabolo incarnato. What struck the Italians must have been still more noticeable to Englishmen. We have a remarkable proof of this in an interpolation made by Roger Ascham at the end of the first part of his Schoolmaster, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," answered the sheikh. At least, he made use of an Arab proverb of a similar tenor. "However, I will consider the matter. In the meantime, I will receive you and the other Nazarene as guests in my tent, where you will be pleased to exhibit the various articles ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... than to amuse myself with sports and hunting in this country, yet the conquest of the enchanting kingdom of Cashmere, which has never yet been subdued by monarchs of the age, which for natural strength and inaccessibility is unrivalled, and which, for beauty and pleasantness, is a proverb among the most sagacious beholders, became secretly an object of my wishes, BECAUSE I received constantly accounts of the tyranny of the rulers of that region. Accordingly, in a very short time, my brave warriors annexed that kingdom to my dominions. Though the princes of that country ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... a moment, and then continued: "You send a great many missionaries to India and elsewhere. Is it because you have no work for them at home? In my country, my benighted and heathen Sennaar, we have a proverb that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of profession. In Rome, I say, we used to fear lest the people, with crossings and dippings and genuflections and repetitions of a long series of invocations and confessions and ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... round about the Marble Arch, where fiery orators "let themselves go," must be the safety-valve of many an obscure home. Occasionally I go there—just to listen to men and women giving an example of that proverb about "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing." Moreover, there is a certain psychological interest in this rowdy corner of a peaceful park. It is typical of England, for one thing. I don't mean to say that tub-thumping is typical of England, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... secrets of Antichrist. 'From Rome' he says 'flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a 'good Christian,' or in their language, a fool. It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could.' If the German princes and nobles did not 'make short work of them in good earnest,' Germany would either be devastated or would ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... be anxious; I'll answer for it that I can kill anybody as well as any doctor in the town. The proverb usually is, "after death comes the doctor," but you will see that if I have anything to do with it, it will be, "after the doctor comes death!" But now, while I think of it, it must be difficult to play the doctor; and if I do ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... Stella. The threatened man lives long. You know the old proverb: 'The man I most fear is he who says nothing, but smiles in your face while he is planning to stab ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... unfailing courtesy and tact, tolerance and humility, even under the greatest provocation. The man who bet 400 Zuz that he would break Hillel's patience by silly and far-fetched questions lost his own temper at the consideration with which he was treated. And so the proverb became current, "Patience is worth 400 Zuz." And other tales are told of Hillel's considerate dealing with heathens who wished to embrace Judaism, in contrast to the harsh treatment meted out to them ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the night; she had left him only at daybreak. But then, in his state of collapse, he had been hardly conscious of her presence. Now to ask for her or to see her would stamp him coward, say what he might to her. The proverb, that the King's face gives grace, applied to her; and an overture on his side could mean but one thing, that he sought her grace. And that he would not do though the cold waters of death covered him more and more, and the coming of the end—in that quiet chamber, while the September sun ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... become unbearable, but I know how to escape from people of the corporal's class without being rude. I do not tell them I have another engagement—that is not accepted because, as there is no time in Sicily, punctuality is not recognised. If they have a proverb about it, it ought to be, "Never put off till to-morrow what can be done the day after." Nor do I say I have letters to write—that only ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... are very fond of music and are constantly singing. They have a proverb: "He who sings thinks not of evil." Tomaseo thought their folk-songs richer than those of any other nation, ranging as they do over all manner of subjects. They are generally heroical or amorous in character, divided into short verses ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men," I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encourag'd ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... of Pisa and Arezzo," said Cennini. "Ay, Messer Pisano, it is no use for you to look sullen; you may as well carry your banner to our San Giovanni with a good grace. 'Pisans false, Florentines blind'—the second half of that proverb will hold no longer. There come the ensigns of our subject towns and signories, Melema; they will all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year, when they will give ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... profess Christianity; but, as the religion of the Greek church, as I saw it, appears to be practically something very little better than fetich-worship, I cannot exalt them as models of evangelical piety. They are, however, according to a popular proverb, not far from godliness in being very clean in their persons; and not only did they appear so to me, but I was assured by several Russians that, as regarded these singing gypsies, it was invariably the case. As for morality in gypsy girls, their principles are very peculiar. Not a whisper ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... The proverb that no man is a hero to his valet is obviously of masculine manufacture. It is both insincere and untrue: insincere because it merely masks the egotistic doctrine that he is potentially a hero to everyone else, and untrue because a valet, being a fourth-rate man himself, is likely to be the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the letter back, sincerely sorry for Mr. Franklin, for I knew how fond he was of my young lady; and I saw that her mother's account of her had cut him to the heart. "You know the proverb, sir," was all I said to him. "When things are at the worst, they're sure to mend. Things can't be much worse, Mr. Franklin, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... guest also," the old gentleman interrupted. "The question of new men can be solved. But there is time for everything, and now is the time for all of you to rest. As our proverb has it, 'Devagar se vae ao longe'—he goes far who ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... as Jacob in his dealings with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me that proverb and practice too ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... he, 'you know, Baron, the proverb tells us, "It's ill taking the breeks off a Highlandman,"—and the boots are here ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... with which you have been pleased to honour me in your obliging letter, and entirely agree with your quotation, of "Quam bonum et quam jucundum!" We may indeed esteem ourselves as come of the same family, or, according to our country proverb, as being all one man's bairns; and there needed no apology on your part, reverend and dear sir, for demanding of me any information which I may be able to supply respecting the subject of your curiosity. The interview ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... speak; a well-known voice interrupted the silence, and drew nearer and nearer. "Ah," whispered she, lightly, "the proverb is fulfilled, 'Speak of the wolf, and he appears.' That is Lord Elliot and Camilla speaking with such ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... comin'. Talkin' to this same German—He's always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money market—'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says 'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' to friend, you've giv' ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... air-guns, plots, and intrigues, of all kinds. It is time to hunt down the chief men of these bravoes who have been sent here from England, Germany, Russia, and Italy, and I have had enough of illustrating the old proverb, 'Hang the little thief and let the great one run.' I mean to have the great thief and to hang him, for that is the only way of intimidating these fellows and inspiring ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so full of hope and youth in all its breathings—that rainbow that we may, if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... be too absurd, certainly. You have heard the proverb— Hold in contempt the innocent words of those Who from their infancy have known no guile:— But trust the treacherous counsels of the man Who makes a ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... proverb—'Subtract from a Spaniard all his good qualities, and the remainder makes a pretty fair Portuguese;' but, as there was nobody else to gamble with, she entered freely into their society. Very soon she suspected that there was ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... greatest historian observes of it) "the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history," which is, indeed (as he says), "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." The influence of Rome extended beyond his borders. As in modern times it has become a proverb that when a particular European nation is satisfied the peace of the world is assured, so in the days whereof we are treating it would seem that Rome had only to desire repose, for the surrounding ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... in favor of the general interest, but in so doing he came very near traversing, unwittingly, the plans of the general government by his local action, laudable and proper as that certainly was. He was, however, professionally lucky to a proverb, and escaped this mischance by a hair's breadth. The purposed detachment had already started for Jamaica, and he was accompanying it in person, when there joined him on March 25th, off the island of St. Kitt's, not far from Antigua, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... than Angera. The proverb says, "He who would know the pains of the infernal regions, could go to Angera in the summer and to Arona in the winter." The neighbourhood is exquisite. Unless during the extreme heat of summer, it is the best place to stay at on the Lago Maggiore. The Monte Motterone is within the compass of ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... nigger; and when you have keeled a great many Kaffirs, by the lash, with the crocodiles, or what-not, then a white man or two makes less deeference. I acknowledge there were too many on board that sheep; but what was one to do? You have your Engleesh proverb about the dead men and the stories; it was necessary to make clin swip. You see ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... stables. Having had a serious difference with Diana, he had made up his mind to try whether a long absence on his part would not have the effect of reducing her to submission, and at the same time remembering the proverb, that "absence makes the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... I believe that this complimentary proverb originally referred to the learning of the English clergy, but it would apply with equal truth to their social agreeableness. When I was writing about the Art of Conversation and the men who excelled in it, I ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... one of the shrewdest men of his day, so shrewd that by common consent he was placed foremost in antiquity among the Seven Sages, or seven shrewd men, whose practical wisdom became a world's tradition, enshrined in anecdote and crystallised in proverb. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... dear good peasants are taking your father in to a dead certainty. You know the Russian proverb, "The Russian ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... conversation she displays a grace which is otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were not echoing at the present moment through all ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Tom. "You weigh the butter, I will weigh the sugar, Rosy the treacle, and Margaret measure the vinegar. It is such an advantage to have so many helpers; we get the work done so quickly. There is a proverb which says 'Many hands make light work.' ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... than some of the native wines do): they accept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as they grow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicated by beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says, have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now, and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said," says the same author, "that the American has no talent for lying, and distrust of a man's word strikes the Yankee as specifically European." Now in England "an American lie" has stood almost as a proverb; yet the German writer is entirely in earnest, though personally I do not agree with him. He sees the symptoms, but the diagnosis is wrong. The American has an excellent talent for lying, but in business he has learned that falsehood and deception are poor commercial weapons. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... want to gather some of the flowers—who does not want to gather Roses? We want some fully opened blossoms and many of the dainty buds. But the straggling stems of the Rose soon teach us the truth of the proverb: "No Rose without a Thorn." The stems are thickly covered with thorns; these are not only sharp, but hooked as well, and we do not get our bunch of roses without a scratch ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... Pierre-Pointue, where the mule-path ends. Neither prayers nor arguments could persuade the Commander to get out of bed. With his cotton nightcap over his ears and his face to the wall, he contented himself with replying to Tartarin's objurgations by a cynical Tarasconese proverb: "Whoso has the credit of getting up early may sleep until midday..." As for Bom-pard, he kept repeating, the whole time, "Ah, vai, Mont Blanc... what a humbug..." Nor did they rise until the P. C. A. had issued a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the blockade runners, received as high as one hundred dollars in gold per month, and a bounty of fifty dollars for every successful trip, which from Nassau could be easily made in seven days. Other people were paid in proportion, and as the old proverb says, "What comes over the Devil's back is spent under his breast," the money so obtained was squandered recklessly, and all ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the use of picking out all the exceptions to prove your point? Of course the exception proves the rule—at least so the proverb says—but a great many exceptions prove nothing that I know of, except—that is—but what's the use of arguing, child, you'll never be convinced. Come, how much do you want ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... "tired and terribly jaded horses." But, in telling of his exploits, he says nothing about losing two pieces of his artillery. The saying of Bonaparte's, "False as a war bulletin," has passed into a proverb, and this bulletin of Gen. Shelby's is ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... northerner? A soulless cult of rhythm, and then, when the simplest of melodies emerges, they cling to it with the passionate delight of a child who has discovered the moon. These men are still in the age of platitudes, so far as music is concerned; an infantile aria is to them what some foolish rhymed proverb is to the Arabs: a thing of God, a portent, a joy ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... for it is said that no phrase becomes a proverb until after a century's experience of its truth. In England it is proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... impotent language. The age of reasoners had passed away with Barrow, South, and Sherlock; and a studied mingling of affected simplicity and deliberate nonsense constituted the sole merits of the pulpit in the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, according to the proverb, that "when things come to the worst, they must mend," came the gentle enthusiasm of Wesley and the fierce declamation of Whitefield, both differing utterly in doctrine, practice, and principle, yet both regarding themselves as missionaries to restore ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... lady. Maria, Countess of Coventry, died aged twenty-seven, not untouched by scandal, and a victim to her own frivolity. Mrs Gunning received a valuable appointment as Housekeeper at one of the royal palaces. "The Luck of the Gunnings" became a proverb. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... many strong men habitually do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in their hearts to recognise how great they are. Many a man whose affectations and assumptions are a proverb, has lost the magnificent virtue of simplicity, for no other reason than that he needed courage to take his own measure, and so finally confirm to himself the reality of his pretensions. With Byron, as with some of his prototypes among the men of action in France and elsewhere, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... sight, out of mind, seems to be a proverb which applies to enemies as well as friends. Because the French army was no longer seen from the cliffs of Dover; because the sound of cannon was no longer heard by the debauched London bathers on the Sussex coast; because ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... in time. Our friend—your husband—has many of the English idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire—' You know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man to take a rational and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stepan Lanovitch—the owner of this house, by the way. His reception of the news I have ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were shabby fellows ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Warren, taking down two bars for the girls to go through into a green lane fenced in on either side with a heavy wire fence. "Talk and work, mixed, are all right, but all talk and no work makes Jack a poor hired man—haven't you ever heard that proverb?" ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." There is truth back of most proverbs, although to-day both horses and men of Texas are losing something of their erstwhile bronco character. That out of such conditions, out of ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... sanded, the door of the toril was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the pick of the corrida should be fifth on the list. It was also a compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... me in that and in some other things also,' M. de Rosny answered, 'it would be very well for France.' Though he spoke courteously, he threw so much weight and independence into his words that I thought of the old proverb, 'A good master, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... qualities. The recognition of the claims of their relations might be emulated by our higher civilization; so impressed upon their natures was the duty to those who were related to them, that their language contains a proverb: "Ca-si-ri pi-rus, he wi-ti ti-ruk-ta-pi-di-hu-ru—Why, even the worms, they love each other—much more should men." They were also very hospitable, very sociable, and fond of telling stories. They really had a literature of stories and songs, which, if they could be gathered in their entirety, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish," which has come into vogue again in connection with the revised income tax—for who can deny that the saving of the penny is wise?—is lost in obscurity; but there is no doubt that it is very ancient. Many nations have the same proverb in different terms as applied to their own currency. In France the coins to which the saying best applies would be the sou and the louis; in America, the cent and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... His rural ballads and idyls are as genuinely American as any thing that our poets have written, and have been recommended, as such, to English working-men by Whittier's co-religionist, John Bright. The most popular of these is probably Maud Muller, whose closing couplet has passed into proverb. Skipper Ireson's Ride is also very current. Better than either of them, as poetry, is Telling the Bees. But Whittier's masterpiece in work of a descriptive and reminiscent kind is Snow Bound, 1866, a New England fireside ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that their alarms ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren |
