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More "Proverb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proverb. Thank God, I won your love as a vagabond. I can treasure it as the richest of my princely possessions. You have not said that you will go to my ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... many of the darksome legends of Brittany, it may be doubted if any are more awe-inspiring than that which we are now about to relate. "Those who are affianced three times without marrying shall burn in hell," says an old Breton proverb, and it is probably this aphorism which has given the Bretons such a strong belief in the sacred nature of a betrothal. The fantastic ballad from which this story is taken is written in the dialect of Leon, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Toto without hesitation; "and everything that falls from heaven is good," he added, quoting an ancient proverb. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... it when it gave up; and the workmen generally declared it to be a "perfect plague." Mr. Blackett did not obtain credit amongst his neighbours for these experiments. Many laughed at his machines, regarding them only in the light of crotchets,—frequently quoting the proverb that "a fool and his money are soon parted." Others regarded them as absurd innovations on the established method of hauling coal; and pronounced that ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... boy, and with no stain upon his name. But while memory whispered of past innocence, conscience told him of present guilt; told him that if his father could have foreseen what he would become, his heart would have broken; told him, and he knew it, that his name was a proverb and a byeword in the school. But the prominent and the recurring thought was ever this—"Is it too late to mend? Is the door shut against me?" For Wilton remembered how once before his mind was harrowed by fear and guilt as he had listened to Mr Percival's parting sermon on that ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... field or two, one of which seemed yet under cultivation and shewed corn stalks and pumpkin vines, but the other was in that poverty-stricken state described by the proverb as 'I once had.' The house was a mere skeleton. Clapboards, indeed, there were still, and shingles; but doors and windows had long since been removed—by man or Time,—and through the open spaces you could see here a cupboard door, and there a stairway, and there ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... were numerous houses or places of resort for gambling, genteel and ungenteel. In vain did the officers of the law seem to exert their utmost vigilance; if they drove the serpent out of one hole it soon glided into another; never was the proverb—'Where there's a will there's ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... There is an old proverb which all the world knows, Anything may be spoke, if 't be under the rose: Then now let us speak, whilst we are in the hint, Of the state of the land, and th' ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... people, as with most nations, "things are worth what they will sell for," and the dollar is mightier than the sword. As good as gold has become a proverb—as though it were the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people; for here every ancient proverb carries with it the force of a law. While they are by nature quiet, passive, and timid, the state of society and the abuse of the laws by which they are governed, have rendered them indifferent, unfeeling, and even cruel, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... he said, "to the proverb that 'a rolling stone gathers no moss.' I've gathered all I want or know what to do with; and now I'm married I mean to take a rest. I haven't decided yet where or how, but it will be somewhere in England. We're looking for a house in London, and later ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Europeans who know the Chinese well would deny. The Chinese are naturally reserved, earnest and good-natured; for the occasional outbursts of ferocious violence, notably against foreign settlements, are no index to the national character. There is a national proverb that "the men of the Four Seas are all brothers," and even strangers can travel through the country without meeting with rudeness, much less outrage. If the Chinese character is inferior to the European, this inferiority lies in the fact that the Chinaman's whole philosophy of life disinclines ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... coves the evening air is thrusting forth a thin film of mist to spread a white floor above the waters. The gathering darkness deepens the quiet of the lake, and bids us, at least for this time, to forsake it. "De soir fontaines, de matin montaignes," says the old French proverb,—Morning for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... triumph commenced by his purchasing for an old song a dragoon's horse at Mallow, who was so savage "that he was obliged to be fed through a hole in the wall." After one of Sullivan's lessons the trooper drew a car quietly through Mallow, and remained a very proverb of gentleness for years after. In fact, with mule or horse, one half-hour's lesson from Sullivan was enough; but they relapsed in other hands. Sullivan's own account of the secret was, that he originally ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... crowd, the old proverb has it, there are a knave and a fool. Between Sir George bursting with passion, and the door by which he had entered and to which he turned, stood Lady Dunborough. Her ladyship had been one of the first to hear the news and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... takes no account of ameliorating circumstances. The sanguinary ingenuity in the constant slights and stabs to which she is exposed makes her life a martyrdom and finally kills her. "Contempt will pierce the armor of a tortoise," says an oriental proverb; and poor Ragni had no chelonian armor. When her most harmless remarks are misinterpreted and her most generous acts become weapons wherewith to slay her, she loses all heart for resistance, and merely lies down ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed contemptible in comparison with this facile ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... worldly way, the men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb, that 'Good times, and bad times, and all times pass over.' Of all men, perhaps, who have lived in our days, the most truly successful was the great Duke of Wellington; and one thing, I believe, which helped him most to become great, was that he was so wonderfully free from vain ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... applauds them while it tramples better men beneath its brutal feet. Greatness and Gall, genius and goose-speech, sound and sense have become synonyms. If you fall on the wrong side of the market men will quote the proverb about a fool and his money: if on the right side you're a Napoleon of finance. Lead a successful revolt and you are a pure patriot whose memory should be preserved to latest posterity; head an unsuccessful uprising and you are a miserable ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... how I love thee'—oh the dear eloquence those few short words contain, when they are sent with lovers' accents to a soul all languishing! But now—alas, thy love is more familiar grown—oh take the other part of the proverb too, and say it has bred contempt, for nothing less than that your letter shews, but more it does, and that is indifference, less to be borne than hate, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... I shall not. There is an old proverb which says, 'Trust not the man who promises with an oath.' Is not my simple word, then, the ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... who are not far from the kingdom of God; who, nevertheless, are not within that kingdom, and who, therefore, if they remain where they are, are as certainly lost as if they were at an infinite distance from the kingdom. The homely proverb applies to them: "A miss is as good as a mile." They are those who suppose that elevated moral sentiments, an aesthetic pleasure in noble acts or noble truths, a glow and enthusiasm of the soul at the sight or the recital of examples of Christian virtue and Christian grace, a disgust at the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... own gratification in procuring honey and in regulating its household, and as, according to the old proverb, what is one man's meat is another's poison, it sometimes carries honey to its cell, which is prejudicial to us. Dr. Barton in the fifth volume, of the "American Philosophical Transactions," speaks of several plants that yield ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... have? You know your own English proverb: 'Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies.' It's no pleasure to me to fool people that way, but I must answer them somehow when they ask what made a cripple of me; and I may as well invent something pretty while I'm about it. You saw ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... An old proverb says: "It is not work, but worry, that kills." How true this is. Congenial work is a health-bringer, a necessity for a normal life, a joy; it keeps the body in order, promotes digestion, induces the sleep of perfect restoration and is one of man's ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... pretty, the wives and daughters of the principal merchants of Rouen, who were waiting to compliment him. He seated himself in this charming circle, and remained there perhaps a quarter of an hour; then passed into another room, where awaited him the representation of a little proverb, containing couplets expressing, as may be imagined, the attachment and gratitude of the inhabitants of Rouen. This play was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... roads are execrable. The Chinese have a proverb which says: "A road is good for ten years and bad for ten thousand," and this applies most excellently to those of Yuen-nan. The main caravan highways are paved with huge stones to make them passable during the rainy season, but after a few years' wear the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... were heavy trout; but no sooner had they departed, than I became firmly convinced, in accordance with a psychological law which holds good all over the world, that they were both enormous salmon. Even the Turks have a proverb which says, "Every fish that escapes appears larger than it is." No one can alter that conviction, because no one can logically refute it. Our best blessings, like our largest fish, always depart before we have ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the poor devil will not do your business as well as you would do it yourself," said William: "you know the proverb of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... tell you 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 ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... is so now, if it wasn't in olden time. The proverb says, 'Young people think old people to be fools, but old people know young people to be fools.' We must alter that, for I says, 'Old people think young people to be fools, but young people know ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the day peace reigned at Wood End House. Mr. Churton, whose absence at mealtime was never made the subject of remark, did not return to tea when the three ladies met again; for now, according to that proverb of the Peninsula which says "Tell me who you are with, and I will tell you who you are," Fan had ceased to belong to the extensive genus Young Person, and might only be classified as Young Lady, at all events for so ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... down the windward side of the wagging coach. This is a mere trifle. The Jimville stage is built for five passengers, but when you have seven, with four trunks, several parcels, three sacks of grain, the mail and express, you begin to understand that proverb about the road which has been reported to you. In time you learn to engage the high seat beside the driver, where you get good air and the best company. Beyond the desert rise the lava flats, scoriae strewn; sharp-cutting ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... became a proverb of hospitality and good cheer. The two sang duets, or Caroline recited poems, while Carl improvised accompaniments; excursions to the fields, and water parties, and hilarious reunions of the opera-troupe kept life busy. Later, he took ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... weather which had prevailed since the Kansas drifted into the estuary seemed to become more settled as the month wore. Suarez said it was unprecedented. Not only had he not witnessed in five years three consecutive days without rain, snow, or hail, but the Indians had a proverb: "Who so-ever sees fire-in-the-sky (the sun) for seven days shall see the leaf red a hundred times." In effect, centenarians were needed to bear testimony to a week's fine weather; whereas no man—most ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... and common friendship, for you went out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it required, not merely kindness, but courage to do so; to have been mentioned by you, in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time, 'when all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still more complimentary to my self-esteem. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... of policy which bring him preferment or popularity are pretty sure to have been devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during the watches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good mothers make saints and heroes, says the proverb, and beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops. Their influence is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs. Proudie, it is exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly because the influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending as it does less ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... mischievous smile again; and she spoke much as she might have done to an eagerly listening child. "Six years pass by. My father is again in the east of France, and he goes to the old village. He is received with enthusiasm; his name has become a proverb. Rossignol pere, alas, is dead, long since. Dear Madame Rossignol lives, but my father sees at a glance that she will not live long. The excitement of meeting him was almost too much for her—pale, sweet little woman. Thibaut was keeping shop with her, but he seemed out of place there; a ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... grace, or acquirement belonging without dispute to the one, and which the other lacked. What was it? She had heard her father say when talking of gentlemen,—of that race of gentlemen with whom it had been his lot to live,—that you could not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The use of the proverb had offended her much, for she had known well whom he had then regarded as a silk purse and whom as a sow's ear. But now she perceived that there had been truth in all this, though she was as anxious as ever to think well of her husband, and to endow him with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... evening; and, although she would not allow him a chair, she permitted him to remain standing at the counter and smoke his cigar while they conversed. It was this indulgence which occasioned people to think that she would marry the doctor; but at last they got tired of waiting, and it became a sort of proverb in Fisher's Alley and its precincts, when things were put off to an indefinite period, to say, "Yes, that will be done when the widow marries ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... used the utmost precaution in her visits to the top landing. In spite of the pains they took to watch her movements, it was some days before they found the propitious moment. "All things come to those who wait," says the old proverb, however, and it proved true ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... spiritual possession; and later on, episcopal rule succeeded to the influence of Loyola's disciples. The relative estimation in which these various orders of the Church were held being illustrated by a Canadian proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the coble; but so long as it holds the vessel will lie well over and sail with amazing swiftness. Years upon years of apprenticeship are needed before a man can manage one of these crank boats; in fact, the fishermen's proverb says, "You must be born in a coble if you want to learn anything ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... go out. The others sit in line and choose a proverb having as many words as there are players. Thus, if there were eight players, "They love too much who die for love" would do; or if more than eight, two short proverbs might be chosen. Each player having made certain what ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... success of her experiment. However, she knew that Nan could be trusted to repeat to the other servants all that she had said, and that it would lose nothing in the recital; and, as for the future, one of Hetty's first principles of action was an old proverb which her grandfather had explained to her when she ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... where river water is drank, which has its source from dissolving snows. This idea is a very ancient one, but perhaps not on that account to be the more depended upon, as authors copy one another. Tumidum guttur quis miratur in alpibus, seems to have been a proverb in the time of Juvenal. The inferior people of Derby are much subject to this disease, but whether more so than other populous towns, I can not determine; certain it is, that they chiefly drink the water of the Derwent, which arises in a mountainous country, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the jewels was the same who had executed such a neat manoeuvre at Gilling's. One or two of the papers actually published leaderettes upon the subject, severely criticising the incompetency of the police in such matters. I have since heard, however, that at Scotland Yard there is a proverb that the wealthier the thief the less chance of his being caught. Bindo and his friends certainly did not lack funds. The various hauls they had made, even since my association with them, must have put many thousands into ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... having thus been presented, I turned it over to Mr. Low, who agreed to bring it to-morrow morning with such modifications, omissions, and additions as seemed best to him. The old proverb, "'T is always darkest just before daylight," seems exemplified in the affairs of to-day, since the kind reception given to my draft of the report, and the satisfaction expressed regarding it, form a most happy ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... country, and especially upon Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose inhabitants began to fear lest New York, Alexandria, or Richmond should snatch the Western trade from Philadelphia or Baltimore. The truth that underlies the proverb that "history repeats itself" is well illustrated by the fact that the first macadamized road in America was built in Pennsylvania, for here also originated the pack-horse trade and the Conestoga horse and wagon; here the first ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... deeps, to the waters of which man may in nowise say, thus far shall ye come and no farther. The community I now speak of, the white population of Darien, should be a religious one, to judge by the number of Churches it maintains. However, we know the old proverb, and, at that rate, it may not be so godly after all. Mr. —— and his brother have been called upon at various times to subscribe to them all; and I saw this morning a most fervent appeal, extremely ill-spelled, from a gentleman ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Enlightened by the shrewd comments of the old sergeant, the quiet penetration of his father's glance, which saw everything, he soon realized that fraud and self-seeking were become the ruling impulse in Beausejour. "Like master, like man" was a proverb which he saw daily fulfilled. Vergor thought more of robbing than of serving his country, and from him his subordinates took their cue. Le Loutre, with his fiery fanaticism, went up, by contrast, in the estimation of the honest-hearted ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not, yet the French esteem this fish highly; and to that end have this proverb " He that hath Breams in his pond, is able to bid his friend welcome "; and it is noted, that the best part of a Bream is his belly ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... slender footstalk about as long as the leaf, and compressed laterally from near the base. They are thus agitated by the slightest breath of wind with that quivering, restless motion characteristic of all the poplars, but in none so striking as this. 'To quiver like an aspen-leaf has become a proverb. The foliage appears lighter than that of most other trees, from continually displaying the under side ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... personality assume an interest altogether out of proportion to their intrinsic importance. Our debt to Ellwood is, it must be admitted, much less than it might have been, if he had thought a little more of Milton and a little less of his somewhat stupid self and the sect to which he belonged. But, as the proverb says, we must not look a gift-horse in the mouth, and we are the richer for the Quaker's reminiscences. With Ellwood's work, the History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself, we are only concerned so far as it bears on his relation with Milton. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... become compressed into expressions which to-day we recognize as proverbs. The words of the Mother Duck, "Into the water he goes if I have to kick him in," became a Scandinavian proverb. "A little bird told it," a common saying of to-day, appears in Andersen's Nightingale and in Thumbelina. But this saying is traceable at least to the third story of the fourth night in Straparola, translated by Keightley, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... and the corruption was suggested by the epithet of Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however, the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or darkens," and it corresponds literally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb, preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... contemporaries, and of most of ours too. Johnson liked satisfying food, such as a leg of pork, or veal pie well stuffed, with plum pie and sugar, and he devoured enormous quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea has almost passed into a proverb,—he has actually been credited with twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu, spoken to Miss ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of Mevagissy Bay; and, as Ray tells us: "These are two forelands, well known to sailors, nigh twenty miles asunder, and the proverb passeth for the periphrasis of an impossibility." The Head, which is nearly insular, has a chapel dedicated to St. Michael on its summit. St. Michael was widely claimed as a patron of lofty and exposed places (such ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... a sea to do with arms? What has a camel,[Footnote: Meantime, though using this case as an illustration, I believe that camel is, after all, the true translation; first, on account of the undoubted proverb in the East about the elephant going through the needle's eye; the relation is that of contrast as to magnitude; and the same relation holds as to the camel and the needle's eye; secondly, because ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... crawl on his fours with his little child upon his back. If you would raise good children let your example at home be accordingly. As you will teach them so they will act. If you are a devil they will scarcely be angels. Children are keen observers. An old proverb says that a father is a looking-glass by which children dress themselves. See to it, fathers, that the glass be clean, so that your children's morals may ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... spider, it is said, changes her web every twenty-four hours, and the part of the day she chooses to do this is always significant. If it occurs a little before sunset, the night will be fine and clear. Hence the old French proverb: "Araignee ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... a halter to gain a horse. From the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock, they began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place to place, and land to land, making a little here and a little there, and controverting the old proverb, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have facetiously received the nickname of "The Pilgrims," that is to say, a people who are always seeking a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... must be risked in one desperate cast of the dice. "I and time against all men," says the proverb. No fresh caravan would be likely to come till spring. Meanwhile they must play against time. Burning the packet to ashes, they replaced it with a forged order instructing the commander on the Pacific ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... and well-dressed on his Lordship's property;" terms of abuse, which, together with the cause that produced them, are at this moment well known to thousands as expressions whose general occurrence on such, occasions has almost fixed them into proverb. Will our English neighbors believe this? That we know not, but we can assure ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their spear thrusts, it is said that the great king prophesied of the coming of white men who ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... warn 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 I can make love to you in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... hands; prostitution is carried on to an enormous extent, and although loathsome concustant [sic] diseases stare the stranger in the face in the street, in the market-place, in the church, and at the fountain; 'Drunken as a Galician' is a proverb; and superstitions forgotten, abandoned in the rest of Spain, are clung to here with surprising pertinacity, the clergy exerting themselves to uphold them by carrying on a very extensive sale in charms, verifying the old saying, 'Witches are found ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... on him. When the asas said they were ready, the wolf shook himself, spurned against and dashed the fetter on the ground, so that the broken pieces flew a long distance. Thus he broke loose out of Drome. Since then it has been held as a proverb, "to get loose out of Lading" or "to dash out of Drome," whenever anything is extraordinarily hard. The asas now began to fear that they would not get the wolf bound. So Alfather sent the youth, who is called Skirner, and is Frey's messenger, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... it shall come to pass in that day, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say: How hath the oppressor ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... and with cutting sarcasm: "Come now, I see that you don't catch the criminals nor do you know what is going on in your own house, yet you try to set yourself up as a preacher to point out their duties to others. You ought to keep in mind that proverb about the fool ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... be held as a feather-weight in the balance. Such as mine is, it is gathered mainly from the tone of casual conversation, from which I should conclude that a considerable proportion of Americans read a well-known proverb as "All's fair in love or business." Men—I will not say of a high character and standing, but men of a standing and character who would not have done it in England—told me instances of their sharp practices in business, with an evident expectation of my admiration for their ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... contemplates Majesty and its Satellites in Eclipse XLI One Quarrel is compromised, and another decided by unusual Arms XLII An unexpected Rencontre, and a happy Revolution in the Affairs of our Adventurer XLIII Fathom justifies the Proverb, "What's bred in the Bone will never come out of the Flesh" XLIV Anecdotes of Poverty, and Experiments for the Benefit of those whom it may concern XLV Renaldo's Distress deepens, and Fathom's Plot thickens ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... may happen? When I was a kid in the circus—you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a travelling circus"—how simply he brought this out!—"the fat woman, we called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the people will ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... educated man: and if one is to be found who cannot read and write well, and accomplish far more abstruse things with his head, he is dubbed—a donkey. He is not now the debauched ignoramus which has made the English sailor a proverb all over the world. Education is of little value if it is not capable of changing a man's habits for the better. There is, however, much room for improvement in certain national traits; apropos of this, the "Mail" for September, 20th, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... causes of hysteria are deprivation of the pleasures of love, griefs connected with this passion, and disorders of menstruation. Foville in 1833 and Landouzy in 1846 advocated somewhat similar views. The acute Laycock in 1840 quoted as "almost a medical proverb" the saying, "Salacitas major, major ad hysteriam proclivitas," fully indorsing it. More recently still Clouston has defined hysteria as "the loss of the inhibitory influence exercised on the reproductive and sexual instincts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... This formal fool, your man, speaks nought but proverbs, And speak men what they can to him, he'll answer With some rhyme-rotten sentence or old saying, Such spokes as th'ancient of the parish use, With, "Neighbour, 'tis an old proverb and a true, Goose giblets are good meat, old sack better than new;" Then says another, "Neighbour, that is true;" And when each man hath drunk his gallon round— A penny pot, for that's the old man's gallon— Then doth he lick his lips, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... rose to her feet. "My medical attendant," she said, with an assumption of dignity; "I must explain myself." She held up one hand, outstretched; and counted her fingers with the other. "First my husband. Then my son. Now my maid. One, two, three. Mr. Null, do you know the proverb? 'It's the last hair that breaks the camel's back.'" She suddenly dropped on her knees. "Will somebody pray for me?" she cried piteously. "I don't know how to pray for myself. Where ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... endeavouring to increase it by giving advice. I think that the right of giving advice has of late years been largely used; and that it has sometimes been not only used, but abused. Still, there is truth in the proverb which says that lookers-on see more of the game than the players; and cases do occur when warning given by a friendly and neutral Power—by a Power which is well known to have no interest of its ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... of better days, which cheered the hopes of the Pastors of the Irish, when the twelfth century had entered on its third quarter. The pious old Gaelic proverb, which says, "on the Cross the face of Christ was looking westwards—," was again on the lips and in the hearts of men, and though much remained to be done, much had been already done, and done under difficulties greater than any that remained ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... thirteenth century, John de Trevisa, says that country-people "fondeth [that is, try] with great bysynes for to speke Freynsch for to be more y-told of." The country-people did not succeed very well, as the ordinary proverb shows: "Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French." Boys at school were expected to turn their Latin into French, and in the courts of law French only was allowed to be spoken. But in 1362 Edward III. gave his assent ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... what I say," I continue, dragging my wicker chair along the shortly-shorn sward a little nearer to him. "Never! nobody ever does; I am a proverb and a by-word for my malapropos speeches. Mother always trembles when she hears me talking to a stranger. The first day that I dined after you came, Algy made me a list of things that I was not ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... contemplates the skies, and departs, skipping to avoid the mud,—because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other citizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, the archway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed's edge, as the proverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. No one is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets forth, makes sure of a scrap of blue sky through the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... wrong sort. I have known many a one who has lost name, fame, character, all that a woman holds most dear, and who has brought an honest name to disgrace, and broken a mother's heart, by mixing with bad company. The proverb says that a person is known by his friends, by the company he keeps. You cannot touch fire and escape burning, and you cannot keep company with those who laugh at religion, who make a mock at sin, who never pray, who talk immodestly, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... of "some folks" and "other folks" had left the proverb dark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till I ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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
... thought before they came to pass, or while they were taking place, that, only after all was over, he found himself compelled to exclaim in great surprise: "Whence have all these things come to me, when I never gave them a thought, or when I thought of something very different?" So that the proverb is true, "Man proposeth, but God disposeth"; [Prov. 16:9] that is, God turns things about, and brings to pass something far different from that which man proposes. Therefore, from this consideration ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... need, sir, is a friend indeed," said the stranger impressively; and Sam's face brightened, for he had heard the proverb before, and it promised to bring the conversation, which he had found some difficulty in following, down to safe, familiar ground. "Allow me to introduce you—but excuse me, I have not the pleasure of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb that "good times and bad times ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... this part of Surrey, that the large vale near my own dwelling, was anciently call'd Holmes-Dale; famous for the flight of the Danes: The inhabitants of great antiquity (in their manners, habits, speech) have a proverb, Holmes-Dale never won; he never shall. It had once a fort, call'd Homes-Dale Castle: I know not whether it might not be that of Rygate; but leaving this uncertain, and return to the plant, I have often wonder'd at our curiosity ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... whom I have just translated what I have written on our subject to you, says—'If you loved me thoroughly, you would not make so many fine reflections, which are only good forbirsi i scarpi,'—that is, 'to clean shoes withal,'—a Venetian proverb of appreciation, which is applicable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the greatest absurdities, even after they are exposed in the clearest manner. All religions are easily combated, but with difficulty extirpated. Reason avails nothing against custom, which becomes, says the proverb, a second nature. Many persons, in other respects sensible, even after having examined the rotten foundation of their belief, adhere to it in contempt of the most striking arguments. Whenever we complain of religion, its shocking absurdities, and impossibilities, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... not famous for these virtues—the restless, ever-moving class that pioneer the way towards the setting sun. But perhaps we are leaving the boy propped too long on his hoe. Let us take a more critical look at him. "Fine feathers don't make fine birds," observes the old proverb. Forgetting the dress, then, please study his face. A clear, deep-blue eye, delicately-arched eyebrows, regular features, mouth and chin indicating decision and native refinement, and a well-developed forehead. Ah, here may be a diamond in the ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Ludlum's Dog (No. 24. p. 382.).—This proverb is repeated somewhat differently in The Doctor, &c., "As lazy as Ludlum's dog, as leaned his head against a wall to bark." I venture to suggest that this is simply one of the large class of alliterative proverbs so common in every language, and often without meaning. In Devonshire ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... the chief sources of his greatness. At that period, perhaps at any period, he would have been incapable of such brilliant and dashing exploits as had made the name of Egmont so famous. It had even become a proverb, "the counsel of Orange, the execution of Egmont," yet we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of St. Quentin in the great political combat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... subject to violent winds, of which the most disastrous is the mistral. The popular proverb is, however, somewhat exaggerated, Avenio ventosa, sine vento venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa (windy Avignon, pest-ridden when there is no wind, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... my tears in your absence," said the Professor gaily, "with this glorious thought. It is my auspicious hand that has given the first push to your fortune in the world. Go, my friend! When your sun shines in Cumberland (English proverb), in the name of heaven make your hay. Marry one of the two young Misses; become Honourable Hartright, M.P.; and when you are on the top of the ladder remember that Pesca, at the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... honey-moon lasts, for so long, perhaps, may novelty have a charm; but when that is ended, the lust of variety, the distinguishing characteristic of a rake, haunts him incessantly, like a ghost, and soon extinguishes all his principles of love, justice, and generosity. It is true, indeed, the proverb goes, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. It may be so, but then it is a truth of equal importance with this, that a pick-pocket going to the gallows is an honest man. His hands are tied behind him, and he has it not in his ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... the ministry to an extent that has not been approached by our English churches. (See Appendix under Sons of the Church.) Nearly all of these are bi-lingual in their ministerial work and many of them serve exclusively English churches. There is a proverb about killing the goose that lays the golden egg, which we would do ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... he cried, in an animated tone. "It was I who encroached on your time, and must bear the blame, if blame indeed there be. There is a homely proverb, that 'many hands make light work.' Come, let ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ARE OFTEN FATAL.—Begin well, and the habit of doing well will become quite as easy as the habit of doing badly. "Well begun is half ended," says the proverb; "and a good beginning is half the battle." Many promising young men have irretrievably injured themselves by a first false step at the commencement of life; while others, of much less promising talents, have succeeded simply ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... not ascribe it either to Greek deity, or to superstition; we call it luck. And he who possesses luck should be happy notwithstanding the proverb which hints the contrary. Luck means more than riches—it means happiness in most of those things, which the fortunate possessor of it may choose to touch. Should he speculate, he is successful; if he marry, his wife will surely ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,— to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American women. Without this there can be no lasting progress. The Sandwich Island proverb says,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the social ritual (Sittlichkeit). It assumes also participation, to a certain extent at least, in the memories, the tradition, and the culture of a new social group. The proverb "In Rome do as the Romans do" is a basic principle of naturalization. The cosmopolitan is the person who readily accommodates himself to the codes of conduct ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... ye,' retorted Lammie. 'Dinna ye ken a proverb whan ye hear 't? De'il hae ye! ye're as sharpset as a missionar'. I was only gaun to say ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... fortunate than rich," says an old proverb, and the correctness of this saying was fully exemplified in the life of Don Rodrigo de Cespedes. Indeed, his whole existence had been a series of mischances and unfortunate results; and he appeared especially reserved as a proper subject on whom the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... napping again, and so they erected a kind of a staging near to the camp, on which the valuable loads of meat and furs were safely placed. Memotas had to have another drive or two at them, and so he ironically congratulated them on their late precautions. Sam said it looked like the old proverb of locking your stable after the horse was stolen. Alec's more charitable remark was, "It is best to be made wise by the loss, and then strive to save ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... 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 have ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of these times ought to put no faith in the bulletins, despatches, notes, and proclamations which have emanated from Bonaparte, or passed through his hands. For my part, I believe that the proverb, "As great a liar as a bulletin," has as much truth in it as the axiom, two and two ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... who came to consult the oracle. After these preliminaries, he descended into the cave by a narrow passage. This place could be entered only in the night. The person returned from the cave by the same narrow passage, bat walking backwards. He appeared melancholy and defected; and hence the proverb which was applied to a person low- spirited and gloomy, "He has been consulting ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... something by slow degrees, and this might be set down to be the truth of that old proverb to the effect that the race is not always to the swift. Perhaps, if he ever had another boat built to order, he would not sacrifice safety and comfort to the mad desire to make ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Grate, she was most exemplary Devout in the Cloister, doing more Penance, and imposing a more rigid Severity and Task on her self, than was requir'd, giving such rare Examples to all the Nuns that were less Devout, that her Life was a Proverb, and a President, and when they would express a very Holy Woman indeed, they would say, 'She ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and turned away. She hesitated at the corner of the street, gazing up and down. To start on a search for Lionel appeared to be as hopeful a project as that search renowned in proverb—the looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. The custom in Deerham was not to light the lamps on a moonlight night, so the street, as Lucy glanced on either side, lay white and quiet; no glare to disturb its peace, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tell you," said Estella. "First, notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may set your mind at rest that these people never will—never would, in hundred years—impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of their being so busy and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... give you a new proverb, one I have found useful at times. Put not thy finger into thy neighbor's pie, lest it get stuck ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... our intentions from them, but to keep the pair apart from all brother-and-sister communism, until such time as each heart begins to have its natural craving for a congenial spirit,—when, in sooth, it looks for others than brothers and sisters to cling to. It is a very old, perhaps a very vulgar proverb, that "familiarity breeds contempt;" and we assuredly think, that the constant fireside association of young folks, trained up together in bread-and-butter ease, is more apt to generate calm friendship than ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... was not good 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, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... he can do till he is tried. That is a proverb (at least if it is not it ought to be) which embraces much deep truth. The way in which David Boone set personal danger at defiance, and seemed to regard suffocation by smoke or roasting by fire as terminations of life worth courting, was astounding, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... checkerberries with an unusual ardor. She did understand; she would not be Mademoiselle de Trop any longer. Kind soul! so unlike young women in general, who won't step aside gracefully, when they should! Further I can vouch, that she neither hemmed, nor made eyes, nor yet repeated the well-worn proverb, "Two's company, but three's none." No, she gathered berries and sang snatches of songs as though she were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was so flattering to Guy, the General made a fresh effort to appease his daughter, but with no better success than before. Children and fools, says the proverb, speak the truth; and the truth which was spoken in this instance was not very agreeable to the visitor at whom it was flung. But Guy looked on with a smile, and nothing in his face gave any sign of the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... says a Scottish proverb, is no bigger than a midge's wing. [Footnote: i.e. Gnat's wing] In this matter of quarrel, neither the young man nor the older knight had afforded each other any just cause of offence. De Walton was a strict observer of military discipline, in which he had been educated from his extreme youth, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... shall still continue to furnish you with hints on all proper occasions, which is all your genius requires. I think, by the way, you cannot in honour have any more to do with Morphew and Lillie, who have gone beyond the ordinary pitch of assurance, and transgressed the very letter of the proverb, by endeavouring to cheat you of your Christian and surname too. Wishing you, Sir, long to live for our instruction and diversion, and to the defeating of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... not sing," is a curious proverb; and if it is meant to express the absence of popular poetry in that country, it would be easy to convict it of falsehood by a list of poets whose works, though unknown to fame beyond the limits of their own country, are cherished, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... I sat up with him last night; and, poor man! it is impossible to tell thee, how easy and safe he thought himself in my company, for the first part of the night: A drowning man will catch at a straw, the proverb well says: and a straw was I, with respect to any real help I could give him. He often awaked in terrors; and once calling out for me, Dear Belford, said he, Where are you!—Oh! There you are!—Give me your friendly ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... chase is a long one, says the proverb, and night came with the craft still miles away, but the sky was brilliantly clear, and the moon shone forth, showing the white-sailed schooner in a strangely weird fashion far across ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... an old proverb. If that is true we should be happy," remarked one of the tourists as we gathered on the deck gazing at an animated scene. "Look! There are thirty boats in the same ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... writer, speaking of this in 1682, adds, "A stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses," referring to the old custom of a bunch of green as the sign of an inn, which is illustrated by the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." I have an old etching of a river-side inn, in which the sign is a ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fabulous stories? says Balbus. Is not the temple, built by Posthumius in honor of Castor and Pollux, to be seen in the Forum? Is not the decree of the senate concerning Vatienus still subsisting? As to the affair of Sagra, it is a common proverb among the Greeks; when they would affirm anything strongly, they say "It is as certain as what passed at Sagra." Ought not such authorities to move you? You oppose me, replies Cotta, with stories, but I ask reasons ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... found that all his efforts for internal reform must be in a comparative sense futile so long as piracy, that curse of Borneo, was permitted to ravage unchecked. "It is in a Malay's nature," says the Dutch proverb, "to rove on the seas in his prahu, as it is in that of the Arab to wander with his steed on the sands of the desert." No person who has not investigated the subject can appreciate how wide-spread and deep-seated this plague ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... opportunities common to the whole human race. Read the story of any successful man and mark its moral, told thousands of years ago by Solomon: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." This proverb is well illustrated by the career of the industrious Franklin, for he stood before five kings and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... land, so that during the first sixteen days I had only one view of the Cordillera behind Lima. These mountains, seen in stages, one above the other, through openings in the clouds, had a very grand appearance. It is almost become a proverb, that rain never falls in the lower part of Peru. Yet this can hardly be considered correct; for during almost every day of our visit there was a thick drizzling mist, which was sufficient to make the streets muddy and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... then the Jesuits, came into spiritual possession; and later on, episcopal rule succeeded to the influence of Loyola's disciples. The relative estimation in which these various orders of the Church were held being illustrated by a Canadian proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, il ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... nonsense. And if he did talk nonsense, it was accepted as words of wisdom because of the important and high position which he occupied. Only in the morning, just at the time Nekhludoff came to see him, he was like a reasonable being, could understand what was said to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a proverb he was fond of repeating: "He's tipsy, but he's wise, so he's pleasant in ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... 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.' It ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of lovely things about tears. Notwithstanding that fact, there is an old German proverb: "Nothing dries sooner than a tear," which isn't so bad. And Byron, you know, said that the busy have no time for tears. Which, one must acknowledge, is quite true when one thinks how everybody is up and hustling these days. They're ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... not wish to know. All that is a matter between yourself and your conscience. You have the right to explain your scruples to the jury. You know the proverb: "The pen is a ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... merry companion," says the old English proverb, and Sir Bale felt in better spirits and temper than he had for many a day as he replaced the guineas in ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... antiquarian and linguist, he unites qualities precious for the due appreciation of Spain. Well-versed in the Castilian, he also displays a familiarity with the Cantabrian tongue—that strange and difficult Vascuense which the Evil One himself, according to a provincial proverb, spent seven years of fruitless labour in endeavouring to acquire. And he patters Romani, the mysterious jargon of the gitanos, in a style no way inferior—so far as we can discover—to Bible Borrow himself. That gentleman, by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... spite of his learning he made many enemies by his arrogance; and his restless and ambitious spirit carried him into enterprises which were outside the proper sphere of his philosophy. In this he followed the example of many other luckless authors, to whom the advice of the homely proverb would have been valuable which states that "a shoemaker ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to other parts of the island and share the nuptial-banquet. Everywhere great quantities of macaroni or of fried fish are prepared, and the guests eat and drink to repletion. Even the most miserly are liberal on this occasion, and a proverb advises one to attend the weddings of the avaricious: A li nozzi di l'avaru trovaticci. The bride and groom, as can be easily imagined, have their heads full of other things than macaroni and fried fish. At Borghetto baked beans and pease are served not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... old proverb was my first warning. I caught two of the youths exchanging glances under raised eyebrows. Yet their stout, easy-going mentor had given me such a reassuring glance of side-long humor, as between man of the world and man of the world, that it was difficult ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... that it amounted to the old proverb, "All's fair in love and war". And, putting aside a few moral prejudices, one can easily enough absolve him.—The fact is, I had long ago surmised that his motives in taking to such a career had more reference to this world than the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... be angry with them!" Hsiao Hung observed. "The proverb says: 'You may erect a shed a thousand li long, but there is no entertainment from which the guests will not disperse!' And who is it that will tarry here for a whole lifetime? In another three years or five years every single one of us will have gone her own way; and who will, when that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... time at all for him to learn to love her. He stared at her a moment. He bent to kiss her and then stopped. He might awaken her. It is always best for the children of the very poor to sleep. He who sleeps dines, runs the Spanish proverb. He turned and kissed the little ragged stockings instead, and then he went out. He was going to play—was it ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... keeping him alive. This was a species of cleverness which his father should have practiced; but this Machiavellian scheme was unnecessary in his case. Young Philippe Belvidero, his son, grew up a Spaniard as conscientiously religious as his father was impious, on the principle of the proverb: "A ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... that, in spite of all my watchfulness in guarding her, it is probable my Lady would have given me the slip, had I not had quite as acute a person as herself as my ally: for, as the proverb says that 'the best way to catch one thief is to set another after him,' so the best way to get the better of a woman is to engage one of her own artful sex to guard her. One would have thought that, followed as she was, all her ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it proper with you, ye kine that you do not welcome me? I am difficult of being attained. Why then do you not accept me? It seems, ye creatures of excellent vows, that the popular proverb is true, viz., that it is certain that when one come to another of one's own accord and without being sought, one meets with disregard. The Gods, the Danavas, the Gandharvas, the Pisachas, the Uragas, the Rakshasas and human beings succeed in obtaining me only after undergoing the severest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... commonly supposed. Some start in life without any leading object at all; some with a low one; and some aim high:—and just in proportion to the elevation at which they aim, will be their progress and success. It is an old proverb that he who aims at the sun, will not reach it, to be sure, but his arrow will fly higher than if he aims at an object on a level with himself. Exactly so is it, in the formation of character, except in one point. To ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... with all his good-natured affability, he was not one to permit it; besides, his position was changed, and he could not help feeling that it was. "Necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows," says the very true proverb; and what might have been borne yesterday would not be ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... clothes and dances before Samuel and David, the only self-possessed spectators of the bacchantic company, till he falls down; and he lies naked as he is a whole day and a whole night upon the ground—whence the proverb, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" But that David when he fled, fled in earnest and went in the direction of Judah, instead of amusing himself by going first towards the north, is perfectly evident, as much so as ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... wept. It was like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and sisters to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... your sex," said Paul. "Down in Mexico, when I was there on the Brighton job, I heard a Spanish proverb: 'If a pretty woman smiles, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... helmet to the circular neck of the breast-plate. Previously, however, a woollen night-cap was drawn over the poor man's head, well down on his ears, and Rooney looked—as indeed he afterwards admitted that he felt—as if he were going to be hanged. He thought, however, of the proverb, that a man who is born to be drowned never can be hanged, and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... seek to promote it. Hence, they have had this maxim, viz., "The end sanctifies the means." But this maxim is not sound. The contrary principle is correct. It is sometimes expressed by this saying: "We must not do evil that good may come;" which is a much safer proverb to be ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... collection of beasts, birds, &c. most of which are inhabited by the souls of some naughty masters or misses, who died in the neighbourhood, and it is possible were not unknown to your little companions. It was a proverb among the ancient Bramins, that Example is more powerful than precept, and it is the common language of mankind to this day, I understand what I hear, but I believe what I see. It would not be amiss therefore, if you were to accompany the young gentlemen and ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... devout women of Saint Germain d' Auxerre, when passing at night beneath the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the man who, after the murder of Nobunaga, marched in furious haste upon his assassin and quenched the ambition of the latter in death. The brief career of the murderer has given rise to a Japanese proverb, "Akechi ruled three days." The avenger of the slain regent was now at the head of affairs. The mikado himself dared not oppose him, for the military power of the empire lay within his grasp. There was ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... member of this fortuitous society contemplates the skies, and departs, skipping to avoid the mud,—because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other citizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, the archway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed's edge, as the proverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. No one is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets forth, makes sure of a scrap of blue ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... know the tones—there's a shrillness in them not to be mistaken. Farewell! I must depart; you have heard the proverb, 'those who are bound must obey.' Young Jack, I presume, is squalling, and I must either nurse him, rock the cradle, or sing comic tunes for him, though heaven knows with what a disastrous heart I often sing, 'Begone dull ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... on every side. Many a man has fallen at the very point where he thought he was safest. The meekness of Moses has passed into a proverb. Yet he lost the Promised Land, because he allowed the children of Israel to provoke him, and "he spake unadvisedly with his lips." Peter was the most zealous and defiant of the disciples, bold and outspoken; yet he degenerated for a short time into a lying, swearing, sneaking ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... second lie: I that, at home, used to be a proverb for blunt truth-telling. They say that "facilis descensus Averni." I do not agree with them. I have not found it easy. To me it has seemed a very steep and precipitous road, set with sharp flints that cut the feet, and make ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... called "The Great State." He said the doctor should no longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his own words, "the health adviser of the community." The same can be expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... postscript. That had been twenty years ago, when he'd been eighty and she'd been seventy. He supposed she'd expect him to take up his old relationship with her again. It probably wouldn't last any longer than it had, the other time; he recalled a Fourth Level proverb about the leopard and his spots. It certainly wouldn't be ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... trust in it. "Nothing walks with aimless feet." Our life is no lottery. We may make foolish experiments with it, but we do so at our own risk. It is no plaything of chance, it is a stern responsibility which is determined by law that brooks no interference and excuses no indifference. The proverb tells us that "our lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing is of the Lord." And just as the dark forces that sweep through our life are not necessarily hostile forces but form part of the order of the world, so things that we regard ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... once, "What says the proverb, 'Better to court favor in the kitchen than in the drawing-room'?" The Master replied, "Nay, better say, He who has sinned against Heaven has none other to whom prayer ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... half-hearted, "Do you think so, really?" voiced the attitude of nearly all present. The Scorpas were, to use the old Roman proverb, "sleeping dogs best let alone," and the Sanseveros, though not as rich, were none the less too great a family to ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... if we got into scrapes, which one or the other of us was not unfrequently doing, we were very certain that no one could extricate us as well as he could. I don't mean to say that he forgot the proverb, "Spare the rod, spoil the child;" or that we were such pieces of perfection that we did not deserve punishment; but we had sense enough to see that he punished us for our good: he did it calmly, never angrily, and without any unnecessarily severe remark, and we certainly did ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... hog or dog on't; And look'd, since he has got his wish, As if he had thrown down a dish, Yet this I dare foretell you from it, He'll soon return to his own vomit. WHIG. Besides, this horrid plot was found By Neynoe, after he was drown'd. TORY. Why then the proverb is not right, Since you can teach dead dogs to bite. WHIG. I proved my proposition full: But Jacobites are strangely dull. Now, let me tell you plainly, sir, Our witness is a real cur, A dog of spirit for his years; Has ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "all-thing hath the being by the love of God." Its oppositions are no part of its realness; and therefore they can be overcome. Is there not here, then, abundance of practical work for you to do; work which is the direct outcome of your mystical experience? Are there not here, as the French proverb has it, plenty of cats for you to comb? And isn't it just here, in the new foothold it gives you, the new clear vision and certitude—in its noble, serious, and invulnerable faith— that mysticism is "useful"; even for the most scientific of social reformers, the most belligerent of politicians, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... the fool thinks.' The proverb is somewhat stale. I marvel thou findest not its application ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought to eat a gored ox, or something—what is the proverb, 'better a dinner of stalled ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a clay oven on the patio; rice and DHAL were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial. In my later world travels, I was charmed to see that a similar respect for visitors is manifested in rural sections of many countries. The city ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... begun she came often. She tried to persuade her husband to go, and told him how sweetly the boys' voices sounded, led by Master Swift's fine bass, which he pitched from a key which he knocked upon his desk. But Master Lake had a proverb to excuse him. "The nearer the church, the further from GOD." Not that he pretended to maintain ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mountains that we never climb but once,'" he said. "We three, meeting in Paris, can prove the truth of that proverb." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gentleman[180] ask Mr. Levett a variety of questions concerning him, when he was sitting by, he broke out, 'Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.' 'A man, (said he,) should not talk of himself, nor much of any particular person. He should take care not to be made a proverb; and, therefore, should avoid having any one topick of which people can say, "We shall hear him upon it."' There was a Dr. Oldfield, who was always talking of the Duke of Marlborough. He came into a coffee-house ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... so much an oyster which you've got to open with a sword, as the old proverb has it, but a wild beast. Yes, a wild beast: and you've got to fight him at first, fight him tooth and claw. When you've beaten him, ah! then ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... still in life, who can claim to have known them familiarly. Their letters, therefore, come to us like material things out of the hands of mighty shadows, long historical, and traditionary, and fit companions for the sages and warriors of a thousand years ago. In spite of the proverb, it is not in a single day, or in a very few years, that a man can be reckoned "as dead as Julius Caesar." We feel little interest in scraps from the pens of old gentlemen, ambassadors, governors, senators, heads of departments, even presidents though they were, who lived lives of praiseworthy ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... same analogies. Why do we not preserve a like attitude towards political and philosophical questions? Why this ridiculous mania for affirming that every thing has been said, which means that we know all about mental and moral science? Why is the proverb, THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, applied exclusively ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... fell into her husband's arms, stone-white: but her hard brother, making no account whatever of all that show of feeling, only took the trouble quietly to address Henry Clements. "Misfortunes never come single, they say; it is no fault of mine if the proverb hits Mr. Henry Clements. I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that the Austral Independent bank has stopped payment, and is not expected to refund to its depositors or shareholders one penny ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan that is set over them be (which God the Most High forfend) weak or lack of policy and majesty, without doubt, this will be the cause of the ruin of the land. Quoth the proverb, 'A hundred years of the Sultan's tyranny, rather than one of the tyranny of the people, one over another.' When the people oppress one another, God setteth over them a tyrannical Sultan and a despotic King. Thus it is told in history that there was, one day, presented to El Hejjaj ben Yousuf[FN205] ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... {purphoros} had charge of the fire brought for sacrifices from the altar of Zeus Agetor at Sparta, and ordinarily his person would be regarded as sacred; hence the proverb {oude purphoros esothe}, used of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... every year to bring away rich loads of eider-down. A long way down the side of this lofty rock was a cleft. Nobody could tell how far into the rock it went, and so inaccessible was it there that its owner had said that whoever liked might come and take eider-down from thence. It became quite a proverb to say, when anything couldn't be done, that it was just as impossible as taking eider-down from ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... Lady Rosamond could not but smile congratulation to the hair-cutter, who looked meekly elevated, while Tom whispered, "Proverb contradicted." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me." "Well," said I, "I beg your pardon once more. I assure you that what I did was with the best intention." "Oh! pray make no further apology," said the individual, "I make no doubt that what you did was done kindly; but there's an old proverb, to the effect, 'that you should let sleeping dogs lie,'" he added with a smile. Then, getting up, and stretching himself with a yawn, he took up his book and said, "I have slept quite long enough, and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... taverners in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin, too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most elaborate, often being painted ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... coffers in a three years' war with America, has given a powerful superiority to France and Spain. She is not now a match for them. But if neither councils can prevail on her to think, nor sufferings awaken her to reason, she must e'en go on, till the honor of England becomes a proverb of contempt, and Europe dub her the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... The Romans had a proverb, "Litera scripta manet," which means "The written letter remains." The subtle wisdom of these words was no doubt well known to the men of the later Paleolithic Age before them, but evidently the gentleman in the engraving never heard of it. If he had kept this simple little rule of social ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... a little longer courtship. They are never caught all in a minute, unless they are quite indifferent as to who catches them. And even then—'marry in haste'—you know the proverb—nay, don't be angry," he added, as his brother turned abruptly away. "I was only jesting; and a happy fellow like you can afford to be laughed at by a miserable old ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... fallen the victims of those people. They will always be your implacable enemies. And you, also, poor, interesting girl!" added the Jesuit, speaking to Mother Bunch, "follow my advice—fear these people. Sleep, as the proverb says, with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a common proverb in the Land of the Gods (Japan) that "the frog in the well knows not the great ocean," and the Kioto frog had so often heard this scornful sneer from the maids who came to draw out water, with their long bamboo-handled buckets that ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the king by war, than to have it kept entire without war, to the profit of the devil and of his followers. He was also reported on another occasion to have reminded her of the Spanish proverb—that the head of one salmon is worth those of a hundred frogs. The hint, if it were really given, was certainly destined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the work. With all these merits and demerits, the book is of much value, because an unsatisfactory manual is far better than none. It does not take the place of that revised edition of Nuttall, which is still the great desideratum, but we may use meanwhile an eminently ornithological proverb, and say that a Samuels in the hand is worth two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Conversation.—A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' mere study of books.—Chinese Proverb. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... partly to be explained by the fact that they often get bits of reasoning by rote, much as young boys learn their Euclid; and that they frequently seem to understand principles because they apply them in the right cases, just as we often quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. As we ascend in the scale of education, there is more and more of this reasoning by rote, so that critical incompetence is more easily concealed and may ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Branche-d'Or?" said Morgan; "it is not much—only half what we gave you last time, but you know the proverb: 'The handsomest girl in the world can ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... fainted. The Governor knew enough. He summoned the young man and, being convinced of his guilt, had him put in prison, while awaiting further information. It is well said in a certain proverb: "Even while you are sitting in your house with the doors ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... answered Toto without hesitation; "and everything that falls from heaven is good," he added, quoting an ancient proverb. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Rimini will be ablaze. He'll kill me? Yes: what then? That's nothing new, Except to me; I'll bear for custom's sake. More blood will follow; like the royal sun, I shall go down in purple. Fools for luck; The proverb holds like iron. I must run, Ere laughter smother me.—O, ho, ho, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... groups were against allowing the developing middle class and especially the merchants to gain too much freedom, and whatever freedom they in fact gained, came through extra-legal or illegal practices. A proverb of the time said "People hate their ruler as animals hate the net (of the hunter)". The basic laws of medieval times which had attempted to create stable social classes remained: down to the nineteenth century there were slaves, different classes of serfs or "commoners", and free ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... hardly believe my own ears! Well, 'Live and learn' is an old proverb. I thought I knew your character. This is ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Chaka's armies went they conquered, till the country was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their spear thrusts, it is said that the great king prophesied of the coming of white men who should ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... his mind and all but whelmed his will. She had been with him, he knew it, in 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, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... would be about two hundred and fifty yards farther at an angle of something like forty degrees. Counting their orderlies and hangers-on we outnumbered that party by two to one; and "the fish starts stinking from the head" as the proverb says. With the head gone, the whole Kurdish firing-line would ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... twenty-two." The signatures of Messieurs Postel and Gannerac were obviously given to oblige in the way of business; the Cointets would act at need for Gannerac as Gannerac acted for the Cointets. It was a practical application of the well-known proverb, "Reach me the rhubarb and I will pass you the senna." Cointet Brothers, moreover, kept a standing account with Metivier; there was no need of a re-draft, and no re-draft was made. A returned bill between the two firms simply meant a debit or credit ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of this cleanliness, which know no bounds, when it can command the labor of others? Which of the people who have become rich has not experienced in his own case, with what difficulty he carefully trained himself to this cleanliness, which only confirms the proverb, "Little white ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... unfeeling ground ridiculously with his tail, and will presently gasp his feeble life out. Take him up tenderly, ere it be too late, and cast him into his native Thames again——But stop: I believe there is a certain proverb about fish out of water, and that other profound naturalists have remarked on them before me. Now Harry Warrington had been floundering for ever so long a time past, and out of his proper element. As soon as he found it, health, strength, spirits, energy, returned to him, and with the tap ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be so bad, he should be so ready to rebel when fed with delicacies. But in justice to the sailor, it ought to be remembered that the daintiest food may be rendered disgusting by bad cookery, such as is the rule on board merchant ships. "God sends meat, but the devil sends cooks" is a proverb which originated on board ship, and no one who has ever served any time in a ship's forecastle would deny that it is abundantly justified. Besides which, even good food well cooked of one kind only, served many times in succession, becomes very trying, only the plainest foods, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... wear a stone, says the old proverb; and if you doubt it, go and look at some step where the rain has dripped from gutter or eave, and see what a nice little hollow is worn. The constant dropping of unsavoury words wears the mind too; and these remarks and banterings about Australia and its convict life in the early days ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer. He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire: he became actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and sometimes when provoked past endurance, spouting mildly a little bit of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... no paradox to say that "Utopia," which has by a conspiracy of accidents become a proverb for undisciplined fancifulness in social and political matters, is in reality a very unimaginative work. In that, next to the accident of its priority, lies the secret of its continuing interest. In some respects it is like one of those precious and delightful scrapbooks people ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... is even like that of the old swan. These lords of earth might slay thee in anger like those creatures of the feathery tribe slaying the old swan. Persons conversant with the Puranas recite a proverb, O Bhishma, as regards this occurrence, I shall, O Bharata, repeat it to thee fully. It is even this: O thou that supportest thyself on thy wings, though thy heart is affected (by the passions), thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... her, Bice—that is to say, according to English pronunciation, Beeshee (you would probably call it Beetchee if you learned to speak Italian in England, but the Contessa had the Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth, according to the proverb), which, as everybody knows, is the contraction of Beatrice. She was called Miss Beachey in the household, a name which was received—by the servants at least—as a quite proper and natural name; a great deal more sensible than Forno-Populo. Her position, however, in the little party ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... all that glisters gold. A favourite proverb with the old English poets. Cf. Chaucer, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... Tory's exceedingly brief "Non plus," which was contemporaneously used also by Olivier Mallard; J.Longis, "Nihil in charitate violentia"; Denys Janot, "Tout par amour, amour par tout, par tout amour, en tout bien"; the French rendering of a very old proverb in the mottoes of B.Aubri and D.Roce, "Al'aventure tout vient a point qui peut attendre"; J.Bignon, "Repos sans fin, sans fin repos"; the motto used conjointly by M.Fzandat and R.Granjon, "Ne la mort, ne le venin"; and the motto of ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... a very trite proverb, and a sadly worn truth, exemplified over and over again at all times and seasons, and in all places of the earth, that the course of true love never ran smooth; and alas! notwithstanding all the pleasant preparations being made for them, these two poor lovers ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... abused. Meat and drink, so easily provided, were always improvidently spent. Probably few buccaneer ships returned from a cruise with the hands on full allowance. The rule was "drunk and full, or dry and empty, to hell with bloody misers"—the proverb of the American merchant sailor of to-day. They knew no mean in anything. That which came easily might go lightly: there was more where ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... pleasantries in proof of what he advanced; and did not forget the Bagdad proverb, "That the table is not completely furnished, except there be four in company"; so concluded, that since they were but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... thicket to prevent the game from escaping. To "beat about the bush" seems to be a mixture of two metaphors which are quite unlike in meaning. To "beat the bush" was the office of the beaters, who started the game for others, hence an old proverb, "I will not beat the bush that another may have the birds." To "go about the bush" would seem to have been used originally of a hesitating hound. The two expressions have coalesced to express the idea for which French ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... is a modern maxim which can be translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue uncongenial ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... darky as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... retorted Mr. Wilkinson. "Ridiculous! That is certainly a fine ground on which to seek sympathy from me! I forget who it is has the proverb, 'Never pity a woman weeping or a cat in the dark.' And I am reminded of it when I look at you two. You and my fair cousin, when you have one another to talk to, are just about as much in need of sympathy as a tiger is of tea . . . Speaking of tea—" he ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... first Place I must observe, that there is a Set of merry Drolls, whom the common People of all Countries admire, and seem to love so well, that they could eat them, according to the old Proverb: I mean those circumforaneous Wits whom every Nation calls by the Name of that Dish of Meat which it loves best. In Holland they are termed Pickled Herrings; in France, Jean Pottages; in Italy, Maccaronies; and in Great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... exertion—fight shy of diversion (Remember, the proverb says 'Laugh and grow fat'); You may venture securely on Punch, because surely There can't be much fear of your laughing ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... more plausible but equally pernicious, is that superficial knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all. That "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" is a saying which has now got currency as a proverb stamped in the mint of Pope's versification; of Pope, who with the most imperfect knowledge of Greek translated Homer, with the most imperfect knowledge of the Elizabethan drama edited Shakespeare, and with the most imperfect ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... be something to save. Lockhart must be liked where his good qualities are known, and where his fund of information has room to be displayed. But, notwithstanding a handsome exterior and face, I am not sure he will succeed in London Society; he sometimes reverses the proverb, and gives the volte strette e pensiere sciolti, withdraws his attention from the company, or attaches himself to some individual, gets into a corner, and seems to be quizzing the rest. This is ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... troops burst through the breaches, an exodus had begun from the gates of the town on the other side, and across the bridge over the Jumna. Our heavy guns could have destroyed this bridge, and our cavalry might have swept round the city and cut off the retreat on the other side; but the proverb that it is good to build a bridge for a flying foe was eminently applicable here. Had the enemy felt their retreat cut off—had they known that certain death awaited them unless they could drive us out of the city, the defense would have been so desperate ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... during which he had imprudently remained in conversation in an unwholesome situation, he called upon the writer of these sheets, and complained of agueish symptoms, mentioning his intention of taking some medicine, and repeating jocularly an old proverb, that "an ague in the spring is medicine for a king." He had no suspicion at the time of the real nature of his indisposition, which proved in fact to be a complaint common in Bengal, an inflammation in the liver. The disorder was, however, soon discovered ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... wherein lies the welfare of others. Give him some fairy power, inexhaustible purses or magic lamps, not, however, applying to the mind; and see whether he could make those whom he would favour good or happy. In the East, they have a proverb of this kind, Happy are the children of those fathers who go to the Evil One. But for anything that our Western experience shows, the proverb might be reversed, and, instead of running thus, Happy ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Greek languages, and which may well therefore be classed among the trees producing necessaries of life,—venerabile donum fatalis virgae. That money-trees existed in the golden age there want not prevalent reasons for our believing. For does not the old proverb, when it asserts that money does not grow on every bush, imply a fortiori, that there were certain bushes which did produce it? Again, there is another ancient saw to the effect that money is the root of all evil. From which two adages it may be safe to infer ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... sore, and sang full sweet, to bring the babe to rest, That would not cease, but cried still, in sucking at her breast. She was full weary of her watch, and grieved with her child; She rocked it and rated it, till that on her it smiled: Then did she say, Now have I found this proverb true to prove The falling out of faithful friends, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... homo" is a Latin proverb which means that one man alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the fancy as she was then (which she is not at all), and that if the fancy had not married some one else for money, but had married him for love, he and she would have been happy (which they wouldn't have been), and that she has a tenderness for him still (whereas her toughness is a proverb). Brooding over the fire, with his dried little head in his dried little hands, and his dried little elbows on his dried little knees, Twemlow is melancholy. 'No Adorable to bear me company here!' thinks he. 'No Adorable at the club! ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... me; a happy pendant to the old proverb, Love me, love my dog. Well, then, for Menie Gray's sake, if not for Dick Middlemas's, (plague on that vulgar tell-tale name,) will you, that are a stander-by, tell us, who are the unlucky players, what you think of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... course of time the merchant's son grew up. Praise be to Brahma! what a wonderful youth it was, with a face like a monkey's, legs like a stork's, and a back like a camel's. You know the old proverb:— ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... matter," I reflected. "What has been left incomplete now, shall be finished another day." Nor did I fail to keep the promise thus made to myself. It was difficult to get even a few words of particular conversation with one pupil among so many; but, according to the old proverb, "Where there is a will, there is a way;" and again and again I managed to find an opportunity for exchanging a few words with Mdlle. Henri, regardless that envy stared and detraction whispered ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... rains unless it pours: Now I can have the other readily. The proverb hits me aptly: "Well they do Who doff the old love ere they don the new!" [He glances again over the letter.] Yes, Caulaincourt now writes he has every hope Of quick success in settling the alliance! The Tsar is willing—even anxious for it, His sister's ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... "you know the proverb: 'Ask not a stranger who is naked where are his clothes.' Let that answer for me. I am hungry and thirsty, I am weak and ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... great body of bribery against him, was providentially freed from Nundcomar, one of his accusers, and, as good events do not come alone, (I think there is some such proverb,) it did so happen that all the rest, or a great many of them, ran away. But, however, the recorded evidence of the former charges continued; no new evidence came in; and Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which branded peculation, fixed and eternized upon the records ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in abundance when the need of them is past. Stately monuments are erected to them, and their children are petted and caressed, and a tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world strives to win self-respect by the payment of a debt long overdue. "Speak nothing but good of the dead" is a proverb that had its birth in the world's sense of its own meanness,—the consciousness that it had not done justice to the dead while they were living. Many a man is systematically abused during all his active life, only to lie down in his grave amid the laudations ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... truth. For that reason, the person who has convinced himself of his truth artificially, watches all doubts and objections with much greater care than a man who has no doubt whatever in what he says. The former, moreover, does not have a good conscience, and the proverb says truly, "a bad conscience has a fine ear.'' The man knows that he is not dealing correctly with the thing and hence he observes all objections, and the fact that he does so observe, can not be easily ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... which end," excused Mr. Scraggs. "Maybe 'twas the front end he meant; then the proverb 'ud read that he never begun anythin' unless he could see the commencement of it; which is a wise and thoughtful statement, because had it been otherwise, and therefore essentially different, ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... says: "It would be necessary to write the history of all Europe if we attempted to describe all the feuds into which King John entered with chivalrous bravery, but also with frivolity. It then became a proverb, that 'nothing can be done without the help of God and ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Freedom of others as their own; yet continuing long in such a place, where honors and greatness come in, they become selfish, seeking themselves, and not Common Freedom; as experience proves it true in these days, according to this common proverb—'Great offices in a Land and Army have changed the disposition ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... much importance had been attached to his opinion, he ventured to criticise a leg, but Apelles rushed out from behind the curtain, and, charging him with being hypercritical, told him that for the future he would do better to keep to his trade. The circumstance gave rise to the Roman proverb—"Ne sutor ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... sups with the devil should hold a long spoon.' All the same, if you can bear another proverb, 'It's an ill wind,' etc. If I hadn't been hard up for a refuge, I should never have thought of bringing you up here, and for any one to get an idea of Oxford it's as good a place as ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the balance of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... some way involved in this failure, and lost, I fancy, a considerable sum of money; but he never talked much on the subject. He was an unflinching believer in the spilt-milk proverb. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a person is in great pain, the cause of which he cannot remove, he sets his teeth firmly together, or bites some substance between them with great vehemence, as another mode of violent exertion to produce a temporary relief. Thus we have a proverb where no help can be had in pain, "to grin and abide;" and the tortures of hell are said to be attended ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered its want of a lid. But having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To these imprudent authors and actors we may apply a Spanish proverb, which has the peculiar quaintness of that people, Aviendo pregonado vino, venden vinagre: "Having cried up their ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to Roan Street as the scene of the tragedy. Roan Street I found to be a somewhat squalid by-street, running out of Skelton Street, close—it seemed significantly close—to the old parish church. One could not help thinking of the familiar proverb, "The nearer the church, the farther from God." The actual locality is called Munyard's Row, being some dozen moderate-sized houses in Roan Street, let out in lodgings, the particular house in question being again, with a horrible grotesqueness, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... begun, The work's half done," So says the proverb old; But even here, You'll see it clear, The truth is but half told; For wisdom says There are two ways, One loses and one wins; You'll find, young friends, That all depends ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Miss Minturn, that you are to room with Miss Sadie Minot, a young lady from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think you will find her an agreeable companion. However"—with a humorous twinkle in his eyes—"to use a homely proverb, 'it is Hobson's choice,' for it happens to be the only vacancy in the building; we have a very full school this year. I will call some one to show you how to find it, and have ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... queer creature Master Bob appropriately christened 'The Prawnee Chief,' much to the annoyance of Miss Nell, who had become quite grand now in her language, becoming 'puffed up,' as Bob said, with her newly-acquired 'knowledge'—a 'little' of which, as the proverb tells us, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... say what Manilov's real character was. A class of men exists whom the proverb has described as "men unto themselves, neither this nor that—neither Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village." And to that class we had better assign also Manilov. Outwardly he was presentable enough, for his features ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... for Lawyer Ed's love for Roderick was a proverb in Algonquin. He had never heard her laugh before. The sound was ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... fire and sword: the latter could only kill, but the other could annihilate. See how thoroughly it does its work, even when domesticated: it takes up everything upon the hearth and leaves all clean. The Greek proverb says, that "the sea drinks up all the sins of the world." Save fire only, the sea is the most capacious of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the Lord to the Jews in a like case: "What means this proverb which you take up, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? It is not so, O house of Israel. The son shall not die for the iniquity of his father, nor the father for the iniquity ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... information of the vessel and address to which your valise was committed, and myself, for having waited till I heard of your being again immerged into the land of newspapers before forwarded your key. However, as you have at length got them safe, I claim absolution under the proverb, that 'all is ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... asserted boldly that a man's house ought to grow around him like an oyster's-shell, and should fit him just as perfectly; in fact, that it should be created, not built. From architects and their works he prayed devoutly to be delivered, and having theretofore illustrated that part of the proverb which avers that "fools build houses," he declared himself determined thenceforth only to illustrate the latter-part of the proverb:—"and wise men live ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... combine his own interests and those of France. Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat doubtfully that he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat doubtfully that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside remonstrance, advice, and curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb (if a little high, he liked them none the worse), joking continually as his manner was. We have seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously compared to Sancho Panza by persons incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of wisdom ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... heart on choosing the best, I resolved not to be dissuaded by common objections against anthologies—that they repeat one another until the proverb [Greek] loses all application—or perturbed if my judgement should often agree with that of good critics. The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... "close-grained stone," he explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the dualism of Jesus ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... disease had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case. I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; And therefore contented like others to fare, To the shades of Elizium I strait did repair; Where Dryden and other great wits o' the town, To reward ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... written lots of lovely things about tears. Notwithstanding that fact, there is an old German proverb: "Nothing dries sooner than a tear," which isn't so bad. And Byron, you know, said that the busy have no time for tears. Which, one must acknowledge, is quite true when one thinks how everybody is up and ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... intellect instead of a matter of temperament and taste. Now, the intellect differs from the taste in being an absolute and general, rather than an individual and personal, quality of mind. There is no disputing matters of taste, as the Latin proverb justly says; but matters of intellect may be disputed logically until a definite decision is arrived at. Hence, although the planning of a novel must be left to the individual author, the structure of a short-story may be considered as a matter impersonal ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... simply that cursed student is to blame for all the mischief. Do you not observe that he has long been mente caphis? And are you not aware that madness is infectious? One fool makes twenty; pardon me, it is an old proverb; especially when you have drunk a glass or two, you fall into madness quite readily, and then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go through your exercise, just as the crack-brained fugleman makes the motion. Would you believe it, Conrector? I am still giddy when ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Indus" was put in motion for the western frontier at the commencement of the present year; and the circumstances which led to so important a proceeding were briefly these. The kingdom of Affghanistan has been called the land of transition between eastern and western Asia: a proverb says, "No one can be king of Hindoostan without first becoming lord of Cabool." The founder of the Affghan empire was Ahmed Shah, who died in 1773. Ahmed Shah made several victorious incursions into the East; and his son, Timour Shah, followed his example. The decease of Timour Shah, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... time, who are frequently of no other value, can point out his allusions, and ascertain his Phraseology. The Reformers of his Text are for ever equally positive, and equally wrong. The Cant of the Age, a provincial Expression, an obscure Proverb, an obsolete Custom, a Hint at a Person or a Fact no longer remembered, hath continually defeated the best of our Guessers: You must not suppose me to speak at random, when I assure you that, from some forgotten book or other, I can demonstrate this to you in many hundred Places; ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of respect while her mother spoke, and promised to do all that she was told. There is a proverb which says "As the soul is at three so it is at one hundred," and so Hase-Hime grew up as her mother had wished, a good and obedient little Princess, though she was now too young to understand how great was the loss ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... word of it. But it isn't too late to mend. That's an old proverb and a true one. It is quite in the line of possibility that I should get back to the position from ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... and on with the new! There's no one proves the truth of that proverb oftener than a certain young man I could mention! However, Maggie, don't throw up the sponge! You've got the first claim on Jim Denton—why don't you let ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... archdeacon, for whom was designed the reversion of his father's see by those who then had the giving away of episcopal thrones. I would not be understood to say that the prime minister had in so many words promised the bishopric to Dr. Grantly. He was too discreet a man for that. There is a proverb with reference to the killing of cats, and those who know anything either of high or low government places will be well aware that a promise may be made without positive words and that an expectant may be put into ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... an exceptionally difficult situation and that we won through as well as we did was due to the solid loyalty to constitutional and law-abiding methods of propaganda of the great mass of suffragists throughout the country. We quoted the American proverb, "Three hornets can upset a camp meeting," and we determined to hold steadily on our way and not let our hornets upset us. Our societies multiplied rapidly both in numbers and in membership. For instance, the number forming the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies increased ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... him, (says he) in his preface to the Tempest, of so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him on which he could not quickly produce a thought extreamly pleasant and surprizing, and these first thoughts of his, contrary to the old Latin proverb, were not always the least happy, and as his fancy was quick, so likewise were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any other, and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter into any other man. His corrections were sober and judicious, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that I have happened to pick up during our exceedingly pleasant sojourn at La Guayra. 'Make hay whilst the sun shines!'—make the most of your opportunities—have all the fun you can during your enforced absence from the jurisdiction of the first luff—is a proverb which ought to command the most profound respect of every British midshipman; and I am surprised at you, Lascelles, and disappointed in you, that you so little endeavour to live up to it," remarked Courtenay. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... own Sir Philip Sidney, riding back, with the mortal hurt in his broken thigh, from the fight at Zutphen, and giving the draught from his own lips to the dying man whose necessities were greater than his own, has long been our proverb for the giver of that self-denying cup of water that shall by no means lose ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their way in the world by the means of women blushing. Such as were only beautiful gave their beauty, whence, without doubt, comes the proverb, "The most beautiful girl in the world can only give what she has." Such as were rich gave in addition a part of their money; and a vast number of heroes of that gallant period may be cited who would neither have won their spurs in the first place, nor their ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Kochem, in Daun, in Trarbach, in Bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties. Kluesserath, however, we must mention, because its straggling figure has given rise to a local proverb—"As long as Kluesserath;" and Neumagen, because of the legend of Constantine, who is said to have seen the cross of victory in the heavens at this place, as well as at Sinzig on the Rhine, and, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... be really married after all, for God, Who gives sons-in-law, can also take them away, especially when He was not asked for them. Ah!" he went on, lapsing into French, as was his wont when moved, "qui vivra verra! qui vivra verra!" Then, shouting this excellent but obvious proverb at the top of his voice, he struck his horse with the butt of his gun, and galloped away before I ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... he himself been present, this cowardice would not have been manifested. We may, however, render the line thus,—"Vines are not named when they are not found," and regard it as a proverb intended to illustrate the truth of the foregoing statements, viz. that no mention would have been made of such things had they not really existed. Truth was a necessary element ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... Lady Ellinor, mournfully, "that was my real thought, my impulse of regret, when I first saw you. But as it is, do not think me too hard and worldly if I quote the lofty old French proverb, Noblesse oblige. Listen to me, my young friend: we may never meet again, and I would not have your father's son think unkindly of me, with all my faults. From my first childhood I was ambitious,—not, as women usually are, of mere wealth and rank, but ambitious ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was. All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, TO INNOVATE IS NOT TO REFORM. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, UNCHANGED. The consequences are BEFORE us,—not in remote history; not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are upon us. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and returning by Cape Horn. This, including two years of wandering in the woods and wilds of Australia, evidently gave a new accession of vital stamina to my frame. It is said that the climate of Australia makes young men old, and old men young. I do not believe the first part of the proverb, but I am quite certain that there is a great deal in the second part of it. During those two years I chiefly lived in a tent, and led a quiet, free, and pleasant life in the open forests and wild country, continually shifting ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... out which destroyed many hundreds of people. In this distress, the King's son-in-law resolved to seek help once more from the Eastern magician, to whom he at once travelled through the air like a bird by the help of the ring. But there is a proverb which says that ill-gotten gains never prosper, and the Prince found that the stolen ring brought him ill-luck after all. The Witch-maiden had never rested night nor day until she had found out where the ring was. As soon as she had discovered ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... heavily at the end of the visit. She'd got to the quoting-proverbs stage by that time. 'Ah, my dear,' she said to Millie. 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' Millie stood up to her like a little brick. 'I'm afraid that proverb doesn't apply to me, Aunt Elizabeth,' she said, 'because I haven't repented!' What do you think of ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... a fancy for mutilating or transposing proverbs reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find changes of letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the semblance of the proverb while giving it a fantastic ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... was of that soft prettiness which is often more effective than downright beauty. There was, indeed, something very charming about her; and, if she was a blonde, I have no reason to think she was as fickle as the Venetian proverb paints that complexion of woman; or that she had not every quality which would have excused any one but Tonelli for thinking of ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... with very proper submission, yet with a twinkle in her eye, "we have a Scots proverb, 'He that will to Coupar, maun to Coupar'—which, being interpreted, means that if Louis wants to go to the Arlington, to the Arlington let him go—and for ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... to the ear of Master Lancelot, or any other eavesdropper; for a sturdy and resolute man was he, being no less than our ancient friend and old soldier, Jack of the Smithies. And now was verified that homely proverb that listeners never hear good ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... one respect entirely contradicts our preconceived notions of a mountaineer, as he is timid, peaceful, and no brawler; qualities which are all the more remarkable from contrasting so strongly with those of his neighbours to the east and west: of whom the Ghorkas are brave and warlike to a proverb, and the Bhotanese quarrelsome, cowardly, and cruel. A group of Lepchas is exceedingly picturesque. They are of short stature—four feet eight inches to five feet—rather broad in the chest, and with muscular arms, but small ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... we have called, according to the old proverb, "the spoiled child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his honours meekly, and would have been ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... a proverb that Valetta Harbor is like a hen-coop—"no gittin' out when you're in, and no gittin' in when you're out." So thought Frank, as the steamer glided into a narrow channel between the two enormous forts of the outer harbor, through the embrasures of which scores of heavy ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to destroy they first make mad,' is a Latin proverb I picked up at St. Andrew's University, and one of the few scraps of knowledge I carried away from the good old place. They might at least have thrown out some of our cavalry on the right to draw fire from that wood, and enable us to find their position. It's not overly pleasant to jog quietly ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... often become compressed into expressions which to-day we recognize as proverbs. The words of the Mother Duck, "Into the water he goes if I have to kick him in," became a Scandinavian proverb. "A little bird told it," a common saying of to-day, appears in Andersen's Nightingale and in Thumbelina. But this saying is traceable at least to the third story of the fourth night in Straparola, translated by Keightley, The Dancing Water, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... pretty things, and shall perhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my face is not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans and visions, but your letter has blown most of them away. 'L'appetit vient en mangeant,' says the French proverb, and I find that the more I see of the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, why shouldn't I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the far East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue: ...
— The American • Henry James
... she has done with it; it becomes merely a question of time. Resistance must be made here or nowhere. Obsta principiis. Woman must be a subject or an equal; there is no middle ground. What if the Chinese proverb should turn out to be, after all, the summit of wisdom,—"For men, to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for women, to renounce knowledge ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... that it is possible, as Nares suggests, that this church was the scene of confusion alluded to in the proverb: "Dover Court, all speakers and no hearers." Fox, in his Martyrology, vol. ii. p. 302., states, that "a rumour was spread that no man could shut the door, which therefore stood open night and day; and that the resort of people to it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... as the organism, so is the personality. The revelation of the Me is perfect in proportion to the sound state of the Medium. But according to the Arabic proverb, the jar oozes of its contents. If these be of a putridinous mixture, therefore, no matter how sound the jar, the ooze is not going to smell of ambergris and musk. So, it all depends on the contents with which the Potter fills ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... propensities, power, wealth, and general superiority of that part of the universe which is so happy as to be represented by them, that, whatever other useful impression they have made, they insure our never forgetting the proverb about the woman who talks of her virtue. South Carolina, in particular, if she has hitherto failed in the application of her enterprise to manufacturing purposes of a more practical kind, has always been able to match every ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... language there is a modern maxim which can be translated, "He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair." In English there is a similar proverb, "Knowledge is power." It is an offer of a prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more important than knowledge itself. Temptations, held before us as inducements to be good or to pursue uncongenial paths, are most often flimsy lies or half-truths, such as the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... gowned "a la 'ARRIETT")—and I assure you our Donkeys went very fast. However—this is a digression—as the man said when he walked over the cliff, so let us "noch einmal zu unser schafen," as the German proverb runs. Although disappointed in the behaviour of La Fleche, my second string Llanthony maintained my reputation for correct tips, by running last, as I said he would!—It is true that some papers report him as having finished seventh and El Diablo last; but as he did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... into a proverb, that homely women are good, that plain women have strong common sense. An eminent writer asks, "Who ever saw a handsome talented woman?" There is among us a class of "strong-minded women," brave of heart and deep of soul, high of purpose ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... For he made verses wild and queer 680 On the strange creeds priests hold so dear, Because they bring them land and gold. Of devils and saints and all such gear, He made tales which whoso heard or read Would laugh till he were almost dead. 685 So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old Till Lionel's "Banquet in Hell" you hear, And then you will laugh yourself young again.' So the priests hated him, and he Repaid their hate with cheerful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... answer, but checked himself. Never before had he appreciated to the full the depth and truth of the proverb relating to the frying-pan and the fire. To clear himself, he must mention his suspicions of Jimmy, and also his reasons for those suspicions. And to do that would mean revealing his past. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... redeeming qualities. The recognition of the claims of their relations might be emulated by our higher civilization; so impressed upon their natures was the duty to those who were related to them, that their language contains a proverb: "Ca-si-ri pi-rus, he wi-ti ti-ruk-ta-pi-di-hu-ru—Why, even the worms, they love each other—much more should men." They were also very hospitable, very sociable, and fond of telling stories. They really had a literature of stories and songs, which, if ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... that the sun shines on," saith the proverb; but if it is vouchsafed one to command a fine day at will in the course of existence, it would be better to reserve that privilege not for one's wedding, but for our first important picnic. Lionel Beauchamp and his confreres were especially ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... away now, then, you gaping idiot, and see that he does not bite you, to put an old proverb to shame.—This is a new incident, Mr. Morton, that dead men should rise and push us from our stools. I must see that my blackguards grind their swords sharper; they used not to do their work so slovenly.—But ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the victuals about. A melancholy proverb, meaning that state of irritable intoxication when a man comes ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... traitor to us—he has plotted Against our General's life, has plunged us all 20 In misery—and you're his son! 'Tis yours To make the amends—Make you the son's fidelity Outweigh the father's treason, that the name Of Piccolomini be not a proverb Of infamy, a common form of cursing 25 To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a-borrowing, go a-sorrowing," saith the old adage; and a wiser saw never came out of the mouth of experience. I have tested the truth of this proverb since my settlement in Canada, many, many times, to my cost; and what emigrant has not? So averse have I ever been to this practice, that I would at all times rather quietly submit to a temporary inconvenience than obtain anything I wanted in this manner. I verily believe ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... poor compliment, sir! In future, pray choose some one else for your experiments. I have heard a Latin proverb quoted which says that the experiment should be made on a body of small value! You hold me cheap, sir, since you ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... pressing question for us, just now, seems to me to be how to gain time. "Time brings counsel," as the Teutonic proverb has it; and wiser folk among our posterity may see their way out of that which at present ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Rev. Hucbald. "Yes. And by the way, I notice with pleasure that this snow, which falls so continually, makes the event of a green Christmas most improbable. Indeed,—of course the proverb is familiar to you?—the graveyards should certainly not be fat this season. I like a lean graveyard," smiled the ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Corsicans and Sicilians become diluted on African soil. Can it be the mere change from an island to a continent? There may be some truth in Bourget's "oppression des iles." Insulani semper mali, says an old Latin proverb.... ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... by any other demonstration, the influence of the physical upon the moral nature and the method of the subtle contagion often effected by mesmerism. A man is known by the friends he keeps is an old proverb. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... [128] A Persian proverb, somewhat illustrative of a story told of a West India "nigger," whom his master used to over-flog. "Ah, massa," said Sambo, "poor man dare ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... regard I may, without vanity, lay claim to the possession of a more progressive spirit than the members of the drug schools, for their disincilination to adopt anything new in the treatment of disease has passed into a proverb. It might naturally be supposed that any one who should come forward with a discovery by which the suffering portion. of the human family would be benefited, would be welcomed with open arms by the medical fraternity, or, that at least he would be allowed a hearing, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... propos of Maturin's tragedy, Manuel (vide post, p. 48, note 1), Byron "does into English" the Latin proverb by way of contrast to the text, "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; blessed be the Name of the Lord" (Letter to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... holds almost invariably true, that they who have risen from low life, still retain some traces of their original. No cultivation, no genius, it seems, is able entirely to surmount this: There was one particular in which Mr. Prior verified the old proverb. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... a Persian proverb which asserts a devil slips in between two winds," said Christopher. "Perhaps that is what has happened in ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... emphatically, "if there were any prospect of emigrating to the moon, there would be some hope; but in the present state of affairs we shall soon be eating our own heads off, as the proverb says. Europe is almost exhausted, the ultima Thule of arable territory in America has been reached, Asia barely supports her own immense population; nothing is left but Africa, and she presents a merely hopeful prospect for the future. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... is for Better for Worse, Some count it a Blessing and others a Curse; The Cuckolds are Blest if the Proverb prove true, And then there's no doubt but in Heav'n there's enough: Of honest rich Rogues who ne'er had got there, If their Wives had not sent ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... like an oyster's-shell, and should fit him just as perfectly; in fact, that it should be created, not built. From architects and their works he prayed devoutly to be delivered, and having theretofore illustrated that part of the proverb which avers that "fools build houses," he declared himself determined thenceforth only to illustrate the latter-part of the proverb:—"and wise ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... "Yes, indeed; that proverb is truer than people think," she replied, with a wise nod of her head. "Don't you remember, Nan, when the Parkers' dance was put off, and then old Mr. Parker died; and nearly the same thing happened with the Normatons, only it was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of direct Memory guided by Will, in which no regard is paid to Association, especially in the beginning. Thus to remember anything, or rather to learn how to do so, we take something which is very easy to retain—the easier the better—be it a jingling nursery rhyme, a proverb, or a text. Let this be learned to perfection, backwards and forwards, or by permutation of words, and repeated the next day. Note that the repetition or reviewing is of more ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... child fears the fire." So says the old proverb; and therefore it was quite reasonable for a couple of big lads to feel a certain sensation of shrinking when they talked about their adventure while trying to investigate the mysteries surrounding the portion of Crag, or Cormorant ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... out upon that easy path there is no turning aside and no turning back. And many have chosen to turn back while there was yet time, leaving the mark unmade. For most men are cowards and shun responsibility. Most men unconsciously steer their way by proverb or catchword; and all the wise saws of all ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... thing of rare occurrence, that the rich are thus distinguished from the poor, but it is a fact so notorious that it has long since passed into a proverb. This being the course of conduct which men practice, the impression has therefore become general that reputation, influence and power depend on wealth. Hence the great inquiry, uppermost in every mind, is "how shall I get rich, so that I may stand high ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... he was sixteen years of age. His memory and his imagination must both have served him well; for he not only acquired a style fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learned to use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dialogue. The third element in his education was writing for publication; he began very early, while he was still a young boy, to put all he had learned to use in writing for the press. When he was ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... came forward and, cutting off a piece of his robe, with it blindfolded his eyes, and was about to strike his neck when one of the Emirs arose and said, Be not hasty, O my lord, but wait, for haste is the whisper of Satan, and the proverb saith: Man gaineth his ends by patience, and error accompanieth the hasty man. Then he continued, Do not press the matter of this man; perhaps he who hath spoken of him lieth and there is nobody without jealousy; so have patience, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... alapaa, literally, "close-grained stone," he explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird which flies ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... that is, he's lived over sixty years an' never been heard of stealing fruit out of people's gardens, an' as for looks—'Han'some is who han'some does,'" said grandma, which effected the collapse of Andrew. In the Clay household there were ever current reminders of the truth of the old proverb, warning people in glass-houses to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... not yet weary of pursuing me; and in my experience I fully realised the old proverb of, "out of the frying- pan into the fire." On this vessel, and during the time we had to keep quarantine in Alexandria, I was almost worse off than during my stay in Beyrout. It is necessary, in dealing with ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... much of the country, and you assign various reasons for disliking it; among others, you imagine the atmosphere too moist and heavy; I agree with you in that opinion, all the black clouds in the sky are continually pressing upon you, for as the proverb says, Like draws to like. Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance, for the pillar of smoke which used to accompany the Israelites out of Egypt; it would be impossible to tell how many things I have taken ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... (as the old proverb doth relate), Equals with equals often congregate. Two consuls[2] (who in years my equals were) When senators, lamenting I did hear That age from them had all their pleasures torn, 47 And them their ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... 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
... to anything so undignified as seasickness, let me tell you that," retorted Xanthippe. "Furthermore, the proverb is not as the lady has quoted it. 'People who live in glass houses should not throw stones' is ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... speak them and write them. Above all, a large share of the world's best thought is being expressed in them. The point requires no arguing, that translations cannot take the place of originals: traduttore traditore, says an excellent Italian proverb. If we are really to know what other nations think,—whether we accept or reject their thought makes little or no difference here,—we can do so only by knowing their language. And the better we know it, the greater our insight will be. To speak at least one foreign language is not only a parlor ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Early in the morning, I mounted a horse for the purpose of visiting the equally-renowned rock temples of Elora (ten miles from Roja). But, as it frequently happens in life that the proverb, "man proposes and God disposes," proves true, such was the case in the present instance—instead of the temples, I saw ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... 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, birds ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... to express dissent from MR. KEIGHTLEY'S ingenious suggestion of a change of meaning in the proverb "Tread on a worm and it will turn." I support my dissent, however, by the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise? If the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too? "Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience. Among so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest betrayed the secret of the famous imposition? Apply a similar theory to any other human institution, and how patent is its absurdity! Let a republican contend that all other forms of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... The old proverb, "Save me from my friends," is founded on a certain basis of fact. "Twenty enemies cannot do me the mischief of one friend," rather cynically, but perhaps not wholly untruly, said Gail Hamilton. For it certainly is not the avowed enemy, or the person to whom one is indifferent, who has the power ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... I received a note from the bishop, inviting me to partake of a family dinner, with him and his niece. So it is! And so true is the proverb: it never rains but it pours! Good fortune absolutely persecuted me! Honours fell so thick at my feet that I had not time to stoop and pick them up! In the present humour of things, I knew not whether I might not be invited, before the morrow came, to dine with ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... they belonged to a class not famous for these virtues—the restless, ever-moving class that pioneer the way towards the setting sun. But perhaps we are leaving the boy propped too long on his hoe. Let us take a more critical look at him. "Fine feathers don't make fine birds," observes the old proverb. Forgetting the dress, then, please study his face. A clear, deep-blue eye, delicately-arched eyebrows, regular features, mouth and chin indicating decision and native refinement, and a well-developed forehead. Ah, here may be a diamond in ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... paving, according to Baber, "is of the usual Chinese pattern, rough bowlders and blocks of stone being laid somewhat loosely together on the surface of the ground; 'good for ten years and bad for ten thousand,' as the Chinese proverb admits. On the level plains of China, where the population is sufficiently affluent to subscribe for occasional repairs, the system has much practical value. But, in the Yunnari mountains, the roads are never repaired; so far from it, the indigent natives extract ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the other, "life is life! 'A live dog is better than a dead king,' says a proverb ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... notice more in detail the natural prognostics of the weather, it is desirable to speak of a superstition which is widely spread among all classes, in the town as well as in the country. The superstition referred to, is that connected with St. Swithin's-day, and is well expressed in a Scotch proverb:— ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... who throng her marts, and clear her forests, are workers, not dreamers,—who have already realized Solomon's pithy proverb, "In all labour is profit;" and their industry has imbued them with a spirit of independence which cannot fail to make them a free ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... position which he occupied. Only in the morning, just at the time Nekhludoff came to see him, he was like a reasonable being, could understand what was said to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a proverb he was fond of repeating: "He's tipsy, but he's wise, so he's ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple, so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... devil that guides 130 him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me,—I'll be ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... There was a proverb as redoubtably popular as Solomon's "Spare the rod"; it originated in Brazil, where the natives were easily humiliated:—"Regarder un sauvage de travers, c'est le battre; le battre, c'es le tuer: battre un negre, c'est le nourrir": Looking hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." These were assembled for to join argument with the king's son and his fellows, and on them was fulfilled the proverb, "Gazelle against lion." The one made the most High his house of defence, and his hope was under the shadow of his wings; while the others trusted in the princes of this world, who are made of none effect, and in the ruler of the darkness of ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... each side of him and at equal distance from him, would never decide from which he should feed and would die of starvation. Nothing of the kind is to be found in his works, but he may have said so in a lecture and his pupils remembering it have handed it down as a proverb. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... the law also; the end returns to the beginning, and the old Titanic nature reappears—men have no regard for the Gods or for oaths; and the evils of the human race seem as if they would never cease. Whither are we running away? Once more we must pull up the argument with bit and curb, lest, as the proverb says, we should fall off our ass. 'Good.' Our purpose in what we have been saying is to prove that the legislator ought to aim at securing for a state three things—freedom, friendship, wisdom. And we chose two states;—one was the type of freedom, and the other ...
— Laws • Plato
... sometimes take osiers from the banks and coppices of the farmer, of which they make their baskets; and occasionally have been known to steal a sheep, but never when they have had any thing to eat, or money to buy it with; for according to a proverb they have among themselves, they despise those who risk their ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... that will play the devil, sir, with you, An 'a may catch your hide and you alone. You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard: I'll smoke your skin-coat an I catch you right; Sirrah, look to 't; i' ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... an Oliver!" Saving the passing reference by Scott and Milton, quoted above, Roland and Olivier are almost unknown to English readers, and yet their once familiar names, knit together for centuries, have passed into a proverb, to be remembered as we remember the friendship of David and Jonathan, or to be classed by the scholar with Pylades, and Orestes of classic story, or with Amys and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... him from his duties. The difference was one of judgment and, perhaps, of temperament. From Higgins's character it is likely that, had he commanded the naval forces, the Louisiana would either have done more work or come to a different end. As the old proverb says, "He would have made a spoon or spoiled ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... a sympathetic listener in Uncle Billy, but this morning the only comfort he offered was an old plantation proverb, spoken ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... herself, doled out warningly the few dollars for his necessaries, and saved, saved, continually saved. The old woman dreaded poverty with a horror not to be expressed in words. It had ruined her own life; it had crushed her son under its merciless wheels; in the words of the proverb, she was the coward who died a thousand deaths in the agonies of apprehension. She was one of those not uncommon misers, who hoard, not for love of money, but through fear. She had managed, with penurious thrift and a self-denial almost sublime in its austerity, to set aside ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... on a grave before he uses them. If a man was a good and successful hunter in his lifetime, his ghost will naturally be more than usually able to assist his brethren in the craft after his death. For that reason when such a man has just died, the people, to adopt a familiar proverb, hasten to make hay while the sun shines by hunting very frequently, in the confident expectation of receiving ghostly help from the deceased hunter. In the evening, when they return from the chase, they lay a small portion of their ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... his life. So all Melville's friends and Melville himself thought. They were persuaded that Arran, at least, was bent on silencing the man who was his most formidable opponent. His friends, quoting the proverb, 'lowes and leiving,'[12] urged him to flight, and he himself resolved on it, having not only his personal safety but also the interests of the Church and the commonweal to consider and safeguard. During the few days he was still left ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... in the first place, from the references made to it both by the Lord and his apostles, and especially from the iteration of the same maxim by Paul in two distinct epistles, that the similitude was current and familiar among the people as a proverb. It is conceded, that apart from this parable, wherever its application is expressly indicated, it is employed to designate the progress of evil; but it ought to be borne in mind that Paul has twice, in the same ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... dull heavy bank of clouds constantly hung over the land, so that during the first sixteen days I had only one view of the Cordillera behind Lima. These mountains, seen in stages, one above the other, through openings in the clouds, had a very grand appearance. It is almost become a proverb, that rain never falls in the lower part of Peru. Yet this can hardly be considered correct; for during almost every day of our visit there was a thick drizzling mist, which was sufficient to make the streets muddy and one's clothes damp: this the people ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the breaches, an exodus had begun from the gates of the town on the other side, and across the bridge over the Jumna. Our heavy guns could have destroyed this bridge, and our cavalry might have swept round the city and cut off the retreat on the other side; but the proverb that it is good to build a bridge for a flying foe was eminently applicable here. Had the enemy felt their retreat cut off—had they known that certain death awaited them unless they could drive us out of the city, the defense would have been so desperate ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... we were away at daylight, and walked some miles before breakfast. All the way to Suifu the road is a paved causeway, 3 feet 6 inches to 6 feet wide, laid down with dressed flags of stone; and here, at least, it cannot be alleged, as the Chinese proverb would have it, that their roads are "good for ten years and bad for ten hundred." There are, of course, no fences; the main road picks its way through the cultivated fields; no traveller ever thinks of trespassing from the roadway, nor did ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... truly make the most of life; for apart from their special joys, even intellect is sharpened by the development of the affections. No material success in life is comparable to success in friendship. We really do ourselves harm by our selfish standards. There is an old Latin proverb,[1] expressing the worldly view, which says that it is not possible for a man to love and at the same time to be wise. This is only true when wisdom is made equal to prudence and selfishness, and when ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... what we do. Wherefore, properly speaking, conscience denominates an act. But since habit is a principle of act, sometimes the name conscience is given to the first natural habit—namely, "synderesis": thus Jerome calls "synderesis" conscience (Gloss. Ezech. 1:6); Basil [*Hom. in princ. Proverb.], the "natural power of judgment," and Damascene [*De Fide Orth. iv. 22] says that it is the "law of our intellect." For it is customary for causes and effects to be called ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... painted beardless and clad in a woman's habit, as a person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch. Wine, nevertheless, taken moderately worketh quite contrary effects, as is implied by the old proverb, which saith,—That Venus taketh cold, when not accompanied by Ceres and Bacchus.[221] This opinion is of great antiquity as appeareth by the testimony of Diodorus the Sicilian, and confirmed by Pausanias, and it is usually held among the Lampsacians, that Don Priapus was the son of Bacchus ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... be so blessed, captain," Mr. Dinsmore said, "but much will depend upon the training to which they are subjected. There is truth in the old proverb, 'Just as the twig ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... to prove a negative, and my main reason for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; but I am absolutely certain I never said that 'some of them (the National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and to administer it by falsehood. We don't.' Most certainly I do not expect to found anything on robbery, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... chair, she permitted him to remain standing at the counter and smoke his cigar while they conversed. It was this indulgence which occasioned people to think that she would marry the doctor; but at last they got tired of waiting, and it became a sort of proverb in Fisher's Alley and its precincts, when things were put off to an indefinite period, to say, "Yes, that will be done when ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... for my maitre d'hotel. Your mind is too much engrossed by the bubbles of politics, you would spoil all my materials, and realize the old proverb that 'the devil sends cooks.' But go to work like a good fellow, and carve the dish before you; by that time the soup will be removed. I have a fine fish, however, in reserve (let me announce this at once), for ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to know wit, according to the proverb, Shakspeare's time should be capable of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after him; and I find among his correspondents and acquaintances, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... modern times. His triumph commenced by his purchasing for an old song a dragoon's horse at Mallow, who was so savage "that he was obliged to be fed through a hole in the wall." After one of Sullivan's lessons the trooper drew a car quietly through Mallow, and remained a very proverb of gentleness for years after. In fact, with mule or horse, one half-hour's lesson from Sullivan was enough; but they relapsed in other hands. Sullivan's own account of the secret was, that he originally acquired it from a wearied soldier ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... style, then, Miss Morgan," he said with a momentary smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb. "Cut it out, Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Consequently, I shall be glad to know that your Lordship has shown him many kindnesses, on account of his services to his Majesty in these regions, and on my own account. The thing which pleased me most in this undertaking, and which is worthy of being remembered, is that, contrary to the proverb of the old Portuguese women, in the course of this war there was not one harsh word between the Spaniards and Portuguese, though they ate together at one mess. But your Lordship may attribute this to your good fortune, and to the intelligence and ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... of the Faithful, there is a proverb that says, "the more one has, the more one wants." So it was with me. I could not rest as long as one solitary camel remained to the dervish; and returning to him I redoubled my prayers and embraces, and promises ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... once more the truth of the old proverb, 'Necessity is the mother of invention,'" I said. "And, besides, you have given me a new idea. I am going home to work it out. When it is finished, I will show it to you." Then I went home, and made rows and rows of strong pockets to sew on a folding screen I was making for my work-room.—Pansy, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... ignorance without fraud? Boasting that we 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 blind, the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... all her self-possession, Pani Korytzka grew confused, and I gained one of those tiny victories which are comprised in the proverb, "The scythe hit upon a stone," or in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'he who sows land, reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a pause, and in a more irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on—nay, if among all my tribe ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... war and saying so, gave but half the proverb, which adds, all's fair in love as well, and maiden, nymph of the woodland, so rapidly does a man learn that which he has never been taught, I proclaim with confidence that ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... explains man's attitude toward his fellows. The proverb says man makes his own world. Each sees what is in himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it clings. Man gives his color to what ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Denis!" gaily exclaimed the Governor to a tall, courtly gentleman, who was super-intending the labor of a body of his censitaires from Beauport. "'Many hands make light work,' says the proverb. That splendid battery you are just finishing deserves to be called Beauport. What say you, my Lord Bishop?" turning to the smiling ecclesiastic. "Is it not ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... same in sexual reproduction: it is a matter of perfectly common experience, that the tendency on the part of the offspring always is, speaking broadly, to reproduce the form of the parents. The proverb has it that the thistle does not bring forth grapes; so, among ourselves, there is always a likeness, more or less marked and distinct, between children and their parents. That is a matter of familiar and ordinary observation. We notice the same thing occurring in the cases of the domestic animals—dogs, ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... the power of the king; nor could he confide in the friendship either of the duke or the Venetians, having no assurance of the sincerity of the latter, or the valor of the former. He concluded by quoting that trite proverb, "Meglio un magro accordo che una grassa vittoria."[*] On the other hand, Lorenzo de' Medici, thinking this an opportunity for exhibiting his prudence and wisdom, and being strenuously supported by ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... peanuts, contemptible peanuts, lies so deep in nature that the mind turns dizzy. It is small stuff to feed valor on—a penny's worth of food in such a mighty hulk. Whatever the lion eats may turn to lion, but the elephant strains the proverb. He might swallow you instead, breeches, hat and suspenders—if you be of the older school of dress before the belt came in—and not so much as cough upon the buttons. And there will be red and yellow wagons, boarded up seductively, as though they ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... opportunity with more leasure and tyme to examine what he had done in the hurry of publick busines, and to repent and amend our errors is in Seneca's Moralls the next best to the being innocent and not haveing committed thesse faults att all: the French proverb being of eternall truth that the shorter ane folly be it is the better; and tho' that physicall rule a privatione ad habitium non datur regressus be also true in politicks as in physicks that a man divested of his offices seldome ever recovers his former greatnes, yet Lauderdale being ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... coach. This is a mere trifle. The Jimville stage is built for five passengers, but when you have seven, with four trunks, several parcels, three sacks of grain, the mail and express, you begin to understand that proverb about the road which has been reported to you. In time you learn to engage the high seat beside the driver, where you get good air and the best company. Beyond the desert rise the lava flats, scoriae strewn; sharp-cutting walls of narrow ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... consider the darky as an inferior being," Charley had confided to Walter in a whisper. "There are rumors that there is more than one negro slave in the heart of the Everglades. The Seminoles have a proverb, 'White man, Indian, dog, nigger,' which expresses their opinion ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... words we hear May revolutionize or rear A mighty state. The words we read May be a spiritual deed Excelling any fleshly one, As much as the celestial sun Transcends a bonfire, made to throw A light upon some raree-show. A simple proverb tagged with rhyme May colour half the course of time; The pregnant saying of a sage May influence every coming age; A song in its effects may be More glorious than Thermopylae, And many a lay that schoolboys scan A nobler feat ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... offering itself to nature, as in the former instance it offered itself to man; and those varieties which are least competent to cope with surrounding conditions will infallibly give way to those that are most competent. To use a familiar proverb, the weakest goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction again breeds to over-production, transmitting the qualities which secured its maintenance, but transmitting them in different degrees. The struggle for food again supervenes, and those to whom ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... said Aunt Isobel. "Child, whilst we are speaking of it—for the first and the last time—let it be a warning for you to illustrate a very homely proverb: 'Don't cut off your nose to spite your own face.' Ill-tempered people are always doing it, and I did it to my life-long loss. I was angry with him, and like Jonah I said to myself, 'I do well to be angry.' And though I would die twenty deaths harder than the death he ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... truth's the truth, and it's no use hiding it, though 'self-praise is no accommodation,' as the proverb says. You see, sir, I couldn't be happy when you was gone. I missed my dear young master so much. People wondered what was amiss with me, when they found me, as they often did, in a state of refraction. 'Why, Juniper,' they'd say, 'what's amiss? Are you grieving after ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... we have,—Span., margarita; Ital., margarita and maugherita; Fr., marguerite, but used only in the proverb, "Il ne faut pas jeter les marguerites devant les pourceaux." Johnson, Webster, and Halliwell give margarite as an English word. Probably all ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... theorists later are credited with having made additions to the musical resources of the Greeks, and it was a proverb, said of any smart man, that he "added a new string to the lyre." This was said of Terpander especially; but it is pretty certain that the lyre had six or seven strings some time before Terpander, and that the form of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... bird in the world is the kiwi. But it is not the most extraordinary bird seen by visitors to the Zoo, because they never see it. The kiwi buries itself asleep all day, and only comes out in the night to demolish an unpleasant and inconvenient proverb. The kiwi is the latest of all the birds, but catches the most worms. For this let us honour the kiwi, and hurl him in the face of the early risers. He stamps about the ground in the dark night, and the worm, being naturally a fool, as even the proverb demonstrates, comes up to investigate, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... teacher. His name grew into a proverb, insomuch that an elementary treatise of any sort might in the fourteenth century be called a "donat." Priscian was a contemporary of Boethius. His grammar was epitomised by Rabanus Maurus in the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the Witch of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more than she bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in India, from a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember the sense. They Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a closed door, the devil will open it—excuse my mentioning such a thing; but ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries. 'Out of sight, out of mind,' is well enough as a proverb applicable to cases of friendship, though absence is not always necessary to hollowness of heart, even between friends, and truth and honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most easily imitated at a distance, when the counterfeits often pass for real. Love, however, is very materially ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Cup and the Lip." The proverb that many things fall out between the cup and the lip, is a literal version of one in Latin. Multo inter pocula ac libra cadunt. The origin of which was as follows:—A king of Thrace had planted a vineyard, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... himself, for that gentleman continued in a very even condition as to worldly goods, being steadily and consistently broke,—a sad state of affairs for one who had brought so much happiness to others. History proved to the point of proverb that whenever McGinnis visited a camp,—and he had followed scores of strikes and stampedes in all the corners of the metalliferous world,—that camp was destined to witness a boom at no ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... revenge of cursing and reviling him; in which latter the landlord joined, saying, "Ay, ay, he is a pure one, I warrant you. A pretty gentleman, indeed, to go for a soldier! He shall wear a laced wastecoat truly. It is an old proverb and a true one, all is not gold that glisters. I am glad my house is well rid ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... is sketched from his childhood to the time he was established in business, thus showing what he was in boyhood and youth; and the achievements of his manhood are summed up in a closing chapter, to substantiate the truth of the above proverb. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... friends until, in bewilderment, I asked myself if our Thursday night was ours or somebody else's. And I fancied a tendency to treat it as if it were somebody else's,—to take an ell when we meant to give no more than an inch, and J. was as little inclined as I to furnish a new proof of the wise old proverb. One day a would-be wit who was regular in his attendance and his talk, and who should have known better, asked J., "Are you still running your Thursday Club?" and so helped to precipitate the end. We were not running a Club for anybody, and if the fame ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... grew up he found the proverb true, That Fate one day makes people pay for all the wrong they do. He was cheated out of money by a man whose name was Brown, And got crippled in a railway smash while coming up to town. So, little boys and little girls, take ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... touch of the karoo, or the prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at breakfast—why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all right, and there's weeping down on the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... growing here in this part of Surrey, that the large vale near my own dwelling, was anciently call'd Holmes-Dale; famous for the flight of the Danes: The inhabitants of great antiquity (in their manners, habits, speech) have a proverb, Holmes-Dale never won; he never shall. It had once a fort, call'd Homes-Dale Castle: I know not whether it might not be that of Rygate; but leaving this uncertain, and return to the plant, I have often wonder'd at our curiosity after foreign plants, and expensive difficulties, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... satisfied that the whole thing is a chimera, then, I adjure you, destroy the potsherd and the writings, and let a cause of troubling be removed from our race for ever. Perhaps that will be wisest. The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them. And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... to kill their enemies. It is something like what people now call 'conscription' that Richard Sellar is talking of when he speaks of 'being pressed.' He means that a number of men, called a 'press-crew,' forced him to go with them to fight in the king's navy, for, as the proverb said, 'A king's ship and the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... class that pioneer the way towards the setting sun. But perhaps we are leaving the boy propped too long on his hoe. Let us take a more critical look at him. "Fine feathers don't make fine birds," observes the old proverb. Forgetting the dress, then, please study his face. A clear, deep-blue eye, delicately-arched eyebrows, regular features, mouth and chin indicating decision and native refinement, and a well-developed forehead. Ah, here may be a diamond ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... familiar with publicans and sinners to a proverb. "Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber; a friend of publicans and sinners." Matt. 11:19. The first part, concerning his gluttonous eating and drinking, to be sure, was a horrible slander; but for the other, nothing was ever spoken truer ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... The Welsh proverb, that a man who sleeps on the top of Snowdon, must awake either a fool or a poet, refers as probably to the effect produced on the mind by the prodigious mountain panorama discernible from thence, as to any fancied influence of ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... granting of a paper constitution, prefaced by some high-sounding declaration, of itself confers the power of self-government upon a people. This is never so. Nobody can "give" a people "self-government," any more than it is possible to "give" an individual "self-help." You know that the Arab proverb runs, "God helps those who help themselves." In the long run, the only permanent way by which an individual can be helped is to help him to help himself, and this is one of the things your University should inculcate. But it must be his ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 was a fool, a thought that has been modernized, with an unnecessary ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... in preserving it for God and the king by war, than to have it kept entire without war, to the profit of the devil and of his followers. He was also reported on another occasion to have reminded her of the Spanish proverb—that the head of one salmon is worth those of a hundred frogs. The hint, if it were really given, was certainly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, will be savourless and disenchanted. It is the fate of such an one to take twice as much trouble as is needed to obtain happiness, and miss the happiness in the end; he is the man of the proverb, in short, who goes farther ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passionate imitation, and of an imitation not always of the wisest or noblest kind. To Ascham it seemed like "the enchantment of Circe brought out of Italy to mar men's manners in England." "An Italianate Englishman," ran the harder proverb of Italy itself, "is an incarnate devil." The literary form which this imitation took seemed at any rate ridiculous. John Lyly, distinguished both as a dramatist and a poet, laid aside the tradition ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... everybody and everything; his vehemence and vituperation were seasoned with a kind of wit, and he made himself, if not a power, at least an important factor in the House of Commons. Indeed, it passed into a kind of proverb at St. Stephen's that there were three parties in the State—the Ministry, the Opposition, and Lord George Gordon. Parliament had seen before, and has seen since, many a politician fighting thus like Hal o' the Wynd for his own hand, but no one so influential for a season or so pernicious ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... boat filled up there, he added, and some have got no further. But I've floated in and out so far. Oh well, 'The silver cup sinks, but the wooden bowl floats on', as the proverb says. There was a time when I had to drag out of the water here a man who was better than me in every way—that's when I really got ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... how still and peaceful they are when their time comes to grub. 'The still sow sups the kail,' as we used to say in the north; the English turn the proverb differently, they say ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and Joan, who have lived twenty years under our porch, when you were little boys? You thought they seemed to enjoy a rain so much that you would give them a shower. Poor Darby and his wife realized the proverb, 'It never rains but it pours.' A gentle, steady rain was agreeable enough; but you floated them out of house and home, and I do not think they ever resettled in ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... foot). Don't repeat that hateful proverb! Nothing can make me more angry. I feel like crying when I hear it, too. Now see, I'm crying. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... from home was Eton, that great "prep" school of so many English boys. The fact that he attended there helped to give rise to the proverb that "Waterloo was won on the cricket fields of Eton"—but as a matter of record the boy was not interested in this sport. He preferred the fiddle to the racquet, as he had inherited his father's ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... the horse or the ass, 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
... was only used in extreme danger, and was hence peculiarly termed iera or sacra, whence the proverb sacram anchoram solvere, as flying to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... all knew what was about to happen. "When a man's mind is made up," says the old Irish proverb, "his feet must ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the unconscious authority of his words he was easily master of them all; but though he had the voice of Mars and a head like Olympian Zeus he must needs abase his proud spirit to the demands of the occasion, for the jealousy of mortal man is a proverb. Where the punchers that he hired for thirty dollars a month were decked out in shaps and handkerchiefs he sat in his shirt-sleeves and overalls, with only his high-heeled boots and the enormous black sombrero which he always wore, to mark him for their ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... fourth Earl of Salisbury (a descendant of Lord Burghley's younger son), who succeeded to the title in 1683, and died in 1694. He was mixed up in the troubles of the time, and was, says Macaulay, 'foolish to a proverb,' and the 'prey of gamesters.' John Cecil, Earl of Exeter, from 1678 to 1700, who was descended from Lord Burghley's elder son, was himself a book collector, and therefore not likely to part with the library of his ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... same thing in the same way. Scores of those who suffer from the depredations of this class of offenders, complain to me every day; but I can neither afford them redress, nor hold out any hope of it from any of the Oude authorities. It is a proverb, "that those who are sentenced to six years' imprisonment in Oude, are released in six months, and those who are sentenced to six months, are released in six years." Great numbers are released every ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... 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 ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... plain-spoken than the two Italian adaptations. The religious postulate on which it rests, namely Deism, will be discussed later on in its wider significance for this period. The same idea is repeated, though in a clumsy caricature, in the famous proverb of the 'three who have deceived the world, that is, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed.' If the Emperor Frederick II, in whom this saying is said to have originated, really thought so, he probably expressed ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... ace quoth Bolton" is an old proverb of unknown origin. Ray tells us that a Collection of Proverbs having been presented to Queen Elizabeth, with an assurance that it contained all the proverbs in the English language. "Bate me an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... she addressed her, Bice—that is to say, according to English pronunciation, Beeshee (you would probably call it Beetchee if you learned to speak Italian in England, but the Contessa had the Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth, according to the proverb), which, as everybody knows, is the contraction of Beatrice. She was called Miss Beachey in the household, a name which was received—by the servants at least—as a quite proper and natural name; a great deal more sensible than Forno-Populo. Her position, however, in the little party ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... That homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz. "That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh," was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would think that after thirty-five years' affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... modest distance, as regards the glory of the achievements related, each peasant told what he had done himself; two or three probably made out their little history together, and told of each other's valour: that homely and somewhat vulgar Scotch proverb, "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours," was certainly unknown to them, but nevertheless they fully recognized the wise principle of mutual ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... to take the advice of another. Let me practise this towards you as well as preach it to you, and I'll lay a wager you will approve on't. But I am chiefly of your opinion that contentment (which the Spanish proverb says is the best paint) gives the lustre to all one's enjoyment, puts a beauty upon things which without it would have none, increases it extremely where 'tis already in some degree, and without it, all that we call happiness besides loses its property. What is contentment, must be left ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... characteristic of the Prince. It was one of the chief sources of his greatness. At that period, perhaps at any period, he would have been incapable of such brilliant and dashing exploits as had made the name of Egmont so famous. It had even become a proverb, "the counsel of Orange, the execution of Egmont," yet we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of St. Quentin in the great political ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the remark and I turned laughingly to Bennett and said: Nonsense; he can't harm any one, and there is an old proverb about the impossibility of drowning those who are born for ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... these times ought to put no faith in the bulletins, despatches, notes, and proclamations which have emanated from Bonaparte, or passed through his hands. For my part, I believe that the proverb, "As great a liar as a bulletin," has as much truth in it as the axiom, two ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the Senator from Illinois Be the world's proverb of successful shame, Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, Who, when the sad State spares ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... was one of those men who always do the opposite of what is expected of them and of what they expect of themselves. It is not that they are not warned—a man who is warned is worth two men, says the proverb. They profess never to be the dupe of anything, and that they steer their ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they reckon without themselves, for they do not know themselves. In one of those moments of forgetfulness ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... many instances, in the Japanese history, of Samurais who were really starved to death in spite of their having a hundred pieces of gold carefully preserved to meet the expenses at the time of an emergency; hence the proverb: "The falcon would not feed on the ear of corn, even if he should starve." Similarly, we know of no case of Zen monks, ancient and modern, who got rich by any ignoble means. They would rather face poverty with gladness of heart. Fu-gai, one of the most distinguished ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... progressive revelation admits them all; and this is already contained in the words of our SAVIOUR, 'Moses because of the hardness of your hearts;' or even in the Old Testament, 'Henceforth there shall be no more this proverb in the house of Israel?'" (O if Catholic writers were to expound Holy Scripture with the license of these gentlemen!... That the scheme of Revelation has been progressive, is a Theological truism. What that has to do with the question in hand, I see not.)—"For what is ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... worst enemy I had among them all—one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about '76. I never doubted that it would ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... situations 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 Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... surrounded the mother had fallen upon the daughter. One felt the influences that had rained upon Nancy ever since she had come into the world, One could not look at her, nor talk with her, without feeling that her mother—like a vine in the blood, as the old proverb says—was breathing, growing, budding, blossoming in her ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... exquisite joy it was to work for it. Yes, mio amico, work is the greatest intoxication, the greatest blessing, the greatest solace we can know. Therefore work, work, work. But of all things, my good musical friends in America, remember the old German proverb: ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... compositions to questionable stories, from laughter to tears, from Blind-man's-buff to Lotto. Some of the proverbs were quite ingenious and required elaborate preparations; for example, at one place Mme. de Lauzun dances with M. de Belgunce, in the simplest kind of a costume, which represented the proverb: Bonne renommee vaut mieux que ceinture doree [A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches]. Mme. de Marigny danced with M. de Saint-Julien as a negro, passing her handkerchief over her face in ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... like a person recovered from a fever who finds mere health a condition of joy. She went back to her music, to her neglected books, with a singing heart. And in accordance with the curious ways of Providence, noted in the proverb relating the different fates of him who hath and him who hath not, there was at once added to her pleasure in the old elements of her life the very elements she had longed for unavailingly. Seeing her friendly and shining of face, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... el-Azhar had promised him that a "child of God" would lead him. If he waited and trusted and just let things take their course, all things would come right. Haste comes of the devil—a true Eastern proverb, a warning far too little regarded by the Western children of speed. But his conscience rebuked him. Had he verily been one of those who do deeds of real kindness? Was he worthy to drink of the cup tempered with camphor? Had his deed been sincerely inspired by disinterested love towards his ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... mother. Bugrov came, unpacked his presents, and after saying a few words, departed. And those few words he said not to Liza but to Groholsky . . . . With Liza he was silent and Groholsky's mind was at rest; but there is a Russian proverb which he would have done well to remember: "Don't fear the dog that barks, but fear the dog that's quiet. . . ." A fiendish proverb, but in practical life ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... has had a narrow escape of being drowned. All the wits, of course, appeal to the proverb, and deny the possibility of his concluding his career by water. Still, his escape was extraordinary. He had taken a boat at Palace Yard to cross to Lambeth. As he was standing up in the boat, immediately on his getting in, the waterman awkwardly ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... makest a voyage to the stars, go thou blindfolded; and carry not a sword, but the sandals of thy youth. —Egyptian Proverb. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the word of the Lord to the Jews in a like case: "What means this proverb which you take up, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? It is not so, O house of Israel. The son shall not die for the iniquity of his father, nor the father for the iniquity of the son. The soul that sinneth, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... mature life, wields enormous influence over the family, males included, and is a kind of private Empress Dowager. A man knows, says the proverb, but a woman knows better. As a widow in early life, her lot is not quite so pleasant. It is not thought desirable for widows to remarry; but if she remains single, she becomes "a rudderless boat;" round which gathers much calumny. Many young women ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... of most of ours too. Johnson liked satisfying food, such as a leg of pork, or veal pie well stuffed, with plum pie and sugar, and he devoured enormous quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea has almost passed into a proverb,—he has actually been credited with twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu, spoken to Miss Reynolds, points its ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... estimate the power which emanated from the pulpits of Dr. McElroy, or Dr. DeWitt, or Dr. Spring, or Dr. Krebs? Their work will go on in New York though their churches be demolished. Large-hearted men were these pulpit apostles, apart from the clerical obligations of their denominations. No proverb in the world is so abused as the one which declares that the children of ministers never turn out well. They hold the highest places in the nation. Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania, Governor Taylor of Tennessee, were sons of Methodist ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Deuteros plous] is a proverb," says the Scholiast on the Phaedo, "used of those who do anything safely and cautiously inasmuch as they who have miscarried in their first voyage, set about then: preparations for the second cautiously," and he ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... really pretty, and has something so unspeakably refined, that a young gentleman might well be attracted by her. With my brother it is not all quite right in this respect; but, candidly speaking, I am in great fear on your account, Mr. Thostrup. Still waters—you know the proverb? I might have spared you the trouble. The letter which I received a few evenings ago informed me of her departure. Mamma has taken her with her. It seemed to her a sin to leave that sweet, innocent girl in a public-house. The host and ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... which gave Hetty some misgivings as to the success of her experiment. However, she knew that Nan could be trusted to repeat to the other servants all that she had said, and that it would lose nothing in the recital; and, as for the future, one of Hetty's first principles of action was an old proverb which her grandfather had explained to her when ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... will strengthen our wills. For when God comes into a heart, He restores the due subordination which has been broken into discord and anarchy by sin. He dismounts the servant riding on horseback, and carrying the horse to the devil, according to the proverb, and gives the reins into the right hands. Now, if the gift of God's Spirit, working through the Word of God, and the principles and the motives therein unfolded, and therefrom deducible, be the great means by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... went before. And Michael seemed gigantical, The Arch-fiend but a dwarf; And at the towers of Erebus Our striplings flung the scoff. But the elders with foreboding Mourned the days forever o'er, And re called the forest proverb, The Iroquois' old saw: Grief to every graybeard When young ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... fifty or more boys were trooping out of school. I carefully scanned the throng. The old proverb has it that it is a wise child who knows its own father; but it is not so difficult for a father to know his own children. The moment I put my eyes on Sarah's son, I knew him; he was the very image of me; I could have ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... breakfast 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 to Belle Isle; not a gale exactly, except once on ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... flotation," the Master curtly retorted. "If we make land, we make it, that's all, sir." He relapsed into silence. Leclair muttered, in Arabic—his words audible only to himself—an ancient Islamic proverb: "Allah knows best, and time will show!" Then, after a moment's pause, the single ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... never heard of him. Thus it will be with Bloomfield and Blackett—their names two years after their death will be found neither on the rolls of Curriers' Hall nor of Parnassus. Who would think that anybody would be such a blockhead as to sin against an express proverb, 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam'? ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... advantages of defensive and offensive war and to decline or give battle according to circumstances, and in the latter case to fight under the ramparts of their camp just as under the walls of a fortress—the Roman, says a Roman proverb, conquers by sitting still. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... fifteen years, then," he said, laughing. "I should have a choice of professions by that time at any rate. You know the proverb that 'At forty every man is either a fool or a physician.'" She looked at him with a smile. "Yes," he said, "I realize the alternative." She laughed a little, but did ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... would seem, in the slightest action that a man attempts in this Great World's Fair of Conventionality, whose every sideshow is hedged around with the red-tape of the Law. Witness even that delusive proverb—there is honour amongst thieves. So is there an unwritten canon in literature and the making of books, that a Romance must end with a phrase to convey another illusion—namely, the happiness ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... fair in war and saying so, gave but half the proverb, which adds, all's fair in love as well, and maiden, nymph of the woodland, so rapidly does a man learn that which he has never been taught, I proclaim with confidence that I ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... "The Brig of Don, near the 'auld town' of Aberdeen, with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... require a high temperature to boil you, Hilda," said Prudence with a laugh, for Hilda's good-nature had passed into proverb. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... an Italian proverb—"Tutto il mondo e paese"—which means, in its broadest sense, "All the world is ruled by the same passion and qualities." In the old days it needed a Dickens, and, later, a Neil Lyons to discover the qualities ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... as that plain, moral, respectable man. I am convinced of sin; I am converted; I have the right frames, and the right feelings, and the right experiences.' Oh, of all the cunning snares of the devil, that I think is the cunningest. Well says the old proverb—'The devil is old, and therefore he ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... said to him: "I did not know you before, Geronimo. I hope it may be in my power to prove to you how much your generosity ennobles you and elevates you in my esteem; but although your confidence in the amulet rests on so laudable a sentiment, I would not rely too much upon it. You know the proverb says: 'Help yourself, and Heaven will ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... also engrossed the moody Vanslyperken, which was how he should behave relative to the widow Vandersloosh. Should he call or should he not? he cared nothing for her, and provided he could succeed with the Portsmouth lady, he would pitch her to the devil; but still he remembered the old proverb, "You should never throw away dirty water before you are sure of clean." After some cogitation he determined upon still pressing his suit, and hoped at the same time that the widow would not admit him into her presence. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... devilish hurry to be quit of your shekels," laughed the Irishman O'Sullivan, who sat across the table from me. "Isn't there a proverb, Mr. Montagu, about a—a careless gentleman and his money going different ways, begad? Don't keep him waiting any longer than ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... country, and you assign various reasons for disliking it; among others, you imagine the atmosphere too moist and heavy; I agree with you in that opinion, all the black clouds in the sky are continually pressing upon you, for as the proverb says, Like draws to like. Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance, for the pillar of smoke which used to accompany the Israelites out of Egypt; it would be impossible to tell how many things I have taken you for at different times; sometimes I have taken you for the witches' cauldron ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... De Guiche seemed very unwilling to take his departure for the purpose of dressing himself. Monsieur, singing, laughing, and admiring himself, passed away the time until the dinner-hour, in a frame of mind that justified the proverb ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... stations as they rise, are pressed upon more and more severely by objective things, by relations and claims from without, so that they become the more perplexed the lower the degree of their individual intelligence. This so far as regards War is the chief foundation of the truth of the French proverb:— ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... say, if your religion's Roman, And you at Rome would do as Romans do, According to the proverb,—although no man, If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you, If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragout— Dine and be d—d! I don't mean to be coarse, But that's the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... expressed, the little fancies may then cluster round them and will be carried lightly, as the victor wears his wreath; while, on the other hand, if these be lacking no amount of symbolism or attribute will supply their place. "Cucullus non facit monachum," as the old proverb says—"It is not the hood that makes the monk," but the ascetic face you depict within it. Indeed, rather beware of trusting even to the ordinary, well-recognised symbols in common use, and being misled by them to think ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... there met him by chance a train of mules loaded with parsley; which his soldiers conceived to be an ominous occurrence or ill-boding token, because this is the herb with which we not unfrequently adorn the sepulchres of the dead; and there is a proverb derived from the custom, used of one who is dangerously sick, that he has need of nothing but parsley. So, to ease their minds, and free them from any superstitious thoughts or forebodings of evil, Timoleon ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... person of whom you speak, your own good sense must direct you. I never pretend to advise, being an implicit believer in the old proverb. This present frost is detestable. It is the first I have felt for these three years, though I longed for one in the oriental summer, when no such thing is to be had, unless I had gone to the top ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... trace its course. The richness and beauty of these Links of Forth appeared the more surprising to the boys from the contrast which the scene presented to the dreary wastes of moss and heather which they had seen in the Highlands. There is an old Scotch proverb that refers to ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... Eusthenes towards the Norman ladies, and even savour faintly, as from afar, the bouquet of that Vin blanc d'Anjou which Pantagruel bought in some old hostelry beside the Eau de Robec. "Mouton de Rouen," says the old proverb, "qui a toujours la patte levee," and her sons were ever ready from the earliest years to go their ways, "gaaignant," through all the trade-routes of Europe, where French and Spanish wines were to be ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... scant forty and looking a neglected fifty, short-sighted, stoop-shouldered and absent-minded to a proverb, he cast a last fond look at the parcel containing his translation of the Bacchic epic and climbed the stairs to his bachelor bedroom, took off his shabby garments, and stretched himself out in the illiterate sleep of a ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... time when it is a year of domestic dissension and repentance. And it is a very true proverb, 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure.' No! If at the end of the year the young people continue of the same mind, and no ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extravagances. It would be sad to have spent my life in saving, only to fatten the Jesuits or those sisters who cannot speak Castilian. I do not wish my money to share the fate of that of the sacristans in the proverb. For this reason, to the annoyance I feel at my struggles with this inimical Chapter, I must add the distress I feel at my daughter's feeble character. Probably she will be hunted; some rake will laugh at me and possess ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dedicated to Athene, and being respected at Athens, it had greatly multiplied. Hence the proverb, 'taking owls to Athens,' similar to our English 'taking coals ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... one; and amid the general felicitation that ensued the successful proverb-guessers were made room for in the magic circle, and Horace had a chance of exchanging "How ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... all his faults, was never mean. "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'po'rth of tar," was a favourite motto of his. She had ever thought it a proverb both pleasant and wise. She was not an extravagant woman, but she also liked to have things well done, and had no sympathy with cheese-paring ways. The house was well and handsomely furnished, she and the children had plenty of dress, their table was an excellent one, all of them indulging ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady- Prioress and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. . . . It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days. Their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... started to answer, but checked himself. Never before had he appreciated to the full the depth and truth of the proverb relating to the frying-pan and the fire. To clear himself, he must mention his suspicions of Jimmy, and also his reasons for those suspicions. And to do that would mean revealing his past. It ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... and just like the children; Both of them bent upon living according as suiteth their pleasure, While we others must never do aught but flatter and praise them. Once for all time holds good the ancients' trustworthy proverb: 'Whoever goes not forward comes backward.' So must it ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... I do retract it. I here emphatically record that first thoughts are not always best thoughts, and that it is my sober second judgment that Mr. Uncannon has done us more good than he has the parish at North Bizzy. We gave him to them grudgingly. But it has been a case in which the proverb applies: It is more blessed to give than to receive. For Mr. Uncannon's flirtation has probably given us Maurice ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... of his ear. "What an undaunted young pedestrian! Four leagues a day are no such trifle when you have to begin again next morning. 'Slow and steady wins the race,' says an old proverb, which I intend to carry out to the letter; for forced marches would soon injure our health, and then good-bye to the success of our expedition. As to walking until night, it is perfectly impossible, except when one is certain to meet with an inn. Under these large ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... themselves how to define man, so as to distinguish him from other animals. Burke says, "Man is an animal that cooks its victuals." "Then," says Johnson, "the proverb is just, 'there is reason in roasting eggs.'" Dr. Adam Smith has hit this case; "Man," says he, "is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this—one dog does not change a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... in love and war,'" exulted the Skeptic, somewhat breathlessly. It seemed to be a favourite maxim with him. I recalled his having excused himself for eluding Dahlia by that same well-worn proverb. "No—don't run! Have ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... been torn to pieces in the struggle. Grettir's fame spread far abroad for this deed, and none was deemed his equal for boldness and prowess. Yet Glam's curse began already to work, for Grettir dared not go out after nightfall, for then he seemed to see all kinds of horrors. It became a proverb in the land that Glam gives Glam-sight to those who see things otherwise than as they are, which we now ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... callers;—were shut even to some who find but few 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 ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the jury,—you know the old saying—'He that pleads his own cause has a fool for his client.' We cannot say that the proverb has held good in this case. The defendant has proved himself no fool. Never in my life have I listened to the pleadings of an opponent with deeper anxiety. Nature and the awful chances of life have made the defendant in this case more than eloquent. For a moment I actually trembled for ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... onward as through life we go, Amid the pomp, and glare, and show, We oft some proverb misconstrue And mutter boldly, "'Tis not true." But in their calm, majestic way, We hear the tongues of wise men say: "You go way back And ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... into my mind Concerning a proverb of old, Plain dealing's a jewel most rare, And more precious than silver or gold: And therefore with patience give ear, And listen to what here is penned, These verses were written on purpose The honest man's cause to defend. For this I will make it appear, And prove by experience ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Favraud, for my maitre d'hotel. Your mind is too much engrossed by the bubbles of politics, you would spoil all my materials, and realize the old proverb that 'the devil sends cooks.' But go to work like a good fellow, and carve the dish before you; by that time the soup will be removed. I have a fine fish, however, in reserve (let me announce this at once), for my end of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... thought of the old proverb, and the alternative the plough presents to those who would thrive by it; Fleda thought of Mr. Didenhover; Mrs. Rossitur would fain have suggested that such an important person must be well paid; but ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Bruyn. They are likewise taken notice of by [682]Thevenot, and Herbert. In respect to the grottos I am persuaded, that they were temples, and not tombs. Nothing was more common among the Persians than to have their temples formed out of rocks. Mithras e [683]Petra was in a manner a proverb. Porphyry assures us, that the Deity had always a rock or cavern for his temple: that people, in all places, where the name of Mithras was known, paid their worship at a [684]cavern. Justin Martyr speaks to the same [685]purpose: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... he had found old Pierre and had followed him to a bath-room, the water that washed the stains from brow and wrist seemed also to purify the stain that is popularly supposed to resist earthly ablutions. A clean body and a clean conscience is not a proverb, but there are, perhaps, worse ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Gloucester, who was really buried at St. Alban's. On May Day the watermen used to come to St. Paul's in order to sprinkle water and strew herbs upon this tomb—I know not why. Those who were out of work and went dinnerless were said to dine with Duke Humphrey: and there was a proverb—'Trash and trumpery is the way to Duke Humphrey.' Trumpery being used in its original meaning—tromperie—deceit. Among other tombs there were those of the Saxon Kings Sebbi and Ethelred. The first of ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... that exists upon earth has its ethereal counterpart.'' Christ said: "As a man thinketh so is he.'' A Hindu proverb says: "Man is a creature of reflection; he becomes that upon which he reflects.'' A modern metaphysicist says: "Our thoughts are real substance and leave their images upon our personality, they fill our aura with beauty or ugliness according to our intents and purposes ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... action to blatant braggadocio. That the Pacific Ocean may become, in truth, the Peaceful Ocean, and never resound to the clash of American arms, is the devout wish of one who believes—implicitly—with Moltke in the old proverb, Si vis pacem, para bellum—If you wish for ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... rain, be sure it will soon clear up and remain clear for some time. The spider, it is said, changes her web every twenty-four hours, and the part of the day she chooses to do this is always significant. If it occurs a little before sunset, the night will be fine and clear. Hence the old French proverb: "Araignee du ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... 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 - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... you had better delay your visit to the bazaar until you have done your business with Mr. Arithmetic. Our mother's proverb, you know, is, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' The sky is dark, the weather uncertain; we may be stopped from going altogether if we do ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... higher power than all that which was around would not overlook me or any other fellows on that day. At one time, not very long before the moment of attack, I felt to its intensest depth the truth of the proverb, "Carpe diem." What was time? I had another twenty minutes in which to live in comparative safety. What was the difference between twenty minutes and twenty years? Really and truly what was the difference? I was living ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... the water mill, through all the livelong day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour away; How languidly the autumn wind does stir the withered leaves As in the fields the reapers sing, while binding up their sheaves! A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with water that ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... andreiotera de panta ta en taei Europaei, polymorphotata de ta en taei libyaei; kai legetai de tis paroimia, hoti aei pherei ti libyae kainon;] i.e. That generally the Beasts are wilder in Asia, stronger in Europe, and of greater variety of shapes in Africa; for as the Proverb saith, Africa always produces something new. Pliny[B] indeed ascribes it to the Heat of the Climate, Animalium, Hominumque effigies monstriferas, circa extremitates ejus gigni, minime mirum, artifici ad formanda Corpora, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... in the refrain is true and beautiful, and the very euphony of its words helps to enforce its meaning and make the song pleasant and suggestive for young and old. It has passed into popular quotation, and become almost a proverb. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... tolerably large library. All these objects I kept in view, to be executed as convenience should serve; and although I knew many years should elapse before they could be attained, I was of a disposition to comfort myself with the Spanish proverb, 'Time and I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... is no paradox to say that "Utopia," which has by a conspiracy of accidents become a proverb for undisciplined fancifulness in social and political matters, is in reality a very unimaginative work. In that, next to the accident of its priority, lies the secret of its continuing interest. In some respects it is like one of those precious and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... sociable and friendly game now and then, just to pass the time away a little agreeably. By this means he may readily mark down his man, and the game once in view, he should not appear too eager in the pursuit of it, but take good care, as the proverb says, to give a sprat, in order to catch a herring. This should be done by allowing some temporary success, before he make ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
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