To pour oil to True eloquence. James Wood, comp. 1899. Dictionary of Quotations

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James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

To pour oil to True eloquence


To pour oil on the fire is not the way to quench it. Proverb.	25255
To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us. Johnson.	25256
To promise is already to give, to hope already to enjoy. Delille.	25257
To prove, as to doubt, the existence of God, is to prove or doubt the existence of existence. Jean Paul.	25258
To put the cart before the horse. Proverb.	25259
To raise the weaker sex in self-respect, as well as in the esteem of the stronger, is the first step from barbarism to civilisation. Canning.	25260
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. Burke.	25261
To receive a simple primitive phenomenon, to recognise it in its high significance, and to go to work with it, requires a productive spirit, which is able to take a wide survey, and is a rare gift, only to be found in very superior natures. Goethe.	25262
To receive gifts is to lose liberty. Saadi.	25263
To reconcile despotism with freedom is to make your despotism just. Carlyle.	25264
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know that the only solid, though a far slower, reformation, is what each man begins and perfects on himself. Carlyle.	25265
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: / Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n. Milton.	25266
To rejoice in the prosperity of another is to partake of it. William Austin.	25267
To remember one worthy thing, how many thousand unworthy must a man be able to forget! Carlyle.	25268
To repel one’s cross is to make it heavier. Amiel.	25269
To require two things is the way to have them both undone. Johnson.	25270
To rescue, to avenge, to instruct, or protect a woman is all the same as to love her. Jean Paul.	25271
To revenge is no valour, but to bear. Timon of Athens, iii. 5.	25272
To run away / Is but a coward’s trick; to run away / From this world’s ills, that at the very worst / Will soon blow o’er. Blair.	25273
To say of a man “He means well,” is worth nothing except he does well. Plautus.	25274
To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned, we would have had no conscience. Carlyle.	25275
To scorn delights and live laborious days. Milton.	25276
To secure and promote the feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our endeavours after happiness. Schopenhauer.	25277
To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour. William Blake.	25278
To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness. Confucius.	25279
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion—all in one. Ruskin.	25280
To see her is to love her, / And love but her for ever. Burns.	25281
To see some small soul pirouetting throughout life on a single text, and judging all the world because it cannot find a partner, is not a Christian sight. Prof. Drummond.	25282
To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege. J. M. Barrie.	25283
To seek to change opinions by laws is worse than futile. Buckle.	25284
To seem and not to be, is throwing the shuttle without weaving. Proverb.	25285
To seize a character, even that of one man, in its life and secret mechanism, requires a philosopher; to delineate it with truth and impressiveness, is work for a poet. Carlyle.	25286
To serve from the lowest station upwards (von unten hinauf) is in all things necessary. Goethe.	25287
To serve God and love him is higher and better than happiness, though it be with wounded feet, and bleeding brow, and a heart loaded with sorrow. W. R. Greg.	25288
To shape the whole future is not our problem but only to shape faithfully a small part of it, according to rules laid down. Carlyle.	25289
To shoot wide of the mark—i.e., guess foolishly when you don’t know. Proverb.	25290
To show mercy is nothing—thy soul must be full of mercy; to be pure in act is nothing—thou shalt be pure in heart also. Ruskin.	25291
To sigh, yet feel no pain; / To weep, yet scarce know why; / To sport an hour with beauty’s charm, / Then throw it idly by. Moore.	25292
To sigh, yet not recede; to grieve, yet not repent. Crabbe.	25293
To simplify complications is, in all branches of knowledge, the first essential of success. Buckle.	25294
To sow is not so difficult as to reap. Goethe.	25295
To spend much and gain little is the sure road to ruin. German Proverb.	25296
To spend too much time in studies is sloth. Bacon.	25297
To spur a free horse soon makes a jade of him. Sterne.	25298
To step aside is human. Burns.	25299
To strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Proverb.	25300
To strive to get rid of an evil is to aim at something definite, but to desire a better fortune than we have is blind folly. Goethe.	25301
To study nature or man, we ought to know things that are in the ordinary course, not the unaccountable things that happen out of it. Fisher Ames.	25302
To succeed in the world it is much more necessary to be able to diagnose a fool than a clever man. Cato.	25303
To talk without effort is, after all, the great charm of talking. Hare.	25304
To taste of human flesh is less criminal in the eyes of God than to stifle human thought. Draper.	25305
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I disclaim it. Disraeli.	25306
To tell our own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly. Johnson.	25307
To the capable man this world is not dumb. Goethe.	25308
To the exiled wanderer how godlike / The friendly countenance of man appears. Goethe.	25309
To the Hindu the world is the dream of Brahma. Amiel.	25310
To the innocent, deliverance and reparation; to the misled, compassion; and to the guilty, avenging justice. Goethe.	25311
To the man of firm purpose all men and things are servile. Goethe.	25312
To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade-winds, and monsoons, and moon’s eclipses; by all of which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may (from time to time, unmiraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is man; his creek, this planet earth; his ocean, the immeasurable All; his monsoons and periodic currents, the mysterious course of Providence through æons of æons. Carlyle.	25313
To the noble mind / Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. Hamlet, iii. 1.	25314
To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift. Zoroaster.	25315
To the strictly just and virtuous person everything is annexed. Hitopadesa.	25316
To the understanding of anything, two conditions are equally required—intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. Carlyle.	25317
To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. Carlyle.	25318
To the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, may perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Carlyle.	25319
To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles. Carlyle.	25320
To the “Worship of sorrow” (Goethe’s definition of Christianity) ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that worship originated and been generated? Is it not here? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! Carlyle.	25321
To think and to feel constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius—the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. I. Disraeli.	25322
To think aright is the sum of human duty. Pascal.	25323
To think is to act. Emerson.	25324
To this burden women are born; they must obey their husbands, be they never such blockheads. Cervantes.	25325
To those by whom liberality is practised, the whole world is but as one family. Hitopadesa.	25326
To those that have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated or some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Johnson.	25327
To those to whom we owe affection, let us be dumb until we are strong, though we should never be strong. Emerson.	25328
To those who are fallen into misfortunes, what was a blessing becometh an evil. Hitopadesa.	25329
To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin. Hare.	25330
To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard, / Wrapp’d in his crimes, against the storm prepared; / But, when the milder beams of mercy play, / He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away. Dryden.	25331
To toy with human hearts is more than human hearts will brook. Dr. Walter Smith.	25332
To tread upon the brink is safe, but to come a step further is destruction. Johnson.	25333
To try things oft, and never to give over, doth wonders. Bacon.	25334
To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves. Goethe.	25335
To understand that the sky is blue everywhere, we need not go round the world. Goethe.	25336
To understand the serious side of things requires a matured faculty; the ridiculous is caught more easily. Froude.	25337
To understand things we must once have been in them, and then have come out of them. Amiel.	25338
To unpractised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay, a Strasburg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem higher than a Chimborazo; because the former rise abruptly, without abutement or environment; the latter rises gradually, carrying half a world along with it; and only the deeper azure of the heavens, the widened horizon, the “eternal sunshine,” disclose to the geographer that the “region of change” lies far below. Carlyle.	25339
To use books rightly is to go to them for help. Ruskin.	25340
To use studies too much for ornament is affectation. Bacon.	25341
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery. Ouida.	25342
To wail friends lost / Is not by much so wholesome, profitable, / As to rejoice at friends but newly found. Love’s L’s. Lost, v. 2.	25343
To wed unequally is to suffer equally. Anonymous.	25344
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Hamlet, v, 1.	25345
To what excesses men go for a religion of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard. La Bruyère.	25346
To what they know best entice all neatly; / For so thou dost thyself and him a pleasure. George Herbert.	25347
To whom is the mere glare of the fire a virtue? Hitopadesa.	25348
To wilful men / The injuries that they themselves procure / Must be their schoolmasters. King Lear, ii. 4.	25349
To work without money, and be poor; to work without pleasure, and be chaste; to work according to orders, and be obedient. Rules of the Order of St. Francis.	25350
To write a good love-letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. Rousseau.	25351
To write down to children’s understandings is a mistake; set them on the scent and let them puzzle it out. Scott.	25352
To write prose, one must have something to say, but he who has nothing to say can still make verses. Goethe.	25353
To write well is to think well, to feel well, and to render well; it is to possess at once intellect, soul, and taste. Buffon.	25354
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and get sensible men to read it, are the three great difficulties in authorship. Colton.	25355
To yield my breath, / Life’s purpose unfulfilled! this is thy sting, O Death. Sir Noel Paton.	25356
To yourself be critic most severe. Dryden.	25357
Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do. Emerson.	25358
Tocher’s nae word in a true lover’s parle. Burns.	25359
Todte Hunde beissen nicht—Dead dogs don’t bite. German Proverb.	25360
[Greek]—Character is simply prolonged habit. Plutarch.	25361
Toga virilis—The manly robe.	25362
[Greek]—What maintains me in life, that I regard as God. (?)	25363
[Greek]—Doing more than one is able for argues a want of intelligence. (?)	25364
Toil is polish’d man’s vocation; / Praises are the meed of skill; / Kings may vaunt their crown and station, / We will vaunt our labour still. Mangan.	25365
Toil on, faint not, keep watch, and pray. Bonar.	25366
Toils of empires pleasures are. Waller.	25367
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. Burke.	25368
Tolle jocos; non est jocus esse malignum—Away with such jokes; there is no joking where there is malignity. Horace.	25369
Tolle periclum, / Jam vaga prosiliet frænis natura remotis—Take away the danger, remove restraint, and vagrant nature bounds forth free. Horace.	25370
Tombs are the clothes of the dead—a grave but a plain suit, and a rich monument one embroidered. Fuller.	25371
[Greek]—All are wont to praise him who is no more. Thucydides.	25372
[Greek]—Speak not evil of the dead. Chilon.	25373
Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; and too hard a religion, few religious persons whose devotion is of long continuance. St. Evremond.	25374
Too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and, for most part, the smallest of fractions to Shall. Carlyle.	25375
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. Chamfort.	25376
Too fair to worship, too divine to love. Milman.	25377
Too low they build who build beneath the stars. Young.	25378
Too many cooks spoil the broth. Proverb.	25379
Too many instances there are of daring men, who by presuming to sound the deep things of religion, have cavilled and argued themselves out of all religion. Thomas à Kempis.	25380
Too much gravity argues a shallow mind. Lavater.	25381
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man’s time much more completely, and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever. Burke.	25382
Too much is always bad; old proverbs call / Even too much honey nothing else than gall. Anonymous.	25383
Too much mercy is want of mercy. Tennyson.	25384
Too much of a good thing. As You Like It, iv. 1.	25385
Too much of one thing is good for nothing. Thales and Solon.	25386
Too much painstaking speaks disease in one’s mind, as much as too little. Carlyle.	25387
Too much rest is rust. Scott.	25388
Too much rest itself becomes a pain. Homer.	25389
Too much sensibility creates unhappiness; too much insensibility creates crime. Talleyrand.	25390
Too much wit / Makes the world rotten. Tennyson.	25391
Too surely, every setting day, / Some lost delight we mourn. Keble.	25392
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. Romeo and Juliet, ii. 6.	25393
Tooth of time. Meas. for Meas., v. 1.	25394
Top and bottom teeth sometimes come into awkward collision. Chinese Proverb.	25395
Torrens dicendi copia multis / Et sua mortifera est facundia—To many a torrent flow of speech and their own eloquence is fatal. Juvenal.	25396
Toss’d on a sea of troubles, soul, my soul, / Thyself do thou control; / And to the weapons of advancing foes / A stubborn breast oppose. Archilochus.	25397
Tot capita, tot sensus—So many heads, so many opinions. Terence.	25398
Tot homines, quot sententiæ—So many men, so many minds.	25399
Tot rami quot arbores—So many branches, so many trees. Motto.	25400
Tota in minimis existit natura—The whole of nature exists in the very smallest things. Quoted by Emerson.	25401
Totidem verbis—In so many words.	25402
Toties quoties—As often, so often.	25403
Toto cœlo—By the whole heavens; as wide as the poles asunder.	25404
Totus in toto, et totus in qualibet parte—Whole in the whole, and whole in every part. Said of the human mind.	25405
Totus mundus exercet histrioniam—All the world acts the player.	25406
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, / Chords that were broken will vibrate once more. Mrs. van Alstyne.	25407
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out. Bible.	25408
Toujours—Always. Motto.	25409
Toujours en vedette—Always on the lookout. Motto of Frederick the Great.	25410
Toujours perdrix—Always partridges. French.	25411
“Toujours perdrix” is sickening. John Wagstaffe.	25412
Toujours prêt—Always ready.	25413
Toujours propice—Always propitious. Motto.	25414
Toujours tout droit, Dieu t’aidera!—Always straightforward, and God will help you! Motto.	25415
Tour d’adresse—A trick of sleight of hand. French.	25416
Tour de force—A feat of strength or skill. French.	25417
Tourner autour du pot—To beat about the bush. French.	25418
Tourner casaque—To change sides; become a turncoat. Proverb.	25419
Tous frais faits—All charges paid. French.	25420
Tous les genres sont bons hors le genre ennuyeux—All kinds are good except the kind that bores you. Voltaire.	25421
Tous les hommes sont foux, et malgré tous leurs soins, / Ne diffèrent entr’eux, que du plus ou du moins—All men are fools, and notwithstanding all their care, they differ but in degree. Boileau.	25422
Tous les méchants sont buveurs d’eau; / C’est bien prouvé par le déluge—All the wicked are water-drinkers; this the deluge proves.	25423
Tout-à-fait—Quite. French.	25424
Tout bien ou rien—All or nothing. Motto.	25425
Tout chemin mène à Rome—Every road leads to Rome.	25426
Tout d’en haut—All from above. Motto.	25427
Tout doit tendre au bon sens: mais pour y parvenir / Le chemin est glissant et pénible a tenir—Everything ought to lead to good sense; but in order to attain to it, the road is slippery and difficult to walk in. Boileau.	25428
Tout éloge imposteur blesse une âme sincère—Praise undeservedly bestowed wounds an honest heart. Boileau.	25429
Tout est contradiction chez nous: la France, à parler sérieusement, est le royaume de l’esprit et de la sottise, de l’industrie et de la paresse, de la philosophie et du fanatisme, de la gaieté et du pédantisme, des loix et des abus, de bon goût et de l’impertinence—With us all is inconsistency. France, seriously speaking, is the country of wit and folly, of industry and idleness, of philosophy and fanaticism, of gaiety and pedantry, laws and their abuses, good taste and impertinence. Voltaire.	25430
Tout est perdu fors l’honneur—All is lost save our honour. Francis I., after his defeat at Pavia.	25431
Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles—All is for the best in the best possible of worlds. Voltaire, in mockery of Leibnitz’s optimism.	25432
Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au malin—Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one. La Fontaine.	25433
Tout finit par des chansons—Everything in the end passes into song. Beaumarchais.	25434
Tout flatteur vît au dépens de celui qui l’écoute—Every flatterer lives at the expense of him who listens to him. La Fontaine.	25435
Tout notre mal vient de ne pouvoir être seul—All our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone. La Bruyère.	25436
Tout par raison—Everything agreeable to reason. Richelieu.	25437
Tout soldat français porte dans sa giberne le bâton de maréchal de France—Every private in the French army carries a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack. Napoleon.	25438
Tout va à qui n’a pas besoin—Everything goes to him who does not need it. French Proverb.	25439
Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre—Everything comes in time to the man who knows how to wait. French Proverb.	25440
Tout vient de Dieu—Everything comes from God. Motto.	25441
Toute révélation d’un secret est la faute de celui qui l’a confié—The disclosure of a secret is always the fault of him who confided it. French.	25442
Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents, et un ingrat—Every time I appoint to a vacant post, I make a hundred discontented and one ungrateful. Louis XIV.	25443
Towards great persons use respective boldness: / That temper gives them theirs, and yet doth take / Nothing from thine. George Herbert.	25444
Towers are measured by their shadows. Chinese Proverb.	25445
Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay. Johnson.	25446
Traditions make up the reasonings of the simple, and serve to silence every inquiry. Goldsmith.	25447
Traduttori, traditori—Translators, traitors. Italian Proverb.	25448
Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death. Chamfort.	25449
Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille. Napoleon.	25450
Trahit ipse furoris / Impetus, et visum est lenti quéesisse nocentem—The very violence of their rage drags them on, and to inquire who is guilty were a waste of time. Lucan.	25451
Trahit sua quemque voluptas—Each man is led by his own liking. Virgil.	25452
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it. Bible.	25453
Tranquil pleasures last the longest. We are not fitted to bear long the burden of great joys. Bovee.	25454
Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Sir T. Browne.	25455
Transeat in exemplum—Let it stand as a precedent, or an example.	25456
Transitory is all human work, small in itself, contemptible; only the worker thereof and the spirit that dwelt in him is significant. Carlyle.	25457
Trau keinem Freunde sonder Mängel, / Und lieb’ ein Mädchen, keinen Engel—Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel. Lessing.	25458
Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures upon the tablet of memory into strong relief. Tuckerman.	25459
Travel in the younger sort is a part of education; in the older, a part of experience. Bacon.	25460
Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones. Mme. Swetchine.	25461
Travel teaches toleration. Disraeli.	25462
Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Emerson.	25463
Travelling is like gambling; it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for. Goethe.	25464
Tre lo sanno, tutti lo sanno—If three know it, all know it. Italian Proverb.	25465
Tre taceranno, se due vi non sono—Three may keep counsel if two be away. Italian Proverb.	25466
Treachery don’t come natural to beaming youth: but trust and pity, love and constancy, they do. Dickens.	25467
Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? / Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Sir J. Harrington.	25468
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, / Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing / Can touch him further. Macbeth, iii. 2.	25469
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but justice delivers from death. Bible.	25470
Trees and fields tell me nothing; men are my teachers. Plato.	25471
Tremblez, tyrans; vous êtes immortels—Tremble, ye tyrants; ye cannot die. Delille.	25472
Tria juncta in uno—Three joined in one. Motto.	25473
Tribulation will not hurt you unless it does—what, alas! it too often does—unless it hardens you, and makes you sour and narrow and sceptical. Chapin.	25474
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest. Ben. Franklin.	25475
Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ. Othello, iii. 3.	25476
Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle. Michael Angelo.	25477
Trifles make up the happiness or misery of mortal life. Alexander Smith.	25478
Trifles themselves are elegant in him. Pope.	25479
Trifles unconsciously bias us for or against a person from the very beginning. Schopenhauer.	25480
Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the wrist parries a mortal thrust. R. Sharp.	25481
Trinitas in Trinitate—Trinity in Trinity. Motto.	25482
Tristis eris, si solus eris—You will be sad if you are alone. Ovid.	25483
Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys, / Is jollity for apes and grief for boys. Cymbeline, iv. 2.	25484
Troops of furies march in the drunkard’s triumph. Zimmermann.	25485
Trop de zèle gâte tout—Too much zeal spoils all. French Proverb.	25486
Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur—Trojan or Tyrian, it shall make no difference to me. Virgil.	25487
Trotz alledem und alledem—For ’a that and ’a that. F. Freiligrath.	25488
Trouble is a thing that will come without our call; but true joy will not spring up without ourselves. Bp. Patrick.	25489
Trouble teaches men how much there is in manhood. Ward Beecher.	25490
Truditur dies die, / Novæque pergunt interire lunæ—Day presses on the heels of day, and new moons hasten to their wane. Horace.	25491
True art is like good company; it constrains us in the most charming way to recognise the standard after which and up to which our innermost being is shaped by culture. Goethe.	25492
True art, which requires free and healthy faculties, is opposed to pedantry, which crushes the soul under a burden. Hamerton.	25493
True bravery proposes a just end, measures the dangers, and, if necessary, the affront, with coldness. Francis la None.	25494
True blue will never stain. Proverb.	25495
True comeliness, which nothing can impair, / Dwells in the mind; all else is vanity and glare. Thomson.	25496
True coral needs no painter’s brush. Proverb.	25497
True dignity is never gained by place, and never lost when honours are withdrawn. Massinger.	25498
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance. Pope.	25499
True eloquence consists in saving all that is proper, and nothing more. La Rochefoucauld.	25500
True eloquence scorns eloquence. Pascal.	25501

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