Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Circles
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. V.
A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one.
Isaac D’Israeli—Miscellanies.
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.
Emerson—Essays. Circles.
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. IV. L. 364.
As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes
The sinking stone at first a circle makes;
The trembling surface by the motion stirr’d,
Spreads in a second circle, then a third;
Wide, and more wide, the floating rings advance,
Fill all the watery plain, and to the margin dance.
Pope—Temple of Fame. L. 436.
I’m up and down and round about,
Yet all the world can’t find me out;
Though hundreds have employed their leisure,
They never yet could find my measure.
Swift—On a Circle.
I watch’d the little circles die;
They past into the level flood.
Tennyson—The Miller’s Daughter. St. 10.
On the lecture slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration.
Tennyson—The Princess. II. L. 349.
Circles are praised, not that abound
In largeness, but the exactly round.
Edmund Waller—Long and Short Life.