"Aphorism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, drames de recette. The recipe consists in the employment of three ingredients—description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... playing of tennis or the piano, or in the solution of mathematical problems, a decided gain in skill and speed comes after what seems to be not only lack of progress but decided backsliding.[1] It is this which led William James to quote with approval the aphorism that one learns to skate in summer ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... observations from ancient and modern civilizations as external evidence, and corroborating the experiences of the present age as internal evidence, my conclusion is reached. If my judgment is faulty, let us remember that trite aphorism: "To err is human, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners," he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... unmixed idea; it is intimately united with the idea of carnal pleasure. Stendhal obscurely perceived this when he defined beauty as 'a promise of happiness.' Beauty is a woman, and women themselves have carried docility to men so far as to accept this aphorism which they can only understand in extreme sexual perversion.... Beauty is so sexual that the only uncontested works of art are those that simply show the human body in its nudity. By its perseverance in remaining purely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the reason that I have never had any home since I was ten years old, when I was left an orphan. I haven't any deep roots in New York; it's like the ocean, too big to love. I respect and admire the ocean, but I love a little river. You know the made-over aphorism: 'The home is where the hat is'? For 'hat' read 'trunk,' and you ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... antiquity; it is clothed with a kind of authority. Doubtless many a poor boy has received a sound flogging which he would have escaped, had not his father happened to recall the somewhat cruel and questionable aphorism of Solomon, currently abbreviated into "Spare the rod and spoil the child." When Charles IX. was hesitating as to the enactment of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre, his bigoted mother, infuriated with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... understood, and the merchant leaves as little to his clerks' honesty or honour as he can possibly help. In business he holds that 'Every man's hand is against his neighbour, and his neighbour's against him;' and he pushes the aphorism to its fullest logical conclusion, i.e., not merely to 'Believe every man to be a knave until you find he is honest,' but 'Believe that when a man is honest it is merely the more successfully to carry ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... decision. In such a spirit I desire to approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... cravings, and the dense motherly horrors that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, viewed them not too nearly, but had regard to ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... kept on the lookout he could always detect the masquerade by observing the creature's hands. The harpies could transform themselves in every other way, but their claws remained unchanged, and they were, consequently, obliged to cover them with gloves. "Beware the gloved hand," was a familiar aphorism among the wise women of the West Inch, and Constans, shaken in spite of himself by the remembrance of these old fables, felt the sweat break out upon his forehead, for all that the wind ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... And we cover our retreat into unbelieving vagueness with a plea of reverence, justified, as we think, by the "Thus far and no farther" of ancient Scriptures. There is often a great deal of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism. When men do not really wish to go farther they find it an honorable convenience sometimes to sit down on the outermost edge of the Holy Ground on the pretext of taking off their shoes. Yet we must be certain that, making a virtue of reverence, we are not merely excusing ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... so glaringly obvious in the Vicar of Wakefield, because this is a novel, and a very delightful one. The only point of direct contact with Rasselas is the knowledge of human nature, though in the one book this takes the form of melancholy aphorism and apophthegm, in the other that of felicitous trait and dialogue-utterance. There is plenty of story, though this has not been arranged so as to hit the taste of the martinet in "fable;" the book has endless character; the descriptions are Hogarth with less of peuple about them; ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... is true of power in this matter is true of judgment. It is a widely bruited aphorism that "all history is a lie," and this aphorism had its birth in the fact that historians become, as it were, magnetized by the characters with which they deal. A man who writes the life of Napoleon finds himself either sympathizing with him, or roused into antipathy by him. In short, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Wynd, a place to which it has since imparted an almost classical interest, and his orders were at first so few that they could easily be overtaken by himself with the assistance of two apprentices. His experience was eventually that of the great bulk of mankind, verifying the well-known aphorism—labor omnia vincit. In the course of time he was encouraged to undertake the general work of an engineer, and his removal from Greyfriars Wynd to Camlachie Foundry afforded greater scope for the extension ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... has overturned and misled all our ideas: men have ended in thinking that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. Hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorism, "What one gains the other loses;" and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and embrued it with blood.[2] After much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in order to render the exchange equitable, the ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... be true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... before he had a practical proof of the truth of this aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston: "You may remember that Smith, just ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett very ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... hasn't been one or felt like one—some of the time—except Christers and the dead," said Oliver, and they proceeded for several minutes on the profundity of that aphorism. The silence was broken ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into 'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure of the table is peculiar to the human species." Gastronomy ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... at the supper-table he crushed conversation flat as a steam-roller crushes a road. He was quite irresistible. Trite anecdotes were sandwiched between aphorisms of the copybook; and whether anecdote or aphorism, all was delivered with the air of a man surprised by his own profundity. If you waited long enough, you had no longer the will power to run away, you sat caught in a web of sheer dulness. Only those, however, who did not know him waited long enough; ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... within the guard-house was strong upon me, and I hesitated a moment, half inclined to risk the attempt to take the few we needed. That he who hesitates is lost proved itself a true aphorism in this instance, for another moment saw me creeping stealthily toward the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I from considering this a defect, that I deem it a necessary result of the impalpable infinitesimal graduation by which the fully-formed parable glides down into the brief detached metaphorical aphorism, in the words of the Lord Jesus during the period ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... season, and without a guide, we made up our minds to go in direct opposition to his counsels, and after gaining the summit, to descend by the other side, and sleep at Schmiedeberg, or some other town in Prussian Silesia. Just, albeit sharp and cutting, is the aphorism of Madame de Stael, that there is no country in the world where the expression, "It is impossible," comes so frequently into use as in Germany. Propose to a German any undertaking which he has either ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... underneath. Let me impress upon you that I don't attempt to defend this action on strictly moral grounds," I continued, peeling off his coat and waistcoat with the celerity of a skilful butcher skinning a sheep for a bet. "I think we may regard the transaction as a pertinent illustration of Pandulph's aphorism—to wit, that 'He who stands upon a slippery place, makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.' When the hurly-burly's done, I must get you to favour me with your address, so that"—— Here my ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... intolerant Moslem spirit manifests direct opposition to all innovation in the administration. As their fathers were, so they wish to be. Before the time of Selim no reform movements of importance had been made in the administrative branches. For five centuries the sultans had received, as an aphorism in their political education, that the subjects existed for the good of the sultan, and not the sultan for the welfare of the people. Selim proclaimed the rights of his subjects and their supremacy; and his words were confirmed by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... There is an aphorism to the effect that one can not spend and have; also, a saying about the whirlwind, both of which in time came home to the land baron. For several generations the Mauville family, bearing one of the proudest names in Louisiana, had held marked ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... damned last night?'—'Thoroughly damned!' quoth the Manager, drily; 'we reproduce it, Sir—we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came on the stage, how timidly she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... celare artem"? "Art" includes "the Artist," of course. Then "Puris omnia pura" is to be found in two other full-blown aphorisms, if I mistake not. St. PAUL's advice to TIMOTHY is engrafted on to the stalk of another aphorism. "Why lug in TIMOTHY?" Well, to "adapt" Scripture to one's purpose is not to quote it. Vade retro! Do we not recognise something familiar in "When Critics disagree the Artist is in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... plus zero—which is absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet is distinct from his poem—a truth which he has condensed into an aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the Deity such "separation" implies of necessity the self-limitation just spoken of. Just as a billion, minus the billionth fraction of a unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to get at facts, even about the merest trifles," said Lady Delacour. "Actions we see, but their causes we seldom see—an aphorism worthy of Confucius himself: now to apply. Pray, my dear Helena, how came you by the pretty gold fishes that you were so good as to send to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... increased simplicity of life. I know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to incur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose motto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and universal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness which renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the leanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... patience to trace the elaborate and winding progress of their effects. He saw the passions in their home, but he could not follow them abroad. He knew mankind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he makes an aphorism or reflection, it comes home at once to you as true; but when he would analyze that reflection, when he argues, reasons, and attempts to prove, you reject him as unnatural, or you refute him as false. It is then that he partakes of that manie commune which he imputes to other philosophers, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the political power. This principle constitutes the very corner-stone of our Government—indeed, of all republican government. Upon that basis our separation from Great Britain was justified. "Taxation without representation is tyranny." This famous aphorism of James Otis, although sufficient for the occasion when it was put forth, expresses but a fragment of the principle, because government can be oppressive through means of many appliances besides that of taxation. The true principle is, that all government over persons deprived of any ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... seem—they have more sympathy with Englishmen, if not with the English Government, than with any other Westerners. East may be East and West West, though I very much doubt it. But if there be any truth in the aphorism, we must define our terms. The East must be confined to India, and China included in the West. That as a preliminary correction. I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall have more to say, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... to give expression to democratic ideas of government in state and church which threatened the principle of personal rule common to monarchy and to episcopacy. "No Bishop, no King," was a shrewd aphorism of James I, which was in the making before he reached the throne. In other respects—such as monopolies, the power of the crown to levy indirect taxation without consent of parliament, to imprison subjects without cause shown, and to tamper with the privileges ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... man. And sometime under the liquor drug, snatches of wisdom came to him far more lucidity than in his sober moments, as, for instance, one night, when he sat on the edge of the bed with one shoe in his hand and meditated on Dede's aphorism to the effect that he could not sleep in more than one bed at a time. Still holding the shoe, he looked at the array of horsehair bridles on the walls. Then, carrying the shoe, he got up and solemnly ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... which one of the parties only was the love-giver, and that the remaining one was the ideal, in which love was mutual and beautiful. This Ashcroft bachelor fellow was a sentimental monstrosity. He was imbued with the superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... under the title "The History of an Eight-Week-Old", and in a prose style of uniformly flowing and attractive quality. "A Love Song", Miss Stalker's other contribution, is a poem of delicate imagery and unusual metre. "Our Paring Knife", by Gertrude Van Lanningham, is a short sketch with an aphorism at the end. Though this type of moral lesson is a little trite, Miss Van Lanningham shows no mean appreciation of literary form, and will, when she has emerged from the "bud" stage, undoubtedly blossom ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the Truth would make us free. Here is no announcement of anything we have to do, or of anything that has to be done for us, in order to gain our liberty, neither is it a statement of anything future. Truth is what is. He did not say, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... a broken law, and it does not help them with a disappointed club committee, or in framing a telegram of regret, accompanied by a physician's certificate, to say that they have erred through ignorance. The aphorism that ignorance of the law is no excuse is just as valid in the court of the hygienic judge as in any common law court ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... each and all of the seven great planes of being, and all the subdivisions, and sub-divisions (sevenfold in division) at the same time. The old occultists impressed this and other facts upon the minds of their pupils by the oft-repeated aphorism: "A PLANE OF BEING IS NOT A PLACE OF BEING, BUT A STATE OF BEING." And the "state of being" is simply a certain manifestation of vibratory energy. With these ideas firmly fixed in the mind, the student is less apt to wander astray from the ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... sets down a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish Rabbins, "We are born that we may die, and die ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... outside of the business, began to be seriously diminished. Josh Billings says, "When a man begins to slide down hill he finds it greased for the occasion." And certainly the case of Richard Ashton illustrated the truth of the aphorism, for when he once began to go down hill his descent was so rapid that he soon reached the bottom; and became bankrupt in capital and character. He now began to talk of selling out and going to America: "There," he said, with much emphasis, "I shall ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against foes ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... which the paradox is not true. The great historical lovers in romance, the pioneers of science, the immortals in every plane, are precisely those that have fulfilled on lower levels the spiritual aphorism ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... continuity of a set discourse. He had, indeed, already twice begun a series of aphorisms on the true methods of interpreting nature, and directing the mind in the true path of knowledge, and had begun them with the same famous aphorism with which the Novum Organum opens. He now reverted to the form of the aphorism, and resolved to throw the materials of the Cogitata et Visa into this shape. The result is the Novum Organum. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... which they suppose to derive irresistible confirmation from the example of algebra. If there were any process in sorcery or necromancy more preternatural than this, I should be much surprised. The culminating point of this philosophy is the noted aphorism of Condillac, that a science is nothing, or scarcely any thing, but une langue bien faite; in other words, that the one sufficient rule for discovering the nature and properties of objects is to name them properly: as if the reverse ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Like the aphorism 'Honesty is the best policy,' it reveals the difference between a fact and a truth. Both sayings are correct as facts, but as guides of conduct devilishly false, leading to dishonesty and treachery. To be true to the divine self in us, is indeed to be ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... never pass an ironstone "blow" without examination. Remember the pregnant Cornish saying with regard to mining and the current aphorism, "The iron hat covers the golden head." "Cousin Jack," put it "Iron rides a good horse." The ironstone outcrop may cover a gold, silver, copper or ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an aesthetic aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by the poet, on an interplay between subject ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... me what I cannot do for myself. When the time comes"—he lifted his shoulders lightly—"I will do what I can. Till then...." He diverged at a tangent. "After all, the world is quite as tiny as the worn-out aphorism has it. To think that you should find me here! It's less than a week since Doggott and I hit upon this place and settled down, quite convinced we had, at last, lost ourselves ... and might have peace, for a little space ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... to dispute your aphorism," observed Koshchei, "inasmuch as matrimony was certainly not included in my doom. None the less, to a by-stander, the conduct of you both appears remarkable. I could not understand, for example, just how your wife proposed to have you keep out of her sight forever and still have supper with ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of master and pupil was probably concerned, in each succession, in the gradual loss of the substance of the old method. The possibility of learning to sing by imitation was only gradually lost to sight. This is well expressed by Paolo Guetta. "The aphorism 'listen and imitate,' which was the device of the ancient school, coming down by way of tradition, underwent the fate of all sane precepts passed along from generation to generation. Through elimination ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... he considered the altruism of that aphorism. Then he got back at the murder which, he decided, must have been premeditated by some one who knew where Paliser would be. That conclusion reached, he groped for another. Lennox knew, but did Cassy know, and, if she did, had she utilised ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... and with such aims, must not attempt to pass his crudities upon the public. If I may parody a celebrated aphorism of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus reverentia(8):" in other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our species. An author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... which could befal an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could reason out for himself,—under which third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... mitigated the inconvenience so abrupt a departure might have occasioned, and as one of the great beauties of Laverick Wells is, that it is just as much in vogue in summer as in winter, the inhabitants consoled themselves with the old aphorism, that there is as 'good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,' and cast about in search of some one to supply his place at as small cost to themselves as possible. In a place so replete with money and the enterprise of youth, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to the principles one is agreed upon' (which is done by means of the syllogisms of him who makes objections); 'whether the premisses of a proof (advanced by the opposer) 'are true; whether the conclusion is properly drawn; whether a four-term Syllogism has been employed; whether some aphorism of the chapter de oppositis or de sophisticis elenchis, etc., has not been violated.' (It is enough, putting it briefly, to deny some premiss or some conclusion, or finally to explain or get explained some ambiguous ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... instances of generosity shown in this way, unperceived by others, have gone most deeply into my mind; and have most raised my opinion of his character. The sense that I was over rather than under valued, made me the more ready to acknowledge and feel my own deficiencies. I felt the truth of an aphorism of Lord Verulam's, which is now come down to the copy-books; that 'knowledge is power.' Having made this notable discovery, I set about with all my might to acquire knowledge. You may smile, and think ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... "Great mistake to think; wastes the tissues awfully. Action first, thought afterward! aphorism! Or if you must indulge in the baneful pursuit, think how much poor Jerry wants you. Poor Jerry! ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... feelings of benevolence, than it could be by the gratification of avarice; but, though his understanding may perceive the demonstration of this moral theorem, though it is the remote principle of his whole conduct, it does not occur to his memory in the form of a prudential aphorism, whenever he is going to do a generous action. It is essential to our ideas of generosity, that no such reasoning should, at that moment, pass in his mind; we know that the feelings of generosity are associated with a number of enthusiastic ideas; we can sympathize with the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... not those in parentheses, are mine. I marked some of Chopin's words thus that they might get the attention they deserve. "Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are." Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth: Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are. Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin's predilection in this respect. But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... search of the sap off which they live so contentedly through their brief lifetime. To them, enter the two small brown ants, their lawful possessors; for ants, too, though absolutely unrecognised by English law ('de minimis non curat lex,' says the legal aphorism), are nevertheless in their own commonwealth duly seised of many and various goods and chattels; and these same aphides, as everybody has heard, stand to them in pretty much the same position as cows stand to human herdsmen. Throw in for sole spectator ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... prosperity, diffused civilization, public happiness, security to society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But the dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved methods of production, and especially to the invention ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... proverbs. The African folk literature is especially rich in proverbs. So numerous are these proverbs that it has been said that there is scarcely an object presented to the eye, scarcely an idea excited in the mind, but it is accompanied by some sententious aphorism, founded on close observation of man and animals and in many cases of a decidedly moral tendency. Lord Bacon remarked many years ago that "the genius, wit and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." Cervantes in Don Quixote says "Methinks, Sancho, that there ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... did wrong in undertaking a task beyond your capacity. Have you progressed one step since you started this affair? No. That shows that, although you are incomparable as a lieutenant, you do not possess the qualities of a general. I am going to present you with an aphorism; remember it, and let it be your guide in the future: A man can shine in the second rank, who would be totally eclipsed ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... aphorism we may be permitted to add that a chasse of cognac or curacoa at the close of the dinner is like the epilogue at the end of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm^; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot [Fr.], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis^. axiom, theorem, scholium^, truism, postulate. first principles, a priori ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... classic aphorism which runs about this way, "Knock and the world knocks with you; boost and you boost alone." Like most popular sayings this is truth turned wrong ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... chiefly to laxative simples for medicine; and he comforts himself, in April, 1695, by transcribing Bacon's reflection that "a Life led in Religion and in Holy Exercises" conduces to longevity,—an aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of 1651 Master Izaak Walton, when ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Manu is in verse, and verse is one of the expedients for lessening the burden which the memory has to bear when writing is unknown or very little used. But there is another expedient which serves the same object. This is Aphorism or Proverb. Even now in our own country much of popular wisdom is preserved either in old rhymes or in old proverbs, and it is well ascertained that during the middle ages much of law, and not a little of medicine, was preserved among ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of ways, but in none more conspicuously than by the development of the idea of contract, i.e. of the capacity of the individual to enter into independent agreements with strangers to his family-group by which he was legally bound—an historical process which Maine sums up in his famous aphorism that the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... not solely for 'romantic young people,' but for 'you' and for himself. Had he read Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, he might there have learned that no man is a hero to his valet, not because he is not always great, but because that valet has a poor, flunkey, valet's soul. He who quotes such an aphorism as a truth, calls himself ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a very extraordinary Aphorism from a Country Shepherd, but at the same Time it is very agreeable to the Observations of Dr. Hooke, Dr. Derham, Dr. Grew, and other able Naturalists, who with unwearied Pains and Diligence ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... dissertation on conceit to which I had just listened, from the Clockmaker, forcibly reminded me of the celebrated aphorism "gnothi seauton," know thyself, which, both from its great antiquity and wisdom, has been by ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... most cases the difference in size and vigour was amazing, while the plants from cross-fertilised parents also produced more and finer seeds. These experiments entirely confirmed the experience of breeders of animals already referred to (p. 160), and led him to enunciate his famous aphorism, "Nature abhors perpetual self-fertilisation".[144] In this principle we appear to have a sufficient reason for the various contrivances by which so many flowers secure cross-fertilisation, either constantly or occasionally. These ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... you know?" said the shopkeeper,—an aphorism on which Livingstone had often acted, but had ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... attained its climax. The Republicans had a large majority in the House and the old war-horses felt like colts. They assumed their leadership, however, with that obliviousness to youth which usually characterizes old age. The gifted and attractive Reed had ruled often by aphorism and wit, but the unimaginative Cannon ruled by the gavel alone; and in the course of time he and his clique of veterans forgot entirely the difference between ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... the proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man Blaize. His wisdom shone forth in an oration so persuasive and aphoristic that had it not been based on a plea against honour, it would have made Sir Austin waver. But its basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better aphorism of his own ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... treat everyone else as his neighbor, in which to every rational agent the well-being or perfection of every other such agent shall be included in that perfection for which he lives." [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 205.] The same thought was more pithily expressed by Marcus Aurelius in the aphorism that "what is good for the hive is good ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... it all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... poet was surrounded. The paladins are no Don Quixotes, the princesses no Dulcineas, the battles are real battles; but the language is that of Florentine wool-workers, housewives, cheese-sellers, and ragamuffins, crammed with the slang of the market-place, its heavy jokes and perpetual sententious aphorism. Moreover the prominence given to food and eating is unrivalled except by Rabelais: the poet must have lounged with delight through the narrow mediaeval lanes, crowded with booths and barrows, sniffing with rapture the mingled scents of cheese, pork, fish, spices, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... had the irons stricken off the accused when brought into court, for in those days of the cruel rule of Judge Jeffreys the defendant was always considered guilty until adjudged innocent. Holt originated the aphorism that "slaves cannot breathe in England:" this was in the famous Somerset case, where a slave was sold and the vendor sued for his money, laying the issues at Mary-le-Bow in London, and describing the negro as "there sold and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... mean) that, in all my remarks, I do not pretend to the level of an original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, 'Taste is the Feminine of Genius.' However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not as Literary Essays only, but comprehending very much beside ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... entrusted with the attack on the Confederate right, had been the subject of the severest criticism, and by not a few of his colleagues he was considered directly responsible for the want of combination which had marred McClellan's plan of attack. More than once Mr. Lincoln infringed his own famous aphorism, "Never swap horses when crossing a stream," but when he transferred the destinies of the Army of the Potomac from McClellan to Burnside he did more—he selected the weakest of his team of generals to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... unfavourable to him, he, with a number of friends and sympathisers withdraw from the Confederation. Seven days afterwards, he issued the first number of a newspaper, bearing the significant title of The United Irishman, and having for its motto the following aphorism, quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone: "Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... not college-bred, nor have they had the advantages of foreign travel. One of our best helpers, Uncle Billy Bushnell, has never been to Niagara Falls, and does not care to go. Uncle Billy says if you stay at home and do your work well enough, the world will come to you; which aphorism the old man backs up with another, probably derived from experience, to the effect that a man is a fool to chase after women, because, if he doesn't, the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of a Country Town. But each one, it will be noticed, has chosen for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... fitting that such a secret should have been first penetrated by an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas those that be strongest by land are many times nevertheless in great ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but that when it is we may entertain better hopes ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, Emma, ou la fiancee, ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither happiness ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The familiar aphorism of Statius: PRIMUS IN ORBE DEOS FECIT TIMOR, points to the relation of animism first to the belief in ghosts, thence to Polytheism, and ultimately to Monotheism. I must apologise to those of the transcendental school who, like Max Muller for instance ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... very pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table- boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young fellows being always hungry——Allow me to stop dead short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the cavity of ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... five minutes left when we arrived at Dr. Mildman's door, Coleman affording a practical illustration of the truth of the aphorism, that "it is the pace that kills"; so that Thomas's injunction, "Look sharp, gentlemen," was scarcely necessary to induce us to rush upstairs two steps at a time. In the same hurry I entered my ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... her of whom I was in pursuit. Her back was toward me, but I recognized the cap and the boa. I confess that I was nervous about her face, which I had not yet seen. So often had I been disappointed in ladies when they showed their faces, that I muttered Jimmy's aphorism to myself: 'The saddest thing in life is that most women look best from the back.' But when she looked round all anxiety was dispelled. So far as your advice is concerned, it cannot matter to you what she was like. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... will transmit them to me. I wish I was with you to consider about these: for though I cannot write poems, you know I consider that I have the old woman's faculty of judging of them: yes, much better than much cleverer and wiser men; I pretend to no Genius, but to Taste: which, according to my aphorism, is the feminine of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... appeared to have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of Sansovino. His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous dread that something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast. "What under the sun is the man afraid of?" Newman ...
— The American • Henry James
... no one else spoke, I turned towards him and—careful lest I should do hurt to the credit I had gained already,—I said, 'You know what Hippocrates lays down in a case like this—febrem convulsioni'—and I recited the aphorism. Then I ordered a fomentation, and an application of lint moistened with linseed-oil and oil of lilies, and gave directions that the child should be gently handled until such time as the neck should be restored; that the nurse should ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... structures which I could find were not in allied groups. Trees like Aspicarpa (95/5. Aspicarpa, an American genus of Malpighiaceae, is quoted in the "Origin" (Edition VI., page 367) as an illustration of Linnaeus' aphorism that the characters do not give the genus, but the genus gives the characters. During several years' cultivation in France Aspicarpa produced only degraded flowers, which differed in many of the most important points of structure from the proper type of the order; but it was recognised by M. Richard ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Antequera, who fell dying from his horse into the arms of two accompanying priests. Thus the most turbulent of all the Governors of Paraguay ceased troubling, and the executioner, after having cut off his head, exhibited it to the people from the scaffold, with the usual moral aphorism as to the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... for I spoke not of the placing, but of the choice of words; for which I quoted that aphorism of Julius Caesar, Delectus verborum est origo eloquentiae; but delectus verborum is no more Latin for the placing of words, than reserate is Latin for shut the door, as he interprets it, which I ignorantly ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... likewise given for the Proculians, to supersede the indecency of a search, and to comply with the aphorism of Hippocrates, who was attached to the septenary number of two weeks of years, or 700 of days, (Institut. l. i. tit. xxii.) Plutarch and the Stoics (de Placit. Philosoph. l. v. c. 24) assign a more natural reason. Fourteen years is the age. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... more of the stuff of life, our every-day human life, typically upon the stage; with less of the traditional theatrical-academic element. The "well-made play" has itself undergone evolution since the days when it was an aphorism that not what is said but what is done on the stage is the essential thing. This of course is at once true and false, like every other truism. Without action there can be no play; and a play may be made fairly intelligible without a single ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... a well-knit soul texture that admits concentration series in many directions and that can bring all its resources to bear at any point. The brain unorganized by training has, to recur to Richter's well-worn aphorism, saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, or all the ingredients of gunpowder, but never makes a grain of it because they never get together. Thus willed action is the language of complete men and the goal of education. When things are mechanized ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... communism, and the model working-man and the rebel by an occasional gaol-delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick—and it is the grand secret of political life—it takes all sort of people to make a 'party.' When you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to the uttermost length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,' has said, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying, mad as it looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason? For truly, as it has been written, 'Silence is divine,' and of Heaven; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... points peculiar to the Americans. They wish, in everything, to improve upon the Old Country, as they call us, and affect to be excessively refined in their language and ideas: but they forget that very often in the covering, and the covering only, consists the indecency; and that, to use the old aphorism—"Very nice people are people with very ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... which the men are to learn from these three hours of talk on syphilis? To be sure, it is suggested that it would be best if every young man were to marry early and remain faithful to his wife and take care that she remain faithful to him. But this aphorism will make very little impression on the kind of listener whose tendency would naturally turn him in other directions. He hears in the play far more facts which encourage him in his selfish instincts. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... we parted after a conversation of two hours. She invited me to breakfast for the following day. She told me that the margrave had her narrowly watched, but being an old acquaintance I was not likely to give rise to any suspicion; that is the aphorism of all women addicted to gallantry. She added that I could, if I liked, see her that same evening in her box, and that M. Papafava, who was her god-father, would be glad to see me. I called at her house ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has contributed as much ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Francis Gore and Sir Peregrine Maitland might successively posture as figure-heads under the title of Lieutenant-Governors, but the real depositaries of power were the Rector and the Chief Justice. Ominous combination! which falsified the aphorism of a great writer—now, unhappily, lost to us—about the inevitable incompatibility of law and gospel. Both of them had seats in the Executive Council, and, under the then-existing state of things, were official but irresponsible advisers of the Crown's representative. More than one would-be ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... small pretension. It is in certain respects ill chosen, though it may, in some degree, denote the exquisite triumphs which art has here accomplished. The Illustrations consist of eighteen portraits of every order of beauty, of variety enough to realize Sir Philip Sidney's aphorism, that "whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful." But here all must be liked; therefore all are beautiful. The very names would make out a sort of court-roll of Venus, and the book itself the enchanting effect of the goddess' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much in trying to be small.—Tozer, what ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... that he had had his revenge—that he had hit back in a way that humbled and wounded his enemy more deeply than any physical stroke could possibly have done; and, as has been the case with thousands before and since, he had found out that the trite old aphorism, "Revenge is sweet," is a contemptible fallacy. For even if there is a sweet taste in the mouth, it is followed by a twang of such intense bitterness that no sensible being ever feels ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... given the old man a good character, and not the other. Instances of this kind occur out of number to confirm the rogues in their preconceived notions of the uncertainty of punishment, and that "the greatest crimes come off the best." This is an aphorism among the thieves. I have seen some of them, after being sentenced by the court, dance for hours, calling out continuously, "Did I not tell you all, the biggest rogues get off the best?" The scene in the several ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... broke into Marthasa's conversation. "One of the things that made me very curious today," he said, "was the general reaction of your people to the Idealist illusion that they have tamed you—as expressed in their aphorism about how was the ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... process is going on here that is so marked all over the country—the divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years ago, that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism that a democracy cannot make society—there was no more agreeable society in the world than that in Washington even ten years ago: society selected itself somehow without any marked class distinction, and it was delightfully ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... impulses and habits of thought which underlie the sporting character, do not altogether commend themselves to common sense. "As to the majority of murderers, they are very incorrect characters." This aphorism offers a valuation of the predaceous temperament, and of the disciplinary effects of its overt expression and exercise, as seen from the moralist's point of view. As such it affords an indication ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... whole, Nietzsche is not difficult to understand, although there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning, although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... to think how the untutored daughter of nature had unconsciously uttered the sparkling aphorism of the most artificial of maxim-makers.(1) Lucilla saw the smile, and her tears flowed instantly. "Thou ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imperfect, and even unintelligible in certain important respects, were I to ignore the deeply interesting history of the sixteen hundred thousand French Canadians, about thirty per cent of the total population of the Dominion. To apply to Canada an aphorism of Carlyle, "The present is the living sum-total of the whole past"; the sum-total not simply of the hundred and thirty years that have elapsed since the commencement of British dominion, but primarily of the century and a half that began ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the fundamental social fact. This is the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... distrustful men use to do; awhile after he lifts up his eyes, as is usual with men in a maze. At last recovering himself, saith he, I have a mind to impart to you the contents of this embassy; but I scarce dare do it, remembering Thales's aphorism, how things impossible or incredible are to be concealed and only things credible and probable are to be related. Bias answered, I crave leave to explain Thales's saying, We may distrust enemies, even though they speak things ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... fret-work. He told me he never wasted any time, as that was the way to succeed. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again,' he sang with the accents all on the wrong syllables. He was very proud of this aphorism, evidently thinking it the secret of our imperial race. And he told me his history. He was born in Damascus, he said, so he knew Arabic. His father emigrated to Bolivia, so he spoke Spanish. Then they pulled ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... women, who, hardworking and thrifty themselves, are married to men who are nothing but an incubus to their wives and to their families. Small wonder, then, that Mrs. Hableton should condense all her knowledge of the male sex into the one bitter aphorism, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... now, it is not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... consequent release of the human mind from its thralldom. The limit of man's power over his environment has been extended again and again; and even in your day, Mr. Henley, you have witnessed such marvelous advances as have adduced the aphorism, that this is an age of miracles. We speak from one end of the continent to the other. We sit in New York and sign our name to a check in Chicago. We reproduce a horse race or any athletic sport just as it occurred with every movement to the slightest detail, so that all men can see it in any part ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Another aphorism of his was, "If you want to keep young, live in a metropolis; never stay above a few weeks at a time in the country. Take two men of similar constitution at the age of twenty-five; let one live in London and enjoy a regular sort of club life; send the other to some rural district, preposterously ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a lying bankrupt's balance-sheet. ["Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success, will know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum."—Macaulay's Review of Basil Montagu's ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning shores of France ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... regarded Abe sorrowfully. There were few occasions to which Linkheimer could not do justice with a cut-and-dried sentiment or a well-worn aphorism, and he was about to expatiate on ingratitude in business ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... curious to find among the Serious Reflections a passage which may be taken as an apology for the practices into which Defoe, gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of conscience ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... with her pen and pencil and in the very presence of the jury copying handwriting which was given her for that purpose by various members of the yellow press who crowded close behind the rail. From time to time she would dash off an aphorism or a paragraph in regard to the trial which she handed to a reporter. If satisfactory this was elaborated and sometimes even illustrated by her for the evening ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Absolute, the continuous, unbroken, unarticulated, undifferentiated, monotonous Vowel-Sound, would be precisely equivalent to Silence. This, then, illustrates the famous fundamental aphorism of the Philosophy of Hegel: SOMETHING (equal to) NOTHING; and the seemingly absurd Hegelian affirmation that the real Something is the resultant of the conjunction of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... weather, and an unnatural dormition—will blast and wear out of memory the most endearing obligations; and hence it was that some politicians in love have looked upon the former of these two as a main remedy against the fondness of that passion. But for my own part, my Lord, I shall deny this aphorism of the people, and beg leave to assure your Lordship, that, though these reputed obstacles have lain long in my way, yet neither of them could work upon me: for I am now—without adulation—as warm and sensible of those numerous ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... force of this analogy, and all the arguments against the origin of species by selection, based on the absence of transitional forms, fall to the ground. And Mr. Darwin's position might, we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself with the aphorism, "Natura non facit saltum," which turns up so often in his pages. We believe, as we have said above, that Nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and lucid utterance of Buffon should have been so little noticed by those who have written in English on style. In general English writers have apparently misconceived, in very curious fashion, Buffon's other remark, "le style c'est l'homme;" by which aphorism Buffon merely meant that a man's individual manner depends on his temperament, his character, and which he, of course, was very far from suspecting would ever ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell |
