"Apophthegm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel[1035].' But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Had he carried the apophthegm out into every detail of life, through its moral and social phases, it would have required indeed the eye of the Omniscient to have discerned ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he, "is a very good book; I read it still." The perverseness of mankind makes it often mischievous in men of eminence to give way to merriment; the idle and the illiterate will long shelter themselves under this foolish apophthegm. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... words, without ceremony, without indulging in a long speech: cut it short with an apophthegm;[6] quick, quick, Mr. ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... again, in his book of Apophthegms, which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apophthegm or an oracle, as vain princes, by custom of flattery, pretend to do. And yet if I should enumerate divers of his speeches, as I did those of Alexander, they are truly such as Solomon noteth, when he saith, Verba ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... helps us to understand the zeal with which he attempts to reconcile the blind cruelty and pain and torture endured by mortals with the benignity and wisdom of the immortal. 'After all,' he used to say, 'there are only two real evils—remorse and disease.' This is true enough for an apophthegm, but as a matter of fact it never for an instant dulled his sensibility to far less supreme forms of agony than the recollection of irreparable pain struck into the lives of others. It is interesting and suggestive to recall how a later publicist viewed the ills that dwarf our little lives. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has, shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... couplet would undo all the mischief that five profligate acts had done. But it would have been wise in Congreve to have looked again at his own comedies before he used this argument. Collier did so, and found that the moral of the Old Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-off against all the libertinism of the piece, is contained in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grunt of derisive and implacable bitterness, but the schoolmaster seemed much comforted by his apophthegm, and stood for several minutes surveying the back of McKnight's head, and wearing ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... never cut a way Between the Austrian muskets, out of thrall:" I tell you rather that, whoever may Discern true ends here, shall grow pure enough To love them, brave enough to strive for them, And strong to reach them though the roads be rough: That having learnt—by no mere apophthegm— Not just the draping of a graceful stuff About a statue, broidered at the hem,— Not just the trilling on an opera-stage Of "liberta" to bravos—(a fair word, Yet too allied to inarticulate rage And breathless sobs, for singing, though the chord Were deeper than they struck ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... maintained, only in show. The survey of the condition of his philosophical enterprise takes more space. He notes the stages and points to which his plans have reached; he indicates, with a favourite quotation or apophthegm—"Plus ultra"—"ausus vana contemnere"—"aditus non nisi sub persona infantis" soon to be familiar to the world in his published writings—the lines of argument, sometimes alternative ones, which were before him; he draws out schemes of inquiry, specimen tables, distinctions ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... fulfilling an important duty; he goes to the Academy, and dictates the aestheticism of his native town. There he is, his hand in his white waistcoat, in the pose chosen for the presentation portrait, at the moment when he delivered himself of his famous apophthegm, "When the nude comes into art, art ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... ingratiation, her professors had no rivals. The great field of education, after the break up of the ancient system, was mainly in Greek hands; while her literature and language were so familiar to the educated Roman that in his moments of intensest feeling it was generally in some Greek apophthegm that he expressed the passion which moved ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... air of precipitation, was the general practice. To work the ruin of a person accused, a single sentence, or a splendid phrase, was sufficient. Men defended themselves in a short brilliant expression; and if that did not protect them, they died with a lively apophthegm, and their last words were wit. This was the fashion introduced by Seneca. The peculiar, but agreeable vices of his style, wrought the downfall of eloquence. The solid was exchanged for the brilliant, and they, who ceased to be ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the apophthegm: "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." This arose from his knowledge of the possible effects of machinery; but however it might astonish a Greek of his day, it ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... set in pictures of silver' is the most apposite apophthegm we can apply to the entire work. We have rarely met a volume so grateful to the taste in all its parts, so rich in its simplicity, so unique in its arrangements, and so perfect in all that constitutes ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... when, with Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply: "Sir, I tell my age to no man!" This occurred some time during the year 1880. Immediately his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on "People's ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... training. His own enthusiasm and entire devotion to the cause he served were infused throughout his followers, and made them all their country's own. To Lord Wellington has been attributed the remark that he did not want zeal in a soldier, and to Napoleon the apothegm that Providence is on the side of the heavy battalions. Zeal was oftentimes our main dependence, and on many a hard-fought field served to drive our small battalions, like a wedge, through the serried ranks ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... genealogical succession, must have fixed its characteristics so tenaciously as to persist through the random admixture of conquests and colonisations during countless generations. "God is eternal," says a fine French apothegm, "but ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... convulses a nation with an agitation only surpassed by a physical contest between hostile armies. The approach of the Presidential contest added to the acerbity of the debates, although some of the participants evidently adopted as their motto the Quaker apothegm, "Treat your enemy as if you thought he might some day become your friend, and your friend as though he might become ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... direction; that the sentiment against concentrating research will prove to operate too strongly. There is a feeling that it is rather better to leave every investigator where he chances to be at the moment, a feeling which sometimes finds expression in the apothegm that we cannot transplant a genius. That such a proposition should find acceptance affords a striking example of the readiness of men to accept a euphonious phrase without inquiring whether the facts support the doctrine which it enunciates. The fact is that ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Reginald Currier, known to mortals as Bim, Guardian of the Sacred Gates, had been rigorously educated. But Bim had a creed of his own which mollified the rigidity of specific standards, and one tenet thereof was the apothegm, "Once a 'Clarion' man, always a 'Clarion' man," the same applying to women. Therefore, when Milly Neal appeared at the gate at 9.05 in the evening, the Cerberus greeted her professionally with a "How goes it, Miss Cutie?" and passed her in without question. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... floor stood the black coffin; in it he lay in the sleep of death. His wish was fulfilled—the body rested, while the spirit went unhindered on its pilgrimage. "Let no one deem himself happy before his end," were the words of Solon; and here was a new and brilliant proof of the wisdom of the old apothegm. ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Dr. Johnson "that nothing can supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will render knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible." This sententious apothegm is thrown out in contemplating the life of Savage, one of the English poets who united some of the highest requisites of genius with the lowest personal habits. But how much instruction does it convey to all! It does not fall to the lot of all to have wit or genius, or to be ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... was at this time in the cook-house pounding rice, overheard this enigma. 'Excellent, it is excellent,' he ventured, 'but as far as completeness goes it isn't complete;' and having bethought himself of an apothegm: 'The P'u T'i, (an expression for Buddha or intelligence),' he proceeded, 'is really no tree; and the resplendent mirror, (Buddhistic term for heart), is likewise no stand; and as, in fact, they do not constitute any tangible objects, how could they be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and Quiet: and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the whole ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human being ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... eloquent protest, entitled "A Century of Dishonor." It has received epigrammatic treatment in the saying tersely enunciated by one of our military commanders, and avowedly accepted by the others, that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." So far as the African is concerned, the similar apothegm once was that "the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect;" or, as Stephen A. Douglas defined his position before an applauding audience, "I am for the white man as against the black man, and for the black man against the alligator." ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams |
