James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Childhood to Compos mentis
Childhood and youth see all the world in persons.Emerson.
Childhood has no forebodings; but then it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.George Eliot.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.Rousseau.
Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.Mrs. Child.
Childhood often holds a truth in its feeble fingers which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, and which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.Ruskin.
Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.Milton.
Childhood, who like an April morn appears, / Sunshine and rain, hopes clouded o’er with fears.Churchill.
Children always turn toward the light.Hare.
Children and chickens are always a-picking.Proverb.
Children and drunk people speak the truth.Proverb.
Children and fools speak the truth.Proverb.
Children are certain sorrows, but uncertain joys.Danish Proverb.
Children are the poor man’s wealth.Danish Proverb.
Children are very nice observers, and they will often perceive your slightest defects.Fénelon.
Children blessings seem, but torments are, / When young, our folly, and when old, our fear.Otway.
Children generally hate to be idle; all the care is then that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.Locke.
Children have more need of models than of critics.Joubert.
Children have scarcely any other fear than that produced by strangeness.Jean Paul.
Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent, that they detect and hunt out everything—the bad before all the rest.Goethe.
Children of night, of indigestion bred.Churchill, of dreams.
Children of wealth or want, to each is given / One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven.Holmes.
Children see in their parents the past, they again in their children the future; and if we find more love in parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad indeed, but natural. Who does not fondle his hopes more than his recollections?Eötvös.
Children should have their times of being off duty, like soldiers.Ruskin.
Children should laugh, but not mock; and when they laugh, it should not be at the weaknesses and the faults of others.Ruskin.
Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they are old.Proverb.
Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.Bacon.
Children tell in the highway what they hear by the fireside.Portuguese Proverb.
Children think not of what is past, nor what is to come, but enjoy the present time, which few of us do.La Bruyère.
Chi lingua ha, a Roma va—He who has a tongue may go to Rome, i.e., may go anywhere.Italian Proverb.
Chi nasce bella, nasce maritata—She who is born a beauty is born married.Italian Proverb.
Chi niente sa, di niente dubita—He who knows nothing, doubts nothing.Italian Proverb.
Chi non dà fine al pensare, non dà principio al fare—He who is never done with thinking never gets the length of doing.Italian Proverb.
Chi non ha cuore, abbia gambe—He who has no courage should have legs (to run).Italian Proverb.
Chi non ha, non è—He who has not, is not.Italian Proverb.
Chi non ha piaghe, se ne fa—He who has no worries makes himself some.Italian Proverb.
Chi non ha testa, abbia gambe—He who has no brains should have legs.Italian Proverb.
Chi non istima vien stimato—To disregard is to win regard.Italian Proverb.
Chi non puo fare come voglia, faccia come puo—He who cannot do as he would, must do as he can.Italian Proverb.
Chi non sa fingere, non sa vivere—He that knows not how to dissemble knows not how to live.Italian Proverb.
Chi non vede il fondo, non passi l’acqua—Who sees not the bottom, let him not attempt to wade the water.Italian Proverb.
Chi non vuol servir ad un sol signor, a molto ha da servir—He who will not serve one master will have to serve many.Italian Proverb.
Chi offende, non perdona mai—He who offends you never forgives you.Italian Proverb.
Chi offende scrive nella rena, chi è offeso nel marmo—He who offends writes on sand; he who is offended, on marble.Italian Proverb.
Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie—Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps.Italian Proverb.
Chi piglia leone in assenza suol temer del topi in presenza—He who takes a lion far off will shudder at a mole close by.Italian Proverb.
Chi piu sa, meno crede—Who knows most, believes least.Italian Proverb.
Chi più sa, meno parla—Who knows most, says least.Italian Proverb.
Chi sa la strada, puo andar di trotto—He who knows the road can go at a trot.Italian Proverb.
Chi sa poco presto lo dice—He who knows little quickly tells it.Italian Proverb.
Chi serve al commune serve nessuno—He who serves the public serves no one.Italian Proverb.
Chi si affoga, s’attaccherebbe a’ rasoj—A drowning man would catch at razors.Proverb.
Chi si fa fango, il porco lo calpestra—He who makes himself dirt, the swine will tread on him.Italian Proverb.
Chi si trova senz’ amici, è come un corpo senz’ anima—He who is without friends is like a body without a soul.Italian Proverb.
Chi sta bene, non si muova—Let him who is well off remain where he is.Italian Proverb.
Chi tace confessa—Silence is confession.Italian Proverb.
Chi t’ha offeso non ti perdonera mai—He who has offended you will never forgive you.Italian Proverb.
Chi troppo abbraccia nulla stringe—He who grasps at too much holds fast nothing.Italian Proverb.
Chi tutto vuole, tutto perde—Covet all, lose all.Italian Proverb.
Chivalry was founded invariably by knights who were content all their lives with their horse and armour and daily bread.Ruskin.
Chi va piano, va sano, chi va sano va lontano—He who goes softly goes safely, and he who goes safely goes far.Italian Proverb.
Chi va, vuole; chi manda, non se ha cura—He who goes himself, means it; he who sends another does not care.Italian Proverb.
Chi vuol dell’ acqua chiara, vada alla fonte—He who wants the water pure must go to the spring-head.Italian Proverb.
Chi vuol esser mal servito tenga assai famiglia—Let him who would be ill served keep plenty servants.Italian Proverb.
Chi vuol il lavoro mal fatto, paghi innanzi tratto—If you wish your work ill done, pay beforehand.Italian Proverb.
Chi vuol presto e ben, faccia da se—He who wishes a thing done quickly and well, must do it himself.Italian Proverb.
Choose a good mother’s daughter, though her father were the devil.Gaelic Proverb.
Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be. Custom will render it easy and agreeable.Pythagoras.
Choose an author as you choose a friend.Earl of Roscommon.
Choose thy speech.Gaelic Proverb.
Choose your wife as you wish your children to be.Gaelic Proverb.
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure / Thrill the deepest notes of woe.Burns.
Chose perdue, chose connue—A thing lost is a thing known, i.e., valued.French Proverb.
[Greek]—Volubility of speech and pertinency are sometimes very different things.Sophocles.
Christen haben keine Nachbarn—Christians have no neighbours.German Proverb.
Christianity has not yet penetrated into the whole heart of Jesus.Amiel.
Christianity appeals to the noblest feelings of the human heart, and these are emotion and imagination.Shorthouse.
Christianity has a might of its own; it is raised above all philosophy, and needs no support therefrom.Goethe.
Christianity has made martyrdom sublime and sorrow triumphant.Chapin.
Christianity is a religion that can make men good, only if they are good already.Hegel.
Christianity is salvation by the conversion of the will; humanism by the enlightenment of the mind.Amiel.
Christianity is the apotheosis of grief, the marvellous transmutation of suffering into triumph, the death of death and the defeat of sin.Amiel.
Christianity is the practical demonstration that holiness and pity, justice and mercy, may meet together and become one in man and in God.Amiel.
Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.Novalis.
Christianity is the worship of sorrow.Goethe.
Christianity’s husk and shell / Threaten its heart like a blight.(J. B.) Selkirk.
Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour. Modern society acknowledges no neighbour.Disraeli.
Christianity, which is always true to the heart, knows no abstract virtues, but virtues resulting from our wants, and useful to all.Chateaubriand.
Christianity without the cross is nothing.W. H. Thomson.
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded / That all the apostles would have done as they did.Byron.
Christ is not valued at all, unless He is valued above all.St. Augustine.
Christ left us not a system of logic, but a few simple truths.B. R. Haydon.
Christmas comes but once a year.Proverb.
Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.Horace Mann.
Christ’s truth itself may yet be taught / With something of the devil’s spirit.(J. B.) Selkirk.
Churches are not built on Christ’s principles, but on His tropes.Emerson.
Ci-devant—Former.French.
Cieco è l’occhio, se l’animo è distratto—The eye sees nothing if the mind is distracted.Italian Proverb.
Ciencia es locura si buen senso no la cura—Knowledge is of little use if it is not under the direction of good sense.Spanish Proverb.
Ci-gît—Here lies.French.
Cineri gloria sera venit—Glory comes too late to one in the dust.Martial.
Ciò che Dio vuole, io voglio—What God wills, I will.Motto.
Ciò che si usa, non ha bisogno di scusa—That which is customary needs no excuse.Italian Proverb.
Circles are prais’d, not that abound / In largeness, but th’ exactly round; / So life we praise, that does excel, / Not in much time, but acting well.Waller.
Circles in water as they wider flow, / The less conspicuous in their progress grow, / And when at last they trench upon the shore, / Distinction ceases, and they’re view’d no more.Crabbe.
Circles to square, and cubes to double, / Would give a man excessive trouble.Prior.
Circuitus verborum—A roundabout story or expression.
Circulus in probando—Begging the question, or taking for granted the point at issue (lit. a circle in the proof).
Circumstances are beyond the control of man, but his conduct is in his own power.Disraeli.
Circumstances are things round about; we are in them, not under them.Lander.
Circumstances form the character, but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form.Landor.
Circumstances? I make circumstances.Napoleon.
Cita mors ruit—Death is a swift rider.
Citharœdus / Ridetur chorda qui semper obberrat eadem—The harper who is always at fault on the same string is derided.Horace.
Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.Emerson.
Cities give not the human senses room enough.Emerson.
Cities have always been the fire-places (i.e., foci) of civilisation, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark, cold world.Theodore Parker.
Citius venit periculum cum contemnitur—When danger is despised, it arrives the sooner.Publius Syrus.
Civil dissension is a viperous worm / That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.1 Henry VI., iii. 1.
Civilisation degrades the many to exalt the few.A. B. Alcott.
Civilisation depends on morality.Emerson.
Civilisation is the result of highly complex organisation.Emerson.
Civilisation means the recession of passional and material life, and the development of social and moral life.Ward Beecher.
Civilisation tends to corrupt men, as large towns vitiate the air.Amiel.
Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.Mary Wortley Montagu.
Clamorous labour knocks with its hundred hands at the golden gate of the morning.Newman Hall.
Claqueur—One hired to applaud.French.
Clarior e tenebris—The brighter from the obscurity.Motto.
Clarum et venerabile nomen—An illustrious and honoured name.
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.Johnson.
Classisch ist das Gesunde, romantisch das Kranke—The healthy is classical, the unhealthy is romantic.Goethe.
Claude os, aperi oculos—Keep thy mouth shut, but thy eyes open.
Claudite jam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt—Close up the sluices now, lads; the meadows have drunk enough.Virgil.
Clausum fregit—He has broken through the enclosure, i.e., committed a trespass.Law.
Clay and clay differs in dignity, / Whose dust is both alike.Cymbeline, iv. 2.
Cleanliness is near of kin to godliness.Proverb.
Clear and bright it should be ever, / Flowing like a crystal river; / Bright as light, and clear as wind.Tennyson on the Mind.
Clear conception leads naturally to clear and correct expression.Boileau.
Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.Landor.
Clear your mind of cant.Johnson.
Clemency alone makes us equal with the gods.Claudianus.
Clemency is one of the brightest diamonds in the crown of majesty.W. Secker.
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.Amiel.
Clever people will recognise and tolerate nothing but cleverness.Amiel.
Climbing is performed in the same posture as creeping.Swift.
Clocks will go as they are set; but man, irregular man, is never constant, never certain.Otway.
Close sits my shirt, but closer sits my skin.Proverb.
Clothes are for necessity; warm clothes, for health; cleanly, for decency; lasting, for thrift; and rich, for magnificence.Fuller.
Clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us.Carlyle.
Clothes make the man.Dutch Proverb.
Clouds are the veil behind which the face of day coquettishly hides itself, to enhance its beauty.Jean Paul.
Coal is a portable climate.Emerson.
Cobblers go to mass and pray that the cows may die (i.e., for the sake of their hides).Portuguese Proverb.
Cobra buena fama, y échate á dormir—Get a good name, and go to sleep.Spanish Proverb.
Cobre gana cobre que no huesos de hombre—Money (lit. copper) breeds money and not man’s bones.Spanish Proverb.
Cœlitus mihi vires—My strength is from heaven.Motto.
Cœlo tegitur qui non habet urnam—He who has no urn to hold his bones is covered by the vault of heaven.Lucan.
Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitia—We assail heaven itself in our folly.Horace.
Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt—Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.Horace.
Coerced innocence is like an imprisoned lark; open the door, and it is off for ever.Haliburton.
Cogenda mens est ut incipiat—The mind must be stimulated to make a beginning.Seneca.
Cogi qui potest nescit mori—He who can be compelled knows not how to die.Seneca.
Cogitatio nostra cœli munimenta perrumpit, nec contenta est, id, quod ostenditur, scire—Our thoughts break through the muniments of heaven, and are not satisfied with knowing what is offered to sense observation.Seneca.
Cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am.Descartes.
Cognovit actionem—He has admitted the action.Law.
Coigne of vantage.Macbeth, i. 6.
Coin heaven’s image / In stamps that are forbid.Meas. for Meas., ii. 4.
Cold hand, warm heart.Proverb.
Cold pudding settles one’s love.Proverb.
Collision is as necessary to produce virtue in men, as it is to elicit fire in inanimate matter; and chivalry is the essence of virtue.Lord John Russell.
Colonies don’t cease to be colonies because they are independent.Disraeli.
Colour answers to feeling in man; shape, to thought; motion, to will.John Sterling.
Colour blindness, which may mistake drab for scarlet, is better than total blindness, which sees no distinction of colour at all.George Eliot.
Colour is the type of love. Hence it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth, and with its fruits; also with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man.Ruskin.
Colours are the smiles of Nature … her laughs, as in the flowers.Leigh Hunt.
Colubram in sinu fovere—To cherish a serpent in one’s bosom.
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.Emerson.
Combien de héros, glorieux, magnanimes, ont vécu trop d’un jour—How many famous and high-souled heroes have lived a day too long!J. B. Rousseau.
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.Johnson.
Come, and trip it as you go, / On the light fantastic toe.Milton.
Come, civil night, / Thou sober-suited matron, all in black.Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2.
Come, cordial, not poison.Romeo and Juliet, v. 1.
Comedians are not actors; they are only imitators of actors.Zimmermann.
Come è duro calle—How hard is the path.Dante.
Come, fair Repentance, daughter of the skies! / Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue; / The weeping messenger of grace from heaven.Browne.
Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.Wordsworth.
Come he slow or come he fast, / It is but Death who comes at last.Scott.
Come like shadows, so depart.Bowles.
Come, my best friends, my books, and lead me on.Cowley.
Come one, come all! this rock shall fly / From its firm base as soon as I.Scott.
Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est—A pleasant companion on the road is as good as a carriage.Publius Syrus.
Come the three corners of the world in arms, / And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, / If England to itself do rest but true.King John, v. 7.
Come, we burn daylight.Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.
Come what come may, / Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.Macbeth, i. 3.
Come what sorrow can, / It cannot countervail th’ exchange of joy / That one short minute gives me in her sight.Romeo and Juliet, ii. 6.
Comfort is the god of this world, but comfort it will never obtain by making it an object.Whipple.
Comfort’s in heaven; and we are on the earth, / Where nothing lives but crosses, care, and grief.Richard II., ii. 2.
Coming events cast their shadows before.Campbell.
Comitas inter gentes—Courtesy between nations.
Command large fields, but cultivate small ones.Virgil.
Comme il faut—As it should be.French.
Comme je fus—As I was.Motto.
Comme je trouve—As I find it.Motto.
Commend a fool for his wit or a knave for his honesty, and he will receive you into his bosom.Fielding.
Commend me rather to him who goes wrong in a way that is his own, than to him who walks correctly in a way that is not.Goethe.
Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.T. Gray.
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, contingent, transitory, almost as liable to change as the winds and waves that waft it to our shores.Colton.
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold.Shelley.
Commerce is a game of skill, which every one cannot play, which few men can play well.Emerson.
Commerce is one of the daughters of Fortune, inconstant and deceitful as her mother. She chooses her residence where she is least expected, and shifts her abode when her continuance is, in appearance, most firmly settled.Johnson.
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.Emerson.
Committunt multi eadem diverso crimina fato, / Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulerit, hic diadema—How different the fate of men who commit the same crimes! For the same villany one man goes to the gallows, and another is raised to a throne.
Common as light is love, / And its familiar voice wearies not ever.Shelley.
Common chances common men can bear.Coriolanus, iv. 1.
Common distress is a great promoter both of friendship and speculation.Swift.
Common fame is seldom to blame.Proverb.
Commonly they use their feet for defence whose tongue is their weapon.Sir P. Sidney.
Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances, because the substance is not.Emerson.
Common-place people see no difference between one man and another.Pascal.
Common-sense is calculation applied to life.Amiel.
Common-sense is the average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual peculiarities.W. R. Alger.
Common-sense is the genius of humanity.Goethe.
Common-sense is the measure of the possible; it is calculation applied to life.Amiel.
Common souls pay with what they do; nobler souls, with what they are.Emerson.
Communautés commencent par bâtir leur cuisine—Communities begin with building their kitchen.French Proverb.
Commune bonum—A common good.
Commune naufragium omnibus est consolatio—A shipwreck (disaster) that is common is a consolation to all.Proverb.
Commune periculum concordiam parit—A common danger tends to concord.Law.
Communia esse amicorum inter se omnia—All things are common among friends.Terence.
Communibus annis—One year with another.
Communi consensu—By common consent.
Communion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.J. G. Holland.
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.Proudhon.
Como cant a el abad, asi responde el monacillo—As the abbot sings, the sacristan answers.Spanish Proverb.
Compagnon de voyage—A fellow-traveller.Proverb.
Company, villanous company, has been the spoil of me.1 Henry IV., iii. 3.
Comparaison n’est pas raison—Comparison is no proof.French Proverb.
Compare her face with some that I shall show, / And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.Romeo and Juliet, i. 2.
Comparisons are odious.Burton.
Comparisons are odorous.Much Ado, iii. 5.
Compassion to the offender who has grossly violated the laws is, in effect, a cruelty to the peaceable subject who has observed them.Junius.
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.Ward Beecher.
Compendia dispendla—Short cuts are round-about ways.
Compendiaria res improbitas, virtusque tarda—Vice is summary in its procedure, virtue is slow.
Compesce mentem—Restrain thy irritation.Horace.
Complaining never so loud, and with never so much reason, is of no use.Emerson.
Complaining profits little; stating of the truth may profit.Carlyle.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.Swift.
Compliments are only lies in court clothes.J. Sterling.
Componitur orbis / Regis ad exemplum; nec sic inflectere sensus / Humanos edicta valent, quam vita regentis—Manners are fashioned after the example of the king, and edicts have less effect on them than the life of the ruler.Claudius.
Compose thy mind, and prepare thy soul calmly to obey; such offering will be more acceptable to God than every other sacrifice.Metastasio.
Compositum miraculi causa—A story trumped up to astonish.Tacitus.
Compos mentis—Of a sound mind.