James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
It is an honour to It is not the fraud
It is an honour for a man to cease from strife.Bible.
It is an ill sign to see a fox lick a lamb.Proverb.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.Proverb.
It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as to invent.Emerson.
It is as easy to be a scholar as a gamester.H. R. Haweis.
It is as easy to deceive one’s self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding it out.La Rochefoucauld.
It is as great a point of wisdom to hide ignorance, as to discover knowledge. (?)
It is as little the part of a wise man to reflect much on the nature of beings above him as of beings beneath him.Ruskin.
It is as much a part of true temperance to be pleased with the little that we know and the little that we can do as with the little that we have.Ruskin.
It is as much intemperance to weep too much as to laugh too much.Proverb.
It is as natural for the old to be prejudiced as for the young to be presumptuous; and in the change of centuries each generation has something to judge for itself.Ruskin.
It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet an old man whose opinions are not ossified.J. F. Boyes.
It is as sport to a fool to do mischief.Bible.
It is at least fatal to the philosophic pretension of a line or stanza if, when it is fairly reduced to prose, the prose discloses that it is nonsense.John Morley.
It is bad, having once known the right, / And the impulse of nobleness prized, / To accept the less worthy, and order the fight / For a cause that is meaner, and walk by a light / That you once had despised.Dr. Walter Smith.
It is beneath the dignity of a soul that has but a grain of sense to make chance, and winds, and waves the arbitrary disposers of happiness.Lucas.
It is best not to be angry; and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.Johnson.
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.Aristotle.
It is best to take half in hand and the rest by and by.Proverb.
It is best to take with thankfulness and admiration from each man what he has to give.John Morley.
It is better and kinder to flog a man to his work than to leave him idle till he robs and flog him afterwards.Ruskin.
It is better for a young man to blush than to turn pale.Cato.
It is better for the man whom God helps than for him who rises early.Cervantes.
It is better living on a little than outliving a great deal. (?)
It is better not to live at all than to live dishonoured.Sophocles.
It is better to be a self-made man, filled up according to God’s original pattern, than to be half a man, made after some other man’s pattern.J. G. Holland.
It is better to be affected with a true penitent sorrow for sin than to be able to resolve the most difficult cases about it.Thomas à Kempis.
It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone.Amiel.
It is better to be nothing than a knave.M. Antoninus.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.French Proverb.
It is better to be the head o’ the commonalty than the tail o’ the gentry.Scotch Proverb.
It is better to be wrong by rule than to be wrong with nothing but the fitful caprice of our disposition to impel us.Natalia in “Wilhelm Meister.”
It is better to cleanse ourselves of our sins now, than to reserve them to be cleansed at some future time.Thomas à Kempis.
It is better to create than to be learned. Creating is the essence of life.Niebuhr.
It is better to die once than live always in fear of death.Cæsar.
It is better to do well than to say well.Proverb.
It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.Bible.
It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill.Tennyson.
It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting.Bible.
It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.Daniel Defoe.
It is better to have friends in our passage through life than grateful dependants; and as love is a more willing, so it is a more lasting tribute than extorted obligation.Goldsmith.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.Tennyson.
It is better to have one’s evil days when one is young than when one is old.Carlyle.
It is better to have to do with God than with His saints.French Proverb.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.Bible.
It is better to live by begging one’s bread than to gratify the mouth at the expense of others.Hitopadesa.
It is better to live in a haunted forest … than to live amongst relations after the loss of wealth.Hitopadesa.
It is better to live on the crust of your own industry than on the fruits of other people’s.Cervantes.
It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.B. R. Haydon.
It is better to trust the eye than the ear.German Proverb.
It is bitter fare eating one’s own words.Danish Proverb.
It is but the outer hem of God’s great mantle our poor stars do gem.Ruskin.
It is but vain to waste honey on those that will be caught with gall.Quarles.
It is by attempting to reach the top by a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.Cobbett.
It is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the thoughts of others we learn to think.Joshua Reynolds.
It is by faith that poetry as well as devotion soars above this dull earth.Henry Giles.
It is by his personal conduct that any man of ordinary power will do the greatest amount of good that is in him to do.Ruskin.
It is by imitation, more than by precept, that we learn anything.Burke.
It is by presence of mind in untried circumstances that the native metal of a man is tested.Lowell.
It is by study that we become contemporaries of every age and citizens of the world. (?)
It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind thereof.Novalis.
It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another.2 Henry IV., v. 1.
It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power.Carlyle.
It is cheap enough to say, “God help you.”Proverb.
It is common to esteem most what is unknown.Tacitus.
It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart; it is so much more sensitive.Thoreau.
It is courage that conquers in war, and not good weapons.Spanish Proverb.
It is cowardly to quit the post the gods elect for us before they permit us.Pythagoras.
It is delightful, after wandering in the thick darkness of metaphysics, to behold again the fair face of Truth.Carlyle.
It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached.Goethe.
It is difficult to act a part long, for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will peep out and betray itself one time or other.South.
It is difficult to descend with grace without seeming to fall.Blair.
It is difficult to do good without multiplying the sources of evil.Ruskin.
It is difficult to feel deep veneration and great affection for one and the same person.La Rochefoucauld.
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.Longfellow.
It is difficult to say whether irresolution renders a man the more unhappy or the more despicable; also whether it is productive of worse consequences to make a bad resolution, or none at all.La Bruyère.
It is difficulties that give birth to miracles.Dr. Sharpe.
It is dreary (öde) to be able to respect nothing but one’s self.Fr. Hebbel.
It is doubt (Zweifel) which turns good into bad.Goethe.
It is downright madness to contend where we are sure to be worsted.L’Estrange.
It is easier for a wit to keep fire in his mouth, than to hold in a witty saying that he is burning to tell.Cicero.
It is easier not to begin to go wrong than it is to turn back and do better after beginning.President Garfield.
It is easier to carry the world in one’s thoughts than on one’s shoulders.A. B. Alcott.
It is easier to know man in general than men in particular.La Rochefoucauld.
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.Ben. Franklin.
It is easier to worship than to obey.Jean Paul.
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.Montaigne.
It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common ways of mankind.Johnson.
It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers; but to act with wisdom, there’s the rub.Rivarol.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.Emerson.
It is easy to be a spendthrift with other people’s property.Platen.
It is easy to condemn; it is better to pity.Abbott.
It is easy to criticise an author, but it is difficult to appreciate him.Vauvenargues.
It is easy to give offence, though it is hard to appease.Grillparzer.
It is easy to open a shop, but hard to keep it open.Chinese Proverb.
It is easy to screw one’s self up into high and ever higher altitudes of Transcendentalism, and see nothing under one but the everlasting snows of Himalaya, the earth shrinking into a planet, and the indigo firmament sowing itself with daylight stars; but whither does it lead? One dreads always to inanity and mere injuring of the lungs.Carlyle to Emerson.
It is enough for thee to know what each day wills; and what each day wills the day itself will tell.Goethe.
It is exactly in the treatment of trifles that a man shows what he is.Schopenhauer.
It is exceedingly difficult for a man to be as narrow as he could have been had he lived a century ago.Whipple.
It is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but tyrannous, / To use it like a giant.Meas. for Meas., ii. 2.
It is falling in with their own mistaken ideas that makes fools and beggars of the half of mankind.Young.
It is fancy, not the reason of things, that makes us so uneasy.L’Estrange.
It is far better to give work which is above the men than to educate the men to be above their work.Ruskin.
It is far easier to make a great rush than to plod steadily on through a long life.Spurgeon.
It is far from universally true that to get a thing you must aim at it. There are some things which can only be gained by renouncing them.Renan.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and ease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately.Ruskin.
It is folly to lay out money in the purchase of repentance.Ben. Franklin.
It is folly to live in Rome and strive with the Pope.Proverb.
It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.Longfellow.
It is for the sake of him (the virtuous man) and of those like him that the earth exists and maintains itself in being.Renan.
It is for truth that God created genius.Lamartine.
It is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success.La Rochefoucauld.
It is force and right that determine everything in the world; force till right is ready.Joubert. (?)
It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man’s life.Cicero.
It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life.Victor Hugo.
It is from the difference we feel between the finitude of fact and the infinitude of fantasy that all the evils spring which torment humanity.Rousseau.
It is fruition, and not possession, that renders us happy.Montaigne.
It is generally a sign of a small mind to think differently from great minds.Goethe.
It is given us to live only once in the world.Goethe.
It is good for a man to be driven, were it by never such harsh methods, into looking at this great universe with his own eyes, for himself and not for another, and trying to adjust himself truly there.Carlyle.
It is good that we sometimes be contradicted, and that we always bear it well; for perfect peace cannot be had in this world.Jeremy Taylor.
It is good to do nothing bad, but better to wish nothing bad.M. Claudius.
It is good to fear the worst; the best can save itself.Proverb.
It is good to lend to God and the soil; they pay good interest.Danish Proverb.
It is good to rub and polish our brains against that of others.Montaigne.
It is great, it is manly, to disdain disguise.Young.
It is great prudence to gain as many friends as we honestly can, especially when it may be done at so easy a rate as a good word.Judge Hale.
It is hard even to the most miserable to die.Proverb.
It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.Proverb.
It is hard to be poor and honest.Proverb.
It is hard to carry a full cup.Proverb.
It is hard to kick against the pricks.Proverb.
It is hard to maintain the truth, but much harder to be maintained by it.South.
It is hard to put old heads on young shoulders.Proverb.
It is hard to suffer wrong and pay for it too.Proverb.
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to escape censure, a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. (?)
It is harder to marry a daughter well than to bring her up well.Proverb.
It is harder to weave than to gather wool.Spurgeon.
It is harder work to resist vices and passions, than to toil in bodily labours.Thomas à Kempis.
It is his excess of sensibility that distinguishes man from other animals.Schopenhauer.
It is his moral sentences on mankind or the state that rank the prose writer among the sages.John Morley.
It is his restraint which is honourable to a man, not his liberty.Ruskin.
It is human nature to hate him whom you have injured.Tacitus.
It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done.South.
It is ill standing in dead men’s shoes.Proverb.
It is ill to take out of the flesh what is bred in the bone.Proverb.
It is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.Mrs. Jameson.
It is impossible for any man to form a right judgment of his neighbour’s sufferings.Addison.
It is impossible that an ill-natured man can have a public spirit; for how should he love ten thousand men who never loved one?Pope.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.Swift.
It is impossible to be a hero in anything unless one is first a hero in faith.Jacobi.
It is impossible to be just, if one is not generous.Pascal.
It is in great perils we see great acts of daring.Regnard.
It is in human nature soon to relax when not impelled by personal advantage or disadvantage.Goethe.
It is in the politic as in the human constitution; if the limbs grow too large for the body, their size, instead of improving, will diminish, the vigour of the whole.Goldsmith.
It is in the soul of man, when reverence, love, intelligence, magnanimity have been developed there, that the Highest can disclose itself face to face in sun-splendour, independent of all cavils and jargonings;—there, of a surety, and nowhere else.Carlyle.
It is in the world that a man, devout or other, has his life to lead, his work waiting to be done.Carlyle.
It is in trifles that the mind betrays itself.Bulwer Lytton.
It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate, if he be unfortunate in his marriage.Dacier.
It is incalculable what by arranging, commanding, and regimenting you can make of men.Carlyle.
It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.Chamfort.
It is incredible how much the mind can do to sustain the body.Goethe.
It is indeed all twilight in this world, a trifle more or less.Goethe.
It is indeed only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression.Schopenhauer.
It is infamy to die and not be missed.C. Wilcox.
It is invariably found that the contented man is a weak man.John Wagstaffe.
It is joy to think the best we can of human kind.Wordsworth.
It is just those who grope with the mole and cling with the bat who are vainest of their sight and of their wings.Ruskin.
It is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.Tacitus.
It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence.Dryden.
It is matter of the commonest remark how a timid man who is in love will show courage, or an indolent man will show diligence.Matthew Arnold.
It is meet / That noble minds keep ever with their likes; / For who so firm that cannot be seduced?Julius Cæsar, i. 2.
It is mere cowardice to take safety in negations.George Eliot.
It is mere Philistinism on the part of private individuals to bestow too much interest on matters that do not concern them.Goethe.
It is more blessed to give than to receive.Jesus.
It is more difficult, and calls for higher energies of the soul, to live a martyr than to die one.H. Mann.
It is more honourable to be raised to a throne than be born to one; fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.Petrarch.
It is more important to discover a new source of happiness on earth than a new planet in the sky. (?)
It is more kindly to laugh at human life than to grin at it.Wieland.
It is more painful to do nothing than something.Proverb.
It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame than flame sinking into smoke.Johnson.
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.Disraeli.
It is much easier to bind on a wreath than to find a head worthy to wear it.Goethe.
It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; the former lies on the surface, the latter rests in the depths.Goethe.
It is much more easy to inspire a passion than a faith.Simms.
It is much safer to obey than to govern.Thomas à Kempis.
It is natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be true, and to believe it because he wishes it.Schopenhauer.
It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.Goethe.
It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.Bible.
It is never permitted to any one in heaven to stand behind another and look at the back of his head: for then the influx which is from the Lord is disturbed.Swedenborg.
It is never too late to mend.Proverb.
It is never wise to slip the bonds of discipline.Lewis Wallace.
It is no man’s business whether he has genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work will always be the things that God meant him to do, and will be his best.Ruskin.
It is no mean happiness to be seated in the mean.Mer. of Ven., i. 2.
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love.La Bruyère.
It is no more possible to prevent thought from reverting to an ideal than the sea from returning to the shore.Joseph Cook.
It is no small commendation to manage a little well. He is a good waggoner that can turn in a little room.Bp. Hall.
It is no such heinous matter to fall afflicted, as, being down, to lie dejected.St. Chrysostom.
It is no wonder man’s religion has much suffering in it; no wonder he needs a suffering God.George Eliot.
It is nobler to become great than to be born great.Proverb.
It is nobler to convert souls than to conquer kingdoms.Louis le Debonnaire.
It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.J. G. Holland.
It is not advisable to reward where men have the tenderness not to punish.L’Estrange.
It is not always necessary that the true should embody (verkörpere) itself; enough if it hovers around spiritually and produce accordance (Uebereinstimmung) in us; if it hover (wogt) through the atmosphere in earnest friendly tones like the sound of bells.Goethe.
It is not an unhealthy (kränkelnde) moral philosophy, but a sturdy morality that is of any profit to us.Feuchtersleben.
It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor; we must all toil, or steal, which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime…. But what I do mourn over is that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even earthly, knowledge should visit him; but only in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company.Carlyle.
It is not by shirking difficulties that we can remove them or escape them.M. R. Greg.
It is not enough that a poet possess inspiration; his inspiration must be that of a cultured spirit.Schiller.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.Italian Proverb.
It is not enough to know how to steal; one must know also how to conceal.Italian Proverb.
It is not enough to know, one must also apply; it is not enough to will to do, one must also do.Goethe.
It is not enough to speak, but to speak true.Mid. N.’s Dream, v. 1.
It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.Goethe.
It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.Colton.
It is not everybody one would set to choose a horse or a pig; how much less a member of Parliament?Ruskin.
It is not everybody who can bend the bow of Ulysses, and most men only do themselves a mischief by trying to bend it.John Morley.
It is not fit to tell others anything but what they can take up. A man understands nothing but what is commensurate with him.Goethe.
It is not from masters, but from their equals, that youths learn a knowledge of the world.Goldsmith.
It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.Fielding.
It is not given to the world to be contented.Goethe.
It is not good for man to be, especially to work, alone.Goethe.
It is not good to have an oar in every one’s boat.Camden.
It is not good to meddle with divine mysteries.Goethe.
It is not good to pass by that we dislike, even to gain that which we like; for the water of life becometh mortal when mixed with a poison.Hitopadesa.
It is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting.Epictetus.
It is not his own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin, i.e., the crime of existence.Schopenhauer.
It is not history which educates the conscience; it is conscience which educates history.Amiel.
It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.Bible.
It is not juggling that is to be blamed, but much juggling; for the world cannot be governed without it.Selden.
It is not lost that comes at last.Proverb.
It is not merely by virtue of the sunlight that falls now, and the rain and dew which it brings, that we continue here, but by virtue of the sunlight of æons of past ages.John Burroughs.
It is not metre, but metre-making agreement that makes a poem, a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architect of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.Emerson.
It is not poetry, but prose run mad.Pope.
It is not possible to buy obedience with money.Carlyle.
It is not proper to place confidence in one who cometh without any apparent cause.Hitopadesa.
It is not propositions, not new dogmas and a logical exposition of the world, that are our first need; but to watch and tenderly cherish the intellectual and moral sensibilities, those fountains of right thought, and woo them to stay and make their home with us.Emerson.
It is not quite so easy to do good as those may imagine who never try.Rd. Sharp.
It is not so much our neighbour’s interest as our own that we love him.Bp. Wilson.
It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as the having overcome them, that is an advantage to us.Swift.
It is not strength, but art obtains the prize.Pope.
It is not the beard that makes the philosopher.Proverb.
It is not the custom when a prince doth sneeze to say, as to other persons, “God help you,” but only to make a low reverence.Gerbier.
It is not the face which deceives; it is we who deceive ourselves in reading in it what is not there.Schopenhauer.
It is not the fact that a man has riches which keeps him from the kingdom of heaven, but the fact that riches have him.Dr. Caird.
It is not the fraud, but the cold-heartedness which is chiefly dreadful in treachery.Ruskin.