James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Marry above to Men look
Marry above your match, and you get a master.Proverb.
Marry and grow tame.Spanish Proverb.
Marry for love and work for siller.Scotch Proverb.
Marry for love, but only love that which is lovely.Proverb.
Marrying is easy, but housekeeping is hard.Proverb.
Mars gravior sub pace latet—A more serious war lies concealed under a show of peace.Claudian.
Martem accendere cantu—To waken up the war-spirit by his note.Virgil.
Mas vale buen amigo que pariente primo—A good friend is better than a near relation.Spanish Proverb.
Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled.Emerson.
Mässigkeit und klarer Himmel sind Apollo und die Musen—Moderation and a clear sky are Apollo and the Muses.Goethe.
Masters are mostly the greatest servants in the house.Proverb.
Masters should be sometimes blind and sometimes deaf.Proverb.
Masters two / Will not do.Proverb.
Mastery passes often for egotism.Goethe.
Match-makers often burn their fingers.Proverb.
Mater artium necessitas—Necessity is the mother of invention (lit. the arts).
Mater familias—The mother of a family.
Materia medica—Substances used in medicine; therapeutics.
Materia prima—The primary substance or substrate.
Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything; makes everything vulgar, and every truth false.Amiel.
Materiem, qua sis ingeniosus, habes—You have a subject on which to show your ingenuity.Ovid.
Materiem superabat opus—The workmanship surpassed the material.Ovid.
Mathematic form is eternal in the reasoning memory; living form is eternal existence.William Blake.
Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.Goethe.
[Greek]—I speak to experts; those who are not I ignore.Æschylus.
Matinée—A morning recital or performance.French.
Matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.Heine.
Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea and body it forth.Carlyle.
Matter, were it never so despicable, is spirit, the manifestation of spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be more?Carlyle.
Mature fieri senem, si diu velis esse senex—You must become an old man soon if you would be an old man long.Proverb in Cicero.
Maulesel treiben viel Parlaren / Dass ihre Voreltern Pferde waren—Mules boast much that their ancestors were horses.German Proverb.
Mauvaise honte—False shame.French.
Mauvaise langue—A slanderous tongue.French.
Mauvais pas—A scrape; a difficulty.French.
Mauvais sujet—A bad or worthless fellow.French.
Mauvais ton—Bad manners.French.
Maxim or aphorism, let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those books are most nourishing which are most richly stored with it, and that it is one of the main objects … which men ought to seek in the reading of books.John Morley.
Maxima debetur pueris reverentia—The greatest respect is due to youth (lit. our boys).Juvenal.
Maxima illecebra est peccandi impunitatis spes—The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.Cicero.
Maxima quæque domus servis est plena superbis—Every great house is full of haughty servants.Juvenal.
Maximas virtutes jacere omnes necesse est, voluptate dominante—Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues must lie dormant.Cicero.
Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct.Joubert.
Maximum remedium iræ dilatio est!—Deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.Seneca.
Maximus in minimis—Very great in very little things.
Maximus novator tempus—Time is the greatest innovator.Proverb.
“May-be” is very well, but “must” is the master.Proverb.
May cauld ne’er catch you but a hap, / Nor hunger but in plenty’s lap.Burns.
May never wicked fortune touzle (tease) him! / May never wicked man bamboozle him! / Until a pow as auld’s Methusalem / He canty (cheerily) claw, / Then to the blessed New Jerusalem / Fleet wing awa’!Burns.
May the idea of pureness, extending itself even to the very morsel which I take into my mouth, become ever dearer and more luminous within me.Goethe.
Me judice—In my opinion or judgment.
Me justum esse gratis oportet—It is my duty to show justice without recompense.Seneca.
[Greek]—Do not make evil gains; evil gains are equal to losses.Hesiod.
[Greek]—Don’t stir Lake Camarina (otherwise pestilence).
Me miseram, quod amor non est medicabilis herbis!—Oh, unhappy me, that there should be no herbs to cure love!
Me nemo ministro / Fur erit—No one shall play the thief with my help.Juvenal.
Me non solum piget stultitiæ meæ, sed etiam pudet—I am not only annoyed at my folly, I am ashamed of it.Law.
Me, poor man, my library was dukedom large enough.Tempest, i. 1.
Me (they will kill) when they are mad, but you when they recover their reason.Phocion to Demosthenes, who had threatened him with death at the hands of his fellow-citizens.
Mea virtute me involvo—I wrap myself in my virtue.Horace.
Meal is finer than grain; women are finer than men.Gaelic Proverb.
Meals and matins minish never.Proverb.
Mean spirits under disappointment, like small beer in a thunderstorm, always turn sour.Randolph.
Measure men around the heart.Proverb.
Measure not by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality.Schiller.
Measure three times before you cut once.Proverb.
Measure your cloth ten times; you can cut it but once.Russian Proverb.
Measures, not men, have always been my mark.Goldsmith.
Meat and matins hinder no man’s journey.Proverb.
Meat is devoured by the birds in the air, by the beasts in the fields, and by the fishes in the waters; so, in every situation, there is plenty.Hitopadesa.
Meat is more than its carving, and truth is more than oratory.Proverb.
Mecum facile redeo in gratiam—I easily recover my good-will myself.Phædrus.
[Greek]—No excess.Anonymous.
[Greek]—Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.Plato.
Medici, causa morbi inventa, curationem inventam putant—Physicians, when they have found out the cause of a disease, consider they have found out the cure.Cicero.
Medicines are not meant to feed on.Proverb.
Medio de fonte leporum / Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat—From the midst of the very fountain of delight something bitter arises to vex us even amid the flowers themselves.Lucretius.
Medio tutissimus ibis—You will go most safely in the middle.Ovid.
Médiocre et rampant, et l’on arrive à tout—Be second-rate and fawning, and you may attain to anything.Beaumarchais.
Mediocria firma—The middle station is the most secure.Motto.
Mediocribus esse poetis / Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnæ—Mediocrity in poets is condemned by gods and men, and booksellers too.Horace.
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.I. Disraeli.
Mediocrity is not allowed to poets either by gods or men.Horace.
Mediocrity of enjoyment only is allowed to man.Blair.
Meditation has taught all men in all ages that this world is after all but a show—a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing.Carlyle.
Meditation is a busy search in the storehouse of phantasy for some ideas of matters to be cast in the moulds of resolution into some forms of words and action; in which search I find this is the best conclusion, that to meditate on the best is the best of meditations, and a resolution to make a good end is a good end of my resolutions.A. Warwick.
Meditation is the life of the soul; action, the soul of meditation; honour, the reward of action.Quarles.
Meditation is the soul’s perspective glass, whereby in her long removes she discerneth God as if he were nearer at hand.Feltham.
Medium tenuere beati!—Happy they who steadily pursue a middle course.
Meekness is not mere white-facedness, a mere contemplative virtue; it is maintaining peace and patience in the midst of pelting provocations.Ward Beecher.
Meekness is not weakness.Proverb.
Meekness is the bridle of anger.Saying.
Meekness is the cherish’d bent / Of all the truly great and all the innocent.Wordsworth.
[Greek]—A great book is a great evil.Callimachus.
Meglio amici da lontano che nemici d’appresso—Better be friends at a distance than enemies near each other.Italian Proverb.
Meglio solo che mal accompagnato—Better alone than in bad company.Italian Proverb.
Meglio tardi che mai—Better late than never.Italian Proverb.
Mehr Leute beten die aufgehende, als die untergehende Sonne an—More people pay homage to the rising than to the setting sun.Jean Paul.
Mehr Licht!—More light!Goethe’s last words. (?)
Meikle crack fills nae sack.Scotch Proverb.
Mein einz’ger Wunsch ist meiner Wünsche Ruhe—My only wish is that my wishes should be at rest.Rückert.
Mein erst Gesetz ist, in der Welt / Die Frager zu vermeiden—A first rule of mine is to avoid the inquiring class of people.Goethe.
Mein Herz gleicht ganz dem Meere, / Hat Sturm und Ebb’ und Flut, / Und manche schöne Perle / In seiner Tiefe ruht—My heart altogether resembles the sea; it has its storms, its ebbs and floods, and far down in its quiet depths rests many a shining pearl.Heine.
Mein Leben ist für Gold nicht feil—My life is not to be bartered away for gold.Bürger.
Mein Leipzig lob’ ich mir! / Es ist klein Paris, und bildet seine Leute—Leipzig for me! It is quite a little Paris, and its people acquire an easy finished air (lit. it fashions its people).Goethe.
Mein Pathos brächte dich gewiss zum Lachen, / Hätt’st du dir nicht das Lachen abgewöhnt—My pathos would surely provoke you to mirth, if you had not long ago forborne to smile.Mephistopheles to the Lord, in Goethe’s “Faust.”
Mein Ruh’ ist hin, / Mein Herz ist schwer; / Ich finde sie nimmer / Und nimmermehr—My peace is gone; my heart is heavy; I shall find it (peace) never and nevermore.Gretchen in Goethe’s “Faust.”
Mein Sohn, nichts in der Welt ist unbedeutend. / Das erste aber und Hauptsächlichste / Bei allem ird’schen Ding ist Ort und Stunde—My son, nothing in this world is without significance, but the first and most essential matter in every earthly thing is the place where and the hour when.Schiller.
Mein Wille ist rein, das weitere gebe ich der Vorsehung anheim!—My intention is pure; the rest I leave in the hands of Providence.Frederick William II. of Prussia.
Meine Herrn, did you never hear of the man that vilified the sun because it would not light his cigar?Carlyle’s challenge to certain canting pietistic depreciators of Goethe.
Meine Zeit in Unruhe, meine Hoffnung in Gott!—The time I live in is a time of turmoil; my hope is in God.Frederick William III. of Prussia.
Meiner Idee nach ist Energie die erste und einzige Tugend des Menschen—In my regard energy is the first and only virtue of man.W. von Humboldt.
Meines Lebens Wunsch ist stiller Friede—The wish of my life is a tranquil peace.Seume.
Mel in ore, verba lactis, / Fel in corde, fraus in factis—Honey in his mouth, words of milk; gall in his heart, deceit in his deeds.
Melancholy advanceth men’s conceits more than any humour whatever.Burton.
Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life.Margaret Fuller.
Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.Victor Hugo.
Melancholy spreads itself betwixt heaven and earth, like envy between man and man, and is an everlasting mist.Byron.
[Greek]—Practice is everything.Periander.
Melior est conditio possidentis—The condition of the party in possession, or the defendant, is the better of the two.Law.
Melior tutiorque est certa pax, quam sperata victoria—A certain peace is better and safer than an expected victory.Law.
Meliora sunt ea quæ natura, quam quæ arte perfecta sunt—The things which are perfect by nature are better than those which are perfect by art.Cicero.
Meliores priores—The better first.Law.
Melioribus auspiciis—Under more favourable auspices.
Melius est pati semel, quam cavere semper—It is better to suffer once than to be in perpetual apprehension.Julius Cæsar.
Melius est peccata cavere quam mortem fugere—It is better to avoid sin than to fly from death.Thomas à Kempis.
Melius, pejus, prosit, obsit, nil vident nisi quod libuerit—better or worse, for good or for harm, they see nothing but what they please.Terence.
Mellitum venerium, blanda oratio—A flattering speech is honied poison.Proverb.
Membra reformidant mollem quoque saucia tactum; / Vanaque sollicitis incutit umbra metum—The wounded limb shrinks from even a gentle touch, and the unsubstantial shadow strikes the timid with alarm.Ovid.
Même quand l’oiseau marche, on sent qu’il a des ailes—Even when a bird walks, we may see that it has wings.French Proverb.
Meminerunt omnia amantes—Lovers remember everything.Ovid.
Memini etiam quæ nolo: oblivisci non possum quæ volo—I remember what I would not, and I cannot forget what I would.Themistocles.
Memor et fidelis—Mindful and faithful.Motto.
Memorabilia—Things to be remembered or recorded.
Memorem immemorem facit, qui monet quod memor meminit—He who reminds a man with a good memory of what he remembers, makes him forget.Plautus.
Memoria in æterna—In eternal remembrance.Motto.
Memoria minuitur, nisi eam exerceas—Your power of recollection will wax feeble unless you exercise it.Cicero.
Memoriter—By rote.
Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.Rivarol.
Memory, and thou, Forgetfulness, not yet / Your powers in happy harmony I find; / One oft recalls what I would fain forget, / And one blots out what I would bear in mind.Macedonius.
Memory is a Muse in herself, or rather the mother of the Muses. (?)
Memory is like a purse: if it be over-full, that it cannot be shut, all will drop out of it.Fuller.
Memory is not so brilliant as hope, but it is more beautiful, and a thousand times more true.G. D. Prentice.
Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council-chamber of thought.Basile.
Memory is the conservative faculty.Sir Wm. Hamilton.
Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention.Colton.
Memory is the golden thread linking all the mental gifts and excellencies together.E. P. Hood.
Memory (Erinnerung) is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven.Jean Paul.
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.Johnson.
Memory is the scribe of the soul.Aristotle.
Memory, of all things good remind us still: / Forgetfulness, obliterate all that’s ill.Macedonius.
Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age.Lactantius.
Memory, the warder of the brain.Macbeth, i. 7.
Men and communities in this world are often in the position of Arctic explorers, who are making great speed in a given direction, while the ice-floe beneath them is making greater speed in the opposite.John Burroughs.
Men and cucumbers are worth nothing as soon as they are ripe.Jean Paul.
Men and pyramids are not made to stand on their head.G. K. Pfeffel.
Men and women who “grill” over the petty annoyances incident to existence, and inseparable from it, go to ruin like a care-worn cat.C. J. Dunphie.
Men apt to promise are apt to forget.Proverb.
Men are April when they woo, December when they wed.As You Like It, iv. 1.
Men are as the time is.King Lear, v. 3.
Men are at best only stewards, and they are very select men indeed who are elected of heaven to this honour. The most want the necessary discrimination, and are in their place only when, like Athenian maidens, “bearers of the basket.”James Wood.
Men are but children of a larger growth; / Our appetites are apt to change as theirs, / And full as craving too, and full as vain.Dryden.
Men are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified.Emerson.
Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.Swift.
Men are enlisted for the labour that kills; let them be enlisted for the labour that feeds; and let the captains of the latter be held as much gentlemen as the captains of the former.Ruskin.
Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet (or believer, maker, and praise), and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser).Ruskin.
Men are everything, measures are comparatively nothing.Canning.
Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.William Penn.
Men are happy in proportion as their range of vision, their sphere of action, and their points of contact with the world are restricted and circumscribed.Schopenhauer.
Men are impatient and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout his operations, accomplishing his natural ends by slow successive steps.Bishop Butler.
Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel, that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.Voltaire.
Men are led by trifles.Napoleon.
Men are less afraid of injuring one who awakens love than one who inspires fear.Machiavelli.
Men are like flies—for men are insects too, / Little in mind, howe’er our bodies run!— / We’re all in sects: in sects that hate each other, / And deem it love of God to hate one’s brother.Edward Irwin.
Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.Whately.
Men are made by nature unequal: it is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.Froude.
Men are men; the best sometimes forget.Othello, ii. 3.
Men are more inclined to ask curious questions than to obtain necessary instruction.Pasquier Quesnel.
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.Pliny.
Men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail.George Eliot.
Men are much in disposition and feelings according to the nature of the country which they inhabit.Polybius.
Men are much more prone (the greater is the pity) both to speak and believe ill than well of their neighbours.Thomas à Kempis.
Men are never so easily deceived as while they are endeavouring to deceive others.La Rochefoucauld.
Men are never wise but returning from law.Proverb.
Men are not always what they seem to be.Lessing.
Men are not influenced by things, but by their thoughts about things.Epictetus.
Men are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves.Emerson.
Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly fiddled on by the fingers of joy.Ward Beecher.
Men are not so ungrateful as they are said to be. If they are often complained of, it generally happens that the benefactor claims more than he has given.Napoleon.
Men are not to be measured by inches.Proverb.
Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.Walpole.
Men are oftener treacherous through weakness than design.La Rochefoucauld.
Men are readier to forgive calumny than admonition (Ermahnung).Jean Paul.
Men are respectable only as they respect.Emerson.
Men are seldom blessed with good fortune and good sense at the same time.Livy.
Men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are making money.Johnson.
Men are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake himself what he sees done by others, whether he has aptitude for it or not.Goethe.
Men are solitary among each other; no one will help his neighbour; each has even to assume a defensive attitude lest his neighbour should hinder him.Carlyle.
Men are tatooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea islanders; but a real human heart, with divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth’s thousand tribes.Holmes.
Men are the sport of circumstances, when the circumstances seem the sport of men.Byron.
Men are unwiser than children; they do not know the hand that feeds them.Carlyle.
Men are very generous with that which costs them nothing.Proverb.
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade / Of that which once was great is passed away.Wordsworth.
Men are what their mothers made them.Emerson.
Men are wiser than they know.Emerson.
Men at most differ as heaven and earth, / But women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.Tennyson.
Men at some time are masters of their fate.Julius Cæsar, i. 2.
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanities.La Bruyère.
Men can be estimated by those who know them not, only as they are represented by those who know them.Johnson.
Men / Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief / Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, / Their counsel turns to passion, which before / Would give preceptial medicine to rage, / Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, / Charm ache with air and agony with words.Much Ado, v. 1.
Men can make an idol of the Bible.Ward Beecher.
Men can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.George Eliot.
Men cannot be well educated without the Bible.Dr. Nott.
Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those that come after them; and of all the pulpits from which the human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.Ruskin.
Men cannot live by lending money to each other.Ruskin.
Men cannot live isolated; we are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can disunite himself from any lowest.Carlyle.
Men carry the head erect indeed, yet how mean and cringing are the thoughts within.Heine.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.Emerson.
Men chew not when they have no bread.Proverb.
Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according to custom.Bacon.
Men complain of not finding a place of repose. They are in the wrong; they have it for seeking. What they indeed should complain of is, that the heart is an enemy to that very repose they seek.Goldsmith.
Men contemplate distinctions because they are stupefied with ignorance (viz., of the substantial identity of things).Eastern saying, quoted by Emerson.
Men deal with life as children with their play, / Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.Cowper.
Men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.Goethe.
Men descend to meet.Emerson.
Men do not make their homes unhappy because they have genius, but because they have not enough genius.Wordsworth.
Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them: they don’t live by trade but by work.Ruskin.
Men dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.Pope.
Men, elevated above all states, are now the educators of states—dead men, for instance, like Plato.Jean Paul.
Men err from selfishness, women because they are weak.Madame de Staël.
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.Bacon.
Men fear only him who does not know them, and he who shuns them will soon misjudge them.Goethe.
Men feed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth.Amiel.
Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.Jean Paul.
Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed the same way.Johnson.
Men have but too much cause to secure themselves from men.Goethe.
Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.Emerson.
Men have many faults; / Poor women have but two; / There’s nothing good they say, / And nothing right they do.Anonymous.
Men have their metal, as of gold and silver.Koran.
Men in all ways are better than they seem.Emerson.
Men in general experience a great joy in colour. The eye needs it as much as it does light. Let any one recall the refreshing sensation one experiences when on a gloomy day the sun shines out on a particular spot on the landscape, and makes the colours of it visible. That healing powers were ascribed to coloured precious stones may have arisen out of the deep feeling of this inexpressible pleasure.Goethe.
Men in great place are thrice servants—servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.Bacon.
Men, in spite of all their failings, best deserve our affections of all that exists.Goethe.
Men learn behaviour, as they take diseases, one of another.Emerson.
Men like advising the women better than doing right themselves.Spurgeon.
Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.Jean Paul.
Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.Bovee.
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.Holmes.
Men look to what people think of them; women to what they say.Hippel.