C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Erasmus
Apothegms are, in history, the same as the pearls in the sand, or the gold in the mine.
As a looking-glass, if it is a true one, faithfully represents the face of him that looks in it, so a wife ought to fashion herself to the affection of her husband; not to be cheerful when he is sad, nor sad when he is cheerful.
As Plato entertained some friends in a room where there was a couch richly ornamented, Diogenes came in very dirty, as usual, and getting upon the couch, and trampling on it, said, “I trample upon the pride of Plato.” Plato mildly answered, “But with greater pride, Diogenes!”
Charity resembleth fire, which inflameth all things it toucheth.
Experience is the common schoolhouse of fools and ill men. Men of wit and honesty be otherwise instructed.
Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.
His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require.
If a man get a fever, or a pain in the head with overdrinking, we are subject to curse the wine, when we should rather impute it to ourselves for the excess.
It is in vain to gather virtues without humility; for the Spirit of God delighteth to dwell in the hearts of the humble.
Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived, and apt to have ague fits.
Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature, who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.
Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions—money, gems, plate, noble mansions and dominion—should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor.
This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier made up than when once it has taken air.
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
When he (Luther) was angry, invectives rushed from him like boulder rocks down a mountain torrent in flood.