Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Fidelity
Fidelity is the sister of justice.
Horace.
To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.
Vaughan.
Faithful found among the faithless.
Milton.
The root of all steadfastness is in consecration to God.
Alexander Maclaren.
Trust reposed in noble natures obliges them the more.
Dryden.
With strength to meet sorrow, and faith to endure.
Mrs. Osgood.
Prosperity asks for fidelity; adversity exacts it.
Seneca.
Ever keep thy promise, cost what it may; this it is to be “true as steel.”
Charles Reade.
She is as constant as the starsThat never vary, and more chaste than they.
Proctor.
The fidelity of barbarians depends on fortune.
Livy.
Through perils both of wind and limb,Through thick and thin she follow’d him.
Butler.
Flesh of flesh,Bone of my bone, thou art, and from thy stateMine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
Milton.
True as the needle to the pole,Or as the dial to the sun.
Barton Booth.
But faithfulness can feed on suffering,And knows no disappointment.
George Eliot.
Fidelity bought with money is overcome by money.
Seneca.
No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
Burke.
It Is more difficult for a man to be faithful to his mistress when he is favored than when he is ill treated by her.
La Rochefoucauld.
Master, go on, and I will follow theeTo the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.
Shakespeare.
Years have not seen, Time shall not seeThe hour that tears my soul from thee.
Byron.
Unkindness may do much;And his unkindness may defeat my life,But never taint my love.
Shakespeare.
To be true to each other, let ’appen what ma
yTill the end o’ the dayAn the last lod hom. Tennyson.
Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow,We will stand by each other, however it blow.
Simon Dach.
I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
Shakespeare.
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;His tears pure messengers sent from his heart;His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.
Shakespeare.
Full many a miserable year hath past—She knows him as one dead, or worse than dead,And many a change her varied life hath known,But her heart none.
Maturin.
Confirm’d then I resolve,Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:So dear I love him, that with him all deathsI could endure, without him live no life.
Milton.
Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.
Cicero.
Let it be ours to be self-reliant amidst hosts of the vacillating—real in a generation of triflers—true amongst a multitude of shams; when tempted to swerve from principle, sturdy as an oak in its maintenance; when solicited by the enticement of sinners, firm as a rock in our denial.
Wm. M. Punshon.
Within her heart was his image,Cloth’d in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him,Only more beautiful made by his death-like silence and absence.
Longfellow.
For me—I have no lingering wish to rove;For though I worship all things fair and free,Of outward grace, of soul nobility,Happier than thou, I find them all in one,And I would worship at thy shrine alone.
Miss Lynch.
He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.
George MacDonald.
Be but faithful, that is all;Go right on, and close behind theeThere shall follow still and find theeHelp, sure help.
Arthur Hugh Clough.
No grace is more necessary to the Christian worker than fidelity; the humble grace that marches on in sunshine and storm, when no banners are waving, and there is no music to cheer the weary feet.
S. J. Nicholls.
Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer!Tho’ the herd hath fled from thee, thy home is still here;Here is still the smile that no cloud can o’ercast,And the heart and the hand all thy own to the Last!
Moore.
Where is honor,Innate and precept-strengthen’d, ’tis the rockOf faith connubial: where it is not—whereLight thoughts are lurking, or the vanitiesOf worldly pleasure rankle in the heart,Or sensual throbs convulse it.
Byron.
Oh! it irradiates all our days with lofty beauty, and it makes them all hallowed and divine, when we feel that not the apparent greatness, not the prominence nor noise with which it is done, nor the external consequences which flow from it, but the motive from which it flowed, determines the worth of our deed in God’s eyes. Faithfulness is faithfulness, on whatsoever scale it be set forth.
Alexander Maclaren.
It goes a great way towards making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so, and he that does but so much as suspect that I will deceive him gives me a sort of right to cozen him.
Seneca.
He who, being boldFor life to come, is false to the past sweetOf mortal life, hath killed the world above.For why to live again if not to meet?And why to meet if not to meet in love?And why in love if not in that dear love of old?
Sydney Dobell.
Yes!—still I love thee: Time, who setsHis signet on my brow,And dims my sunken eye, forgets,The heart he could not bow;—Where love, that cannot perish, growsFor one, Alas! that little knowsHow love may sometimes last;Like sunshine wasting in the skiesWhen clouds are overcast.
Rufus Dawes.
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,Like fairy-gifts fading away!Thou would’st still be ador’d, as this moment thou art,Let thy loveliness fade as it will,And, around the dear ruin, each wish of my heartWould entwine itself verdantly still!
Moore.
I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other,Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.If any wretch hath put this in your head,Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse!For, if she be not honest, chaste, and true,There’s no man happy: the purest of their wivesIs foul as slander.
Shakespeare.
There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.
Emerson.
Pure as the snow the summer sun—Never at noon hath look’d upon—Deep, as is the diamond wave,Hidden in the desert cave—Changeless, as the greenest leavesOf the wreath the cypress weaves—Hopeless, often, when most fond—Without hope or fear beyondIts own pale fidelity—And this woman’s love can be.
Miss Landon.
Chain me with roaring bears;Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,O’er-covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;Or bid me go into a new-made grave,And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;And I will do it without Fear or Doubt,To live an unstain’d Wife of my sweet Love.
Shakespeare.
They said her cheek of youth was beautifulTill withering sorrow blanch’d the bright rose there;But grief did lay his icy finger on it,And chill’d it to a cold and joyless statue,Methought she caroll’d blithely in her youth,As the couched nestling trills his vesper lay;But song and smile, beauty and melody,And youth and happiness are gone from her,Perchance—even as she is—he would not scorn her,If he could know her—for, for him she’s chang’d,She is much alter’d—but her heart—her heart!
Maturin.
Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend, who will stand firm when others fail; the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous—in such a one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages.
Dean Stanley.
