Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Dignity
Remember this,—that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
Marcus Aurelius—Meditations. IV. 32.
Otium cum dignitate.
Ease with dignity.
Cicero—Oratia Pro Publio Sextio. XLV.
The dignity of truth is lost
With much protesting.
Ben Jonson—Catiline. Act III. Sc. 2.
***With grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem’d
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone
Majestic, though in ruin: sage he stood,
With Atlantéan shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer’s noontide air.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 300.
We have exchanged the Washingtonian dignity for the Jeffersonian simplicity, which was in truth only another name for the Jeffersonian vulgarity.
Bishop Henry C. Potter—Address at the Washington Centennial Service. New York, April 30, 1889.
Facilius crescit dignitas quam incipit.
Dignity increases more easily than it begins.
Seneca—Epistolæ Ad Lucilium. CI.
But clay and clay differs in dignity,
Whose dust is both alike.
Cymbeline. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 6.
Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.
Merchant of Venice. Act II. Sc. 9. L. 39.
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.
Wordsworth—Lines left upon a seat in a Yew Tree. Same idea in Beattie—Minstrel. II. St. 12.
Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.
Young—Night Thoughts. VI. 128.