Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Providence
And pleas’d th’ Almighty’s orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
Addison—The Campaign.
Fear not, but trust in Providence,
Wherever thou may’st be.
Thomas Haynes Bayly—The Pilot.
But they that are above
Have ends in everything.
Beaumont and Fletcher—The Maid’s Tragedy. Act V. Sc. 4.
If heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies.
William Browne—Visions. Ch. V.
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird
In his good time.
Robert Browning—Paracelsus. Pt. I.
Le hasard est un sobriquet de la Providence.
Chance is a nickname for Providence.
Chamfort.
’Tis Providence alone secures
In every change both mine and yours.
Cowper—A Fable. Moral.
Behind a frowning Providence
He hides a smiling face.
Cowper—Light Shining Out of Darkness.
God made bees, and bees made honey,
God made man, and man made money,
Pride made the devil, and the devil made sin;
So God made a cole-pit to put the devil in.
Transcribed by James Henry Dixon, from the fly-sheet of a Bible, belonging to a pit-man who resided near Hutton-Henry, in County of Denham.
Whatever is, is in its causes just.
Dryden—Œdipus. Act III. Sc. 1.
Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue.
God tempers the cold to the shorn sheep.
Henri Étienne—Le Livre de Proverbs Epigrammatique. Quoted from an older collection, possibly Lebon’s. (1557. Reprint of 1610).
We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favours.
Goldsmith—Vicar of Wakefield. Ch. I.
To a close shorn sheep, God gives wind by measure.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum.
God sends cold according to clothes.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. “God sendeth cold after clothes.” As given in Camden’s Remains.
Deus haec fortasse benigna
Reducet in sedem vice.
Perhaps Providence by some happy change will restore these things to their proper places.
Horace—Epodi. XIII. 7.
Behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Lowell—The Present Crisis. St. 8.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportion’d strength.
Milton—Comus. L. 329.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 87.
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 117.
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 205.
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 271.
Lap of providence.
Prideaux—Directions to Churchwardens. P. 105. (Ed. 1712).
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
Psalm. CXXI. 6.
Mutos enim nasci, et egere omni ratione satius fuisset, quam providentiæ munera in mutuam perniciem convertere.
For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
Quintilian—De Institutione Oratoria. XII. 1. 1.
Dieu modère tout à son plaisir.
God moderates all at His pleasure.
Rabelais—Pantagruel. (1533).
He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age!
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 43.
There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 10.
We defy augury: there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 230.
O God, thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all!
Henry V. Act IV. Sc. 8. L. 111.
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give.
Romeo and Juliet. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 17.
He maketh kings to sit in soverainty;
He maketh subjects to their powre obey;
He pulleth downe, he setteth up on hy:
He gives to this, from that he takes away;
For all we have is his: what he list doe he may.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. V. Canto II. St. 41.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
Sterne—Sentimental Journey. (Given in Italics as a quotation.)
And I will trust that He who heeds
The life that hides, in mead and wold,
Who hangs yon alder’s crimson beads,
And stains these mosses green and gold,
Will still, as He hath done, incline
His gracious care to me and mine.
Whittier—Last Walk in Autumn. St. 26.