Quotes
Quotes about Man
Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours and excise our brains.
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Lights of the world, and stars of human race.
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,--
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me,--and no other can.
I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.
I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,--
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
God made the country, and man made the town.
Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.
Transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
The Frenchman's darling.
Some must be great. Great offices will have
Great talents. And God gives to every man
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordain'd to fill.
As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An honest man, close-button'd to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves, by thumping on your back,
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.
But strive still to be a man before your mother.
