"Apophthegm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discourse on this occasion better than by putting you in mind of a passage you quoted to me once, with great applause, from a sermon of Foster, and to this effect: "Where mystery begins, religion ends." The apophthegm pleased me much, and I was glad to hear such a truth from any pulpit, since it shows an inclination, at least, to purify Christianity from the leaven of artificial theology, which consists principally in making things that are very plain mysterious, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... no notice of this droll apothegm. Her hands began to work. "What shall I do!" she said. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... All I say is, 'Dem as libs longest will see most!'" said Wool, shaking his white head. After which undeniable apothegm the ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... himself, is round the corner of the white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... at this time in the cook-house pounding rice, overheard this enigma. 'Excellent, it is excellent,' he ventured, 'but as far as completeness goes it isn't complete;' and having bethought himself of an apothegm: 'The P'u T'i, (an expression for Buddha or intelligence),' he proceeded, 'is really no tree; and the resplendent mirror, (Buddhistic term for heart), is likewise no stand; and as, in fact, they do not constitute any tangible objects, how could they ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that, Dr. Small," said Titus, in answer to some observation of the vicar, "that's a most original apothegm. We all of us hould our lives by a thrid. Och! many's the sudden finale I have seen. Many's the fine fellow's heels tripped up unawares, when least expected. Death hangs over our heads by a single hair, as your reverence says, precisely like the sword of Dan Maclise,[6] ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... obliterated,—to fade away from the consciousness; they are reillumined, made to blaze out again in brilliant light on the "walls of the chambers of imagery," by some outward stimulus; by a "word spoken in season"; by the recollection of some weighty apothegm which embodies truth,—some ennobling image which illustrates it; by the utterance of certain "charmed words," hallowed by association as they fall on the external sense, or are recalled by memory. How familiar to us all is this dependence on the external! How dull, how sluggish, has often ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... managed. English experience will tell you, more to the purpose, that 'perseverance is power;' for with it, all things can be done, without it nothing. I remember, in the history of Tamerlane, an incident which, to me, has always had the force of an apothegm. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... stronger than its weakest part, and it would be well if a similar apothegm could be extended to the criticism of such compositions as the Annales Cambriae, and the Saxon Chronicle. It would be well if we could say that in chronological tables nothing was earlier than the latest entry. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... mind were those of meditation and inward thought, rather than of action. He delighted to express his opinions by an apothegm, illustrate them by a parable, or drive them home by a story. He was skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea on which a question turned, and knew how to disengage it and present it by itself in a few homely, strong old English words that would ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... consulted the augurs; and learning from them the inestimable preciousness of the books, he bought them, and the Sibyl forthwith vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared. This legend reads like a moral apothegm on the increasing value of life as it ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... habitual study of nature. The chemist, the geologist, the botanist, the zoologist, has to deal with facts which will make him master of them, and of himself, only in proportion as he obeys them. Many of you doubtless know Lord Bacon's famous apothegm, Nature is only conquered by obeying her; and will understand me when I say, that you cannot understand, much less use for scientific purposes, the meanest pebble, unless you first obey that ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... takes an economist not to expect these things. Multiply machinery, and you increase the amount of arduous and disagreeable labor to be done: this apothegm is as certain as any of those which date from the deluge. Accuse me, if you choose, of ill-will towards the most precious invention of our century,—nothing shall prevent me from saying that the principal result of railways, after the subjection of petty industry, will be the creation ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... is a question that will not down, and we have got to meet it. British publicists and statesmen from whom we have taken in the past far too much of our politics have either ignored that question entirely, or have treated it as practically settled by the apothegm of Ricardo, that the laborer is entitled out of his earnings to just enough food and clothing to keep the machine of his body in working order, and that when that machine becomes disarranged or worn out, he ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various |
