Part 2 — FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS FROM UNFAMILIAR SOURCES.

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BY A STUDENT.

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Many of our readers have undoubtedly been asked during the past month for information touching the whereabouts of some trite quotation, the locality of which the whole neighborhood has not been able accurately to decide. We have often thought it would be a commendable service if some industrious student would make a complete collection of the every day sayings, and print them side by side with the author’s names. As no one, however, has seen fit to pioneer in the attempt, we here make a beginning, confident that the plan is worthy to be carried out more fully. At some future period, if no one else seems willing to continue the undertaking, we hope to find leisure and opportunity for other specimens in “Graham.” Meantime, here are a few of the more common lines in “everybody’s mouth.”

No line which dying he could wish to blot.

It stands thus in the original:

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,

One line which dying he could wish to blot.

Lord Lyttleton. Prologue to Thomson’s Coriolanus.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Pope. Essay on Criticism.

The perilous edge of battle.

Milton. Paradise Lost, Book First.

God made the country and man made the town.

Cowper. The Task.

No pent up Utica contracts your powers,

But the whole boundless continent is yours.

J. M. Sewall. Epilogue to Cato, 1778.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Shakspeare. As You Like It.

And man the hermit sighed till woman smiled.

Campbell. Pleasures of Hope.

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.

Pope. Essay on Criticism.

He whistled as he went for want of thought.

Dryden. Cymon and Iphigenia.

The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Pope. Satires. To Mr. Fortescue.

Woman, last at the cross and earliest at the grave.

E. S. Barrett. Woman: A Poem.

When Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of war.

Nat Lee. Play of Alexander the Great.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.

Congreve. The Mourning Bride.

The old man eloquent.

Milton. Tenth Sonnet.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Shakspeare. Troilus and Cressida.

Great wits to madness surely are allied,

Dryden. Absalom and Achitophel.

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

Gray. The Elegy.

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

Sterne. Sentimental Journey.

The devil may cite scripture for his purpose.

Shakspeare. The Merchant of Venice.

She walks the waters like a thing of life.

Byron. The Island.

Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.

Gray. The Progress of Poesy.

On the light fantastic toe.

Milton. l’Allegro.

Give ample room and verge enough.

Gray. The Bard.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

Pope. Essay on Criticism.

And even his failings leaned to virtue’s side.

Goldsmith. The Deserted Village.

O wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursel’ as others see us.

Burns. Address to a Louse.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Shakspeare. Hamlet.

Westward the course of empire takes its way.

Bishop Berkley.

Hills peep o’er hills and Alps on Alps arise.

Pope. Essay on Criticism.

The observed of all observers.

Shakspeare. Hamlet.

And made a sunshine in a shady place.

Spenser. Fairy Queen.

A breath can make them as a breath has made.

Goldsmith. The Deserted Village.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

Wordsworth. Ode on Immortality.

Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long.

Goldsmith. Edwin and Angelina.

Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

Pope. Moral Essays.

Throw physic to the dogs.

Shakspeare. Macbeth.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased.

Ditto.

My way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf.

Ditto.

I’ll make assurance doubly sure.

Ditto.

Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won.

Goldsmith. Deserted Village.

Domestic happiness, the only bliss

Of Paradise that has survived the fall.

Cowper. The Task.

Let who may make the laws of a people, allow me to

write their ballads, and I’ll guide them at my will.

Sir Philip Sidney.

For winter lingering chills the lap of May.

Goldsmith. The Traveler.

Rolled darkling down the torrent of his fate.

Dr. Johnson. Vanity of Human Wishes.

The man forget not, though in rags he lies,

And know the mortal through a crown’s disguise.

Akenside. Epistle to Curio.

Whatever is, is right.

Pope. Essay on Man.

The proper study of mankind is man.

Ditto.

Man never is but always to be blest.

Ditto.

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Ditto.

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

Goldsmith. Retaliation.

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.

Johnson. Vanity of Human Wishes.

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

Addison. Lines to the Duke of Marlboro.

Also Pope. The Dunciad.

To teach the young idea how to shoot.

Thomson. The Seasons. Spring.

’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.

Campbell. Pleasures of Hope.

Or like the snow-fall in the river,

A moment white, then melts forever.

Burns. Tam O’Shanter.

Nothing extenuate, nor set down ought in malice.

Shakspeare. Othello.

Exhausted worlds and then imagined new.

Dr. Johnson. Prologue at the opening of the

Drury-Lane Theatre, 1747.

Assume a virtue though you have it not.

Shakspeare. Hamlet.

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Burns. Tam O’Shanter.

Curses not loud but deep.

Shakspeare. Macbeth.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree.

Pope. Epistle to Bathurst.

By strangers honored and by strangers mourned.

Pope. Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady.

Where ignorance is bliss

’Tis folly to be wise.

Gray. Ode on Eton College.

And swift expires a driveller and show.

Dr. Johnson. Vanity of Human Wishes.

Order is Heaven’s first law.

Pope. Essay on Man.

Honor and shame from no condition rise.

Ditto.

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

Ditto.

Plays round the head but comes not to the heart.

Ditto.

But looks through nature up to nature’s God.

Ditto.

With all my imperfections on my head.

Shakspeare. Hamlet.

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveler returns.

Ditto.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

Ditto.

The time is out of joint.

Ditto.

A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.

Pope. Moral Essays.

Who never mentions hell to ears polite.

Pope. The Epistles.

From seeming evil still educing good.

Thomson. Hymn.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them how we will.

Shakspeare. Hamlet.

On her white breast a cross of gold she wore,

Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.

Pope. Rape of the Lock.

At every word a reputation dies.

Ditto.

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Ditto.

In wit a man; simplicity a child.

Pope. Epitaph on Gay.

The mob of gentlemen who write with ease.

Pope. Imitations of Horace.

Even Palinurus nodded at the helm.

Pope. The Dunciad.

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

Pope. Prologue to the Satires.

Wit that can creep and pride that licks the dust.

Ditto.

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.

Ditto.

Damns with faint praise.

Ditto.

To point a moral or adorn a tale.

Dr. Johnson. Vanity of Human Wishes.

Good wine needs no bush.

Shakspeare. As You Like It.

A little round fat oily man of God.

Thomson. The Castle of Indolence.

None but the brave deserve the fair.

Dryden. Alexander’s Feast.

Doubtless the pleasure is as great

Of being cheated, as to cheat.

Butler. Hudibras, canto 3, part 2, lines 1 and 2.

And bid the devil take the hindmost.

Do. Canto 2, part 1, line 633.

And count the chickens ere they’re hatched.

Do. Canto 3, part 2, line 924.

He that complies against his will

Is of his own opinion still.

Do. Canto 3, part 3, lines 547-8.

And look before you, ere you leap.

Do. Canto 2, part 2, line 503.