Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Name
Oh! no! we never mention her,
Her name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word.
Thomas Haynes Bayly—Melodies of Various Nations. Oh! No! We Never Mention Her.
Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n’est par son nom;
J’appelle un chat un chat, et Rollet un fripon.
I can call nothing by name if that is not his name. I call a cat a cat, and Rollet a rogue.
Boileau—Satires. I. 51.
Call a spade a spade.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritis Junior to the Reader. P. 11. Scalinger—Note on the Priapeia Sive Diversorum Poetarum. Baxter—Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of Life and Times. (1696). Dr. Arbuthnot—Dissertations on the Art of Selling Bargains. Philip of Macedon. See Plutarch’s Life of Philip.
He left a Corsair’s name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
Byron—The Corsair. Canto III. St. 24.
I have a passion for the name of “Mary,”
For once it was a magic sound to me,
And still it half calls up the realms of fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto V. St. 4.
Oh, Amos Cottle!—Phœbus! what a name!
Byron—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. L. 399.
Who hath not own’d, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name.
Campbell—Pleasures of Hope. Pt. II. L. 5.
Ah! replied my gentle fair,
Beloved, what are names but air?
Choose thou whatever suits the line:
Call me Sappho, call me Chloris,
Call me Lalage, or Doris,
Only, only, call me thine.
Coleridge—What’s in a Name.
Some to the fascination of a name,
Surrender judgment hoodwinked.
Cowper—Task. Bk. VI. L. 101.
“Brooks of Sheffield”: “‘Somebody’s sharp.’ ‘Who is?’” asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up quickly, being curious to know. “Only Brooks of Sheffield,” said Mr. Murdstone. I was glad to find it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for at first I really thought that it was I.
Dickens—David Copperfield. Ch. 2. “I know that man; he comes from Sheffield.” Sidney Grundy—A Pair of Spectacles.
Known by the sobriquet of “The Artful Dodger.”
Dickens—Oliver Twist. Ch. 8.
The dodgerest of all the dodgers.
Dickens—Our Mutual Friend. Ch. XIII.
Called me wessel, Sammy—a wessel of wrath.
Dickens—Pickwick Papers. Ch. 22.
He lives who dies to win a lasting name.
Drummond—Sonnet. XII.
Above any Greek or Roman name.
Dryden—Upon the Death of Lord Hastings. L. 76.
A good name is better than precious ointment.
Ecclesiastes. VII. 1.
There be of them that have left a name behind them.
Ecclesiasticus. XLIV. 8.
Ficum vocamus ficum, et scapham scapham.
We call a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff.
Erasmus—Colloquy. Philetymus et Pseudocheus. Also in Dilucalum Philyphnus. In his Adagia he refers to Aristophanes as user of a like phrase. Quoted by Lucian—Quom, Hist. sit. conscribend. 41. Also in his Jov. Trag. 32. Found also in Plutarch—Apopthegms. P. 178. (Ed. 1624). Old use of same idea in Taverner—Garden of Wysdom. Pt. I. Ch. VI. (Ed. 1539).
The blackest ink of fate was sure my lot,
And when fate writ my name it made a blot.
Fielding—Amelia. II. 9.
I cannot say the crow is white,
But needs must call a spade a spade.
Humphrey Gifford—A Woman’s Face is Full of Wiles.
“Whose name was writ in water!” What large laughter
Among the immortals when that word was brought!
Then when his fiery spirit rose flaming after,
High toward the topmost heaven of heavens up-caught!
“All hail! our younger brother!” Shakespeare said,
And Dante nodded his imperial head.
R. W. Gilder—Keats.
My name may have buoyancy enough to float upon the sea of time.
Quoted by Gladstone. Eton Miscellany. Nov. 1827.
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
Fitz-Greene Halleck—Marco Bozzaris.
A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.
Quoted by Hazlitt—Essays. On Nicknames.
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
Holmes—The Boys. (Of S. F. Smith).
My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain,
Whose constant cares were to increase his store,
And keep his only son, myself, at home.
John Home—Douglas. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 42.
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.
Leigh Hunt—Abou Ben Adhem.
He left the name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Samuel Johnson—Vanity of Human Wishes. L. 221.
Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde,
But boldly nominate a spade a spade.
Jonson—Poetaster. Act V. 3.
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.
Walter Savage Landor—Gebir. Bk. V. L. 145.
Stat magni nominis umbra.
He stands the shadow of a mighty name.
Lucan—Pharsalia. I. 135. Junius adapted this as motto affixed to his Letters. (Stat nominis umbra). Claudianus—Epigrams. 42. gives “Nominis umbra manet veteris.”
Clarum et venerabile nomen.
An illustrious and ancient name.
Lucan—Pharsalia. IX. 203.
Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.
Macaulay—On Machiavelli. 1825.
But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.
Malachi. IV. 2.
The name that dwells on every tongue,
No minstrel needs.
Don Jorge Manrique—Coplas de Manrique. St. 54. Longfellow’s trans.
My name is Legion.
Mark. V. 9.
I, a parrot, am taught by you the names of others; I have learned of myself to say, “Hail! Cæsar!”
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. XIV. Ep. 73.
“What is thy name, faire maid?” quoth he.
“Penelophon, O King,” quoth she.
Thos. Percy—Reliques. King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid.
O name forever sad! forever dear!
Still breath’d in sighs, still usher’d with a tear.
Pope—Eloisa to Abelard. L. 31.
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.
Proverbs. XXII. 1.
Byzantine Logothete.
Term applied by Roosevelt to President Wilson. Taken from Hodgkin’s Italy and Her Invaders, or Bury’s Hist. of the Later Roman Empire. The officials of Byzantium were called Logothetes, “men of learning,” “academic”; their foes were “barbarians.” These men wrote notes to their foes, who read the notes and conquered the empire. Term defined by Prof. Basil Gildersleeve as “a scrivener, a subordinate who draws up papers.” See N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 13, 1915.
Your name hangs in my heart like a bell’s tongue.
Rostand—Cyrano de Bergerac.
Ich bin der Letzte meines Stamms; mein Name
Endet mit mir.
I am the last of my race. My name ends with me.
Schiller—Wilhelm Tell. II. 1. 100.
My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor!
Scott—Rob Roy. Ch. XXXIV.
Who, noteless as the race from which he sprung,
Saved others’ names, but left his own unsung.
Scott—Waverley. Ch. XIII.
The one so like the other
As could not be distinguish’d but by names.
Comedy of Errors. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 52.
I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 92.
Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
******
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
Henry V. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 51.
And if his name be George, I’ll call him Peter;
For new-made honour doth forget men’s names.
King John. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 186.
When we were happy we had other names.
King John. Act V. Sc. 4. L. 7.
I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 17.
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
Othello. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 157.
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 43. (“Name” is “word” in Folio, and quarto of 1609.)
I do beseech you—
Chiefly, that I might set it in my prayers—
What is your name?
Tempest. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 32.
I am thankful that my name is obnoxious to no pun.
Shenstone—Egotisms.
Ye say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave;
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave;
That mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter’s shout;
But their name is on your waters;
Ye may not wash it out.
Lydia Sigourney—Indian Names.
And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,—
A name which you all know by sight very well;
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.
Southey—The March to Moscow. St. 8.
I’ll give you leave to call me anything, if you don’t call me spade.
Swift—Polite Conversation. Dialogue II.
And the best and the worst of this is
That neither is most to blame,
If you have forgotten my kisses
And I have forgotten your name.
Swinburne—An Interlude.
The myrtle that grows among thorns is a myrtle still.
Talmud. Sanhedrin. 44.
No sound is breathed so potent to coerce
And to conciliate, as their names who dare
For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die.
Tennyson—Tiresias.
O, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!
Thomson—Sophonisba.
Charmed with the foolish whistling of a name.
Vergil—Georgics. Bk. II. L. 72. Cowley’s trans.
Neither holy, nor Roman, nor Empire.
Voltaire—Essay on the Morals of the Holy Empire of the Hapsburgs.