Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Worth
I care not twopence.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Coxcomb. Act V. Sc. 1. Cupid’s Revenge. Act IV. Sc. 3.
’Tis virtue, wit, and worth, and all
That men divine and sacred call;
For what is worth, in anything,
But so much money as ’t will bring?
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto I. L. 463.
This was the penn’worth of his thought.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto III.
Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.
The game is not worth the candle.
French Proverb quoted by Lord Chesterfield.
Nihil vulgare te dignum videri potest.
Nothing common can seem worthy of you.
Cicero to Cæsar.
The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. (The Devil and Shakespeare.)
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Shakespeare. Dead? Ch. III.
You will always be fools! We shall never be gentlemen.
Lord Fisher. In the London Times, June 16, 1919. Quoted by him as a “classic” and as “the apposite words spoken by a German naval officer to his English confrère.” Lord Fisher comments, “On the whole I think I prefer to be the fool—even as a matter of business.”
Not worth twopence, (or I don’t care twopence).
Favorite expression of Marshal Foch. He is nicknamed “General Deux Sous” from this. Wellington used “Not worth a twopenny dam.” See Wellington—Dispatches. Vol. I. Letter to his brother, the Governor-General. (The dam was a small Indian coin.)
He has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle.
Benj. Franklin—The Whistle.
Too good for great things and too great for good.
Fuller—Worthies.
In native worth and honour clad.
Libretto of Haydn’s Creation. Adapted from Milton’s Paradise Lost. IV. 289. “God-like erect, with native honour-clad.”
Of whom the world was not worthy.
Hebrews. XI. 38.
’Tis fortune gives us birth,
But Jove alone endues the soul with worth.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XX. L. 290. Pope’s trans.
This mournful truth is everywhere confess’d,
Slow rises worth by poverty depress’d.
Samuel Johnson—London. L. 175.
Il est plus facile de paraître digne des emplois qu’on n’a pas que de ceux que l’on exerce.
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
La Rochefoucauld—Maximes. 164.
An ounce of enterprise is worth a pound of privilege.
Frederic R. Marvin—Companionship of Books. P. 318.
Mon verre n’est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre.
My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass.
Alfred de Musset.
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather and prunello.
Pope—Essay on Man. Epistle IV. 203.
I would that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that’s made for me.
King John. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 164.
I have been worth the whistle. O Goneril.
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.
King Lear. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 27.
Let there be some more test made of my metal,
Before so noble and so great a figure
Be stamped upon it.
Measure for Measure. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 49.
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?
Sonnet XXXIX.
A pilot’s part in calms cannot be spy’d,
In dangerous times true worth is only tri’d.
Stirling—Doomes-day. The Fifth Houre.
It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.
Swift—Tale of a Tub. Dedication.
All human things
Of dearest value hang on slender strings.
Edmund Waller—Miscellanies. I. L. 163.
But though that place I never gain,
Herein lies comfort for my pain:
I will be worthy of it.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—I Will be Worthy of It.
It is easy enough to be prudent,
When nothing tempts you to stray;
When without or within no voice of sin
Is luring your soul away;
But it’s only a negative virtue
Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honor of earth,
Is the one that resists desire.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—Worth While.
Siempre acostumbra hacer el vulgo necio,
De le bueno y lo malo igual aprecio.
The foolish and vulgar are always accustomed to value equally the good and the bad.
Yriarte—Fables. XXVIII.