D

Danger
Dangers bring fears, and fears more dangers bring.
Richard Baxter
Danger, the spur of all great minds.
George Chapman
As soon as there is life there is danger.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the
fraternity of strangers.
Victor Hugo
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
Shakespeare
Better face a danger once than be always in fear.
Proverb
Day
Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.
DRYDEN, JOHN
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
HEBER, REGINALD
O day most calm, most bright.
HERBERT, GEORGE
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky.
HERBERT, GEORGE
Pack clouds away and welcome day,
With night we banish sorrow.
HEYWOOD, THOMAS
Wondering, listening,
Listening, wondering,
Eve with a berry
Halfway to her lips.
HODGSON, RALPH
And he feels that the good days are flying and passing away, those days that perish and are put down to our account.
MARTIAL
Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day,
That costs thy life, my gallant grey!
SCOTT, SIR WALTER, BARONET
Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,
And we are for the dark.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to morrow as to day,
And to be boy eternal.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Each morning puts a man on trial and each evening passes judgement.
Roy L Smith
Death
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant perhaps the one is as painful as the other.
BACON, FRANCIS
So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
BUNYAN, JOHN
Which now goes along the dark path to that place whence they say none returns.
CATULLUS, GAIUS VALERIUS
One had as good be out of the world as out of the fashion.
CIBBER, COLLEY
Life that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes say’ Welcome, Friend.’
CRASHAW, RICHARD
Perish those who have said our remarks before us.
DONATUS, AELIUS
Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
FROHMAN, CHARLES
It is a sweet and glorious thing to die for one’s country.
HORACE
Death hath a thousand doors to let out life.
I shall find one.
MASSINGER, PHILIP
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quit us in a death so noble.
MILTON, JOHN
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
MOORE, THOMAS
But the old men know when an old man dies.
NASH, OGDEN
Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
POPE, ALEXANDER
But thousands die, without this or that,
Die, and endow a college or a cat.
POPE, ALEXANDER
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.
ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA GEORGINA
Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
SAKI (HECTOR HUGH MUNRO)
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away.
SCOTT, SIR WALTER
What’s brave, what’s noble,
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
His biting is immortal; those that do die of it seldom or never recover.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Death levels all things.
Claudian
Death is Nature’s expert advice to get plenty of life.
Goethe
A man can die but once.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep.
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE
If I should die to-night,
My friends would look upon my quiet face,
Before they laid it in its resting-place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair.
SMITH, ARABELLA EUGENIA
Go and try to disprove death, Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
TURGENEV, IVAN SERGEIEVITCH
Debt
The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states—Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.
INGE, WILLIAM RALPH
He that dies pays all debts.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.
Josh Billings
The borrower runs in his own debt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Getting into debt, is getting into a tanglesome net.
Benjamin Franklin
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.
Samuel Johnson
One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can’t pay back.
Jesse H. Jones
A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, and enemy.
Publilius Syrus
Deceit
Yet still we hug the dear deceit.
COTTON, NATHANIEL
God is not averse to deceit in a holy cause.
Aeschylus
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Jean de la Fontaine
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
Goethe
Listen at the keyhole and you’ll hear news of yourself.
Proverb
The surest way to be deceived is to think one’s self more clever than others.
Francois de la Rouchefoucauld
Oh, What a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to decieive!
Walter Scott
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever.
Shakespeare
There are three persons you should never deceive: your physician, your confessor, and your lawyer.
Horace Walpole
Decision and Indecision
All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes
GLADSTONE, WILLIAM, EWART
Who shall decide when doctor disagree?
POPE, ALEXANDER
I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
The wavering mind is but a base possession.
Euripides
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
Decide not rashly. The decision made can never be recalled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To be or not to be, that is the question….
Shakespeare
Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.
Sophocles
We have a choice: to plow new ground or let the weeds grow.
Jonathan Westover
Defeat
Defeat never comes to any man untill he admits it.
Josephus Daniels
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Earnest Hemingway
Those who are prepared to die for any cause are seldom defeated.
Jawahar lal Nehru
Defence
I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.
Winston Churchill
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
George Washington
A government without the power of defence; it is a solecism.
James Wilson
A strong defence is the surest way to peace. Strength makes detente attainable. Weakness invites war, as my generation knows from four very bitter experiences.
Gerald r. Ford
That is not to say that we can relax our readiness to defend ourselves. Our armamen must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primaarily in these machines of defence but in ourselves.
Admiral Chester w. Nimitz
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising propsperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war.
George Washington
Democracy
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
The world must be made safe for democracy.
WILSON, THOMAS WOODROW
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
Edmund Burke
Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.
Thomas CarlIle
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
James Fenimore Cooper
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
The measure of a democracy is the measure of the freedom of its humblest citizens.
John Galsworthy
We hold the view that the people come first, not the government.
John F. Kennedy
All creatures are members of the one family of God.
The Koran
Democracy gives to every man
The right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
E.B.White
Dependence
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years.
BYRON, GEORGE
The greatest man living may stand in need of the meanest, as much as the meanest does of him.
Thomas Fuller
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
Samuel Johnson
Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.
Alfred E. Smith
Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It’s choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.
Chanakya
Desire
The man’s desire is for the woman; but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR
The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.
GRAY, THOMAS
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a postchaise with a pretty woman.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
KEATS, JOHN
‘Let spades be trumps!’ she said, and trumps they were.
POPE, ALEXANDER
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.
Cicero
He begins to die that quits his desires.
George Herbert
Naked I see the camp of those who desire nothing.
Horace
We live in our desires rather than in our achievements.
George Moore
Desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.
Proverb
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Scottish Proverb
Despair
I want to be forgotten even by god.
Robert Browning
Despair is the conclusion of fools.
Benjamin Disraeli
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
John Donne
Despondency is not a state of humility. On the contrary, it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride….
Fenelon
The only refuge from despair is to project one’s ego into the world.
Leo Tolstoy
When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace and death a duty.
Voltaire
Destiny
There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.
ALEXANDER, CECIL FRANCES
The long arm of coincidence.
CHAMBERS, CHARLES HADDON
There was a Door to which I found no Key;
There was a Veil past which I could not see.
FITZGERALD, EDWARD
Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
By many a happy accident.
MIDLETON, THOMAS
It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
What always, what every where, what by everyone has been believed.
VINCENT OF LERINS
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan
No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
Homer
Devil
What the devil does the plot signify, except to bring in fine things?
BUCKINGHAM, GEORGE VILLIERS
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR
He saw a cottage with a double coachhouse,
A cottage of gentility:
And the devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And it will be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.
DEFOE, DANIEL
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.
DONNE, JOHN
If I had known that as many devils would set on me as there are tiles on the roofs in Worms, still I would have gone there.
LUTHER, MARTIN
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Differences
Geography is about maps,
But biography is about chaps.
BENTLEY, EDMUND CLERIHEW
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces there should be none alike.
BROWNE, SIR THOMAS
No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s worktime
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
BROWNING, ROBERT
There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book, and the tired man who wants a book to read.
MILTON, JOHN
A man’s good work is effected by doing what he does; a woman’s by being what she is.
CHESTEERTON, GILBERT KEITH
I have called this principles, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.
DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT
A little monograph on the ashes of one hundred and forty different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco.
DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN
So over-violent or over-civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
Dryden, John
My tongue has sworn it, but my mind’s unsworn.
EURIPIDES
A nice unparticular man.
HARDY, THOMAS
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
No, Sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend.
LAMB, CHARLES
Though this may be play to you, it is death to us.
L’ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
LYTTON, Lord
Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
LYTTON, Lord
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
MACAULAY
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and gentlemen were not seamen.
MACAULAY
For evil news rides post, while good news baits.
MILTON, JOHN
From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous: and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
PAINE, THOMAS
At length the morn and cold indifference came.
ROWE, NICHOLAS
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD
All that can be said is, that two people happened to hit on the same thought and Shakespeare made use of it first, that’s all.
SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY
A place for everything, and everything in its place.
SMILES, SAMUEL
I portray men as they ought to be portrayed, but Euripides portrays them as they are.
OPHOCLES
In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?
TWAIN, MARK
All men think all men mortal but themselves.
YOUNG, EDWARD
Diplomacy
Diplomacy, the partiotic art of lying for one’s country
Ambrose Bierce
The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathizes with their just feelings.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I never refuse. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Benjamin Disraeli
We must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.
Thomas Jefferson
Speak softly and carry a big; you will go far.
Theodore Roosevelt
Discretion
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
HARDY, THOMAS
Once to every man nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
For good and evil in our actions meet;
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
John Donne
The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.
Shakespeare
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wished ill to; the other injures indifferently both friends an foes.
Jospeh Addsion
Dissent
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease.
DRYDEN, JOHN
Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.
ROSCOMMON, WENTWORTH DILLON
Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought.
Spiro t. Agnew
There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs.
William O. Douglas
Dissent does not include the freedom to destroy the system of law which guarantees freedom to speak, assemble and march in protest. Dissent is not anarchy.
Seymour F. Simon
Doing
Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.
BROWNING, ROBERT
It is not what man Does which exalts him, but what man would do!
BROWNING, ROBERT
If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.
CHESTEERTON, GILBERT KEITH
A man build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.
INGE, WILLIAM RALPH
For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep.
KINGSLEY, CHARLE
To be weak is miserable doing or suffering.
MILTON, JOHN
Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,
If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.
POPE, ALEXANDER
A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA
O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD
The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
SMILES, SAMUEL
Do well, and right, and let the world sink.
HERBERT, GEORGE
He touched nothing that he did not adorn.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
I never did repent for doing good, nor shall not now.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.
The Buddha
Doomsday
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
ELIOT, THOMAS STEARNS
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Due to the lack of experienced trumpeters, the end of the world has been postponed.
Unknown
The world must be coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents and every man wants to write a book.
Unknown
Doubt
A castle called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair.
BUNYAN, JOHN
When in doubt, win the trick.
HOYLE, EDMOND
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win.
By fearing to attempt.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Doubt whom you will, but never doubt yourself.
Christian Nestell Bovee
Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.
Dante
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
Clarence Darrow
Scepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
Denis Diderot
To have doubted one’s own first principles, is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Dreams
If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing-bell,
Some a light sigh.
BEDDOES, THOMAS LOVELL
There’s a long, long trail a winding
Into the land of my dreams.
KING, STODDARD
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.
NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY JOHN
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
POE, EDGAR ALLAN
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
POE, EDGAR ALLAN
When you cease to dream you ceases to live.
Sant Tukaram
Cricket has been my life, I’m living a dream.
Sachin Tendulkar
A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not read.
The Talmud
The spirit of man has two dwellings: this world and the world beyond. There is also a third dwelling place: the land of sleep and dreams…
Yajur Veda
Wandering in this borderland, he beholds behind him the sorrows of this world, and in front of him he sees the joys of the beyond.
Yajur Veda
Faithful below he did his duty.
But now he’s gone aloft.
DIBDIN, CHARLES
Did wisely from expensive sins refrain
And never broke the Sabbath but for gain.
DRYDEN, JOHN
Nor does Apollo always keep his bow strung.
HORACE
Awake my soul, and with the sun
The daily stage of duty run.
KENN, THOMAS
Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles,
Helping, when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.
KINGSLEY, CHARLE
I do perceive here a divided duty.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS
Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. Cleanliness is, indeed next to godliness.
WESLEY, JOHN