Careful Words

all (n.)

all (v.)

all (adv.)

all (adj.)

Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Epistle to Congreve. Line 19.

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Each and All.

Rather than be less,

Car'd not to be at all.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 47.

Or shear swine, all cry and no wool.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 852.

Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?

All fear, none aid you, and few understand.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 261.

  All flesh is grass.

Old Testament: Isaiah xl. 6.

Did you ever hear of Captain Wattle?

He was all for love, and a little for the bottle.

Charles Dibdin (1745-1814): Captain Wattle and Miss Roe.

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,

Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.

Evil, be thou my good.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 108.

Lord of himself, though not of lands;

And having nothing, yet hath all.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639): The Character of a Happy Life.

Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,

The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 542.

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,

All in the morning betime.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. 5.

Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all

That shared its shelter perish in its fall.

William Pitt (1759-1806): The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. No. xxxvi.

  All is lost save honour.

All is not gold that glisteneth.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627): A Fair Quarrel. Act v. Sc. 1.

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; th' unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 105.

  Vanity of vanities, . . . all is vanity.

Old Testament: Ecclesiastes i. 2; xii. 8.

  All is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Old Testament: Ecclesiastes i. 14.

  If the end be well, all is well.

Gesta Romanorum: Tale lxvii.

All is well that endes well.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. x.

  I said in my haste, All men are liars.

Old Testament: Psalm cxvi. 11.

  Flowery oratory he despised. He ascribed to the interested views of themselves or their relatives the declarations of pretended patriots, of whom he said, "All those men have their price."

Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745): Coxe: Memoirs of Walpole. Vol. iv. p. 369.

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Be ye all of one mind.

New Testament: 1 Peter iii. 8.

  Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  All that a man hath will he give for his life.

Old Testament: Job ii. 4.

All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 7.

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

Sir William Davenant (1605-1668): Gondibert. Book ii. Canto v. Stanza 37.

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee

To temper man: we had been brutes without you.

Angels are painted fair, to look like you:

There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—

Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

Thomas Otway (1651-1685): Venice Preserved. Act i. Sc. 1.

All the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.

All the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.

  There was all the world and his wife.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Polite Conversation. Dialogue iii.

  Like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  But Chrysippus, Posidonius, Zeno, and Boëthus say, that all things are produced by fate. And fate is a connected cause of existing things, or the reason according to which the world is regulated.

Diogenes Laertius (Circa 200 a d): Zeno. lxxiv.

All things that are,

Are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd.

How like a younker or a prodigal

The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,

Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind!

How like the prodigal doth she return,

With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails,

Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act ii. Sc. 6.

All things that are

Made for our general uses are at war,—

Even we among ourselves.

John Fletcher (1576-1625): Upon an "Honest Man's Fortune."

  I am made all things to all men.

New Testament: 1 Corinthians ix. 22.

  All things work together for good to them that love God.

New Testament: Romans viii. 28.

Our author, for the advantage of this play ("Appius and Virginia"), had invented a new species of thunder, which was approved of by the actors, and is the very sort that at present is used in the theatre. The tragedy however was coldly received, notwithstanding such assistance, and was acted but a short time. Some nights after, Mr. Dennis, being in the pit at the representation of "Macbeth," heard his own thunder made use of; upon which he rose in a violent passion, and exclaimed, with an oath, that it was his thunder. "See," said he, "how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!"—Biographia Britannica, vol. v. p. 103.