Careful Words

brother (n.)

Am I not a man and a brother?

  O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?

Epictetus (Circa 60 a d): Discourses. Chap. xiii.

Oh, call my brother back to me!

I cannot play alone:

The summer comes with flower and bee,—

Where is my brother gone?

John Keble (1792-1866): The Child's First Grief.

Poets are sultans, if they had their will;

For every author would his brother kill.

Orrery: Prologues (according to Johnson).

Affliction's sons are brothers in distress;

A brother to relieve,—how exquisite the bliss!

Robert Burns (1759-1796): A Winter Night.

How fast has brother followed brother,

From sunshine to the sunless land!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.

I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,

And hurt my brother.

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

  At the beginning of the cask and at the end take thy fill, but be saving in the middle; for at the bottom saving comes too late. Let the price fixed with a friend be sufficient, and even dealing with a brother call in witnesses, but laughingly.

Hesiod (Circa 720 (?) b c): Works and Days. Line 366.

My father's brother, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules.

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

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

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

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 197.

No author ever spar'd a brother.

John Gay (1688-1732): Fables. The Elephant and the Bookseller.

By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see

For one who hath no friend, no brother there.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto i. Stanza 40.

  Night, having Sleep, the brother of Death.

Hesiod (Circa 720 (?) b c): The Theogony. Line 754.

  I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle.

Izaak Walton (1593-1683): The Complete Angler. Part i. Chap. 1.

And every eye

Gaz'd, as before some brother of the sky.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book viii. Line 17.

Forget the brother, and resume the man.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book iv. Line 732.

How wonderful is Death!

Death and his brother Sleep.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Queen Mab. i.

  A man that hath friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Old Testament: Proverbs xviii. 24.

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619): To Delia. Sonnet 51.

I never tempted her with word too large,

But, as a brother to his sister, show'd

Bashful sincerity and comely love.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Brother, brother! we are both in the wrong.

John Gay (1688-1732): The Beggar's Opera. Act ii. Sc. 2.

O, never say hereafter

But I am truest speaker. You call'd me brother

When I was but your sister.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act v. Sc. 5.