Careful Words

everything (?.)

Gon.  Here is everything advantageous to life.

Ant.  True; save means to live.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest. Act ii. Sc. 1.

A man so various, that he seem'd to be

Not one, but all mankind's epitome;

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was everything by starts, and nothing long;

But in the course of one revolving moon

Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 545.

  Everything comes if a man will only wait.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Tancred. Book iv. Chap. viii. (1847.)

  Custom reconciles us to everything.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): On the Sublime and Beautiful. Sect. xviii. vol. i. p. 231.

  You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand to.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616): Don Quixote. Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi.

O Reader! Had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Reader! you would find

A tale in everything.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Simon Lee.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 1.

  A fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 2.

  Everything has two handles,—one by which it may be borne; another by which it cannot.

Epictetus (Circa 60 a d): Enchiridion. xliii.

  Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Essays. First Series. Compensation.

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,

And nought is everything and everything is nought.

Horace Smith (1779-1849): Rejected Addresses. Cui Bono?

  Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 a d): Meditations. iv. 36.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard;

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chaliced flowers that lies;

And winking Mary-buds begin

To ope their golden eyes:

With everything that pretty is,

My lady sweet, arise.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act ii. Sc. 3.

I love everything that's old,—old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.—Goldsmith: She Stoops to Conquer, act i.

  To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Old Testament: Ecclesiastes iii. 1.

But they that are above

Have ends in everything.

Beaumont And Fletcher: The Maid's Tragedy. Act v. Sc. 1.

Time trieth troth in every doubt.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part ii. Chap. v.