Careful Words

homage (n.)

  Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage,—the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.

Richard Hooker (1553-1600): Ecclesiastical Polity. Book i.

  What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!—To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity; to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!

Thomas B Macaulay (1800-1859): On Boswell's Life of Johnson (Croker's ed.). 1831.

None are so desolate but something dear,

Dearer than self, possesses or possess'd

A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto ii. Stanza 24.

The surest pledge of a deathless name

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): The Herons of Elmwood.

  Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Isaac De Benserade (1612-1691): Maxim 218.

When I am dead, no pageant train

Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,

Nor worthless pomp of homage vain

Stain it with hypocritic tear.

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.