Careful Words

proof (n.)

proof (v.)

proof (adj.)

Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act iii. Sc. 3.

  We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

Thomas B Macaulay (1800-1859): On Milton. 1825.

  The proof of the pudding is the eating.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616): Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxiv.

Where music dwells

Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,

Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ecclesiastical Sonnets. Part iii. xliii. Inside of King's Chapel, Cambridge.

'T is a common proof,

That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,

Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act ii. Sc. 1.