Careful Words

worth (n.)

worth (adj.)

Where, where was Roderick then?

One blast upon his bugle horn

Were worth a thousand men.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lady of the Lake. Canto vi. Stanza 18.

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty

Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act ii. Sc. 1.

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,—

Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): London. Line 176.

Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,

That would be woo'd, and not unsought be won.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book viii. Line 502.

  Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Earl Of Chesterfield (1694-1773): Letter, March 10, 1746.

For what is worth in anything

But so much money as 't will bring?

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part ii. Canto i. Line 465.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;

The rest is all but leather or prunello.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 203.

  So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

Martin Luther (1483-1546): Works. Book ii. Chap. xxix.

  Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

Publius Syrus (42 b c): Maxim 847.

There buds the promise of celestial worth.

Edward Young (1684-1765): The Last Day. Book iii.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!

Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto ii. Stanza 73.

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,—

Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): London. Line 176.

Like stones of worth, they thinly placed are,

Or captain jewels in the carcanet.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet lii.

Whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book xvii. Line 392.

It is a poor sport that is not worth the candle.

George Herbert (1593-1632): Jacula Prudentum.

  Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,

Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.

War, he sung, is toil and trouble;

Honour but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning,

Fighting still, and still destroying.

If all the world be worth the winning,

Think, oh think it worth enjoying:

Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Alexander's Feast. Line 97.

I would that I were low laid in my grave:

I am not worth this coil that's made for me.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King John. Act ii. Sc. 1.

I know a trick worth two of that.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 1.

For it so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost,

Why, then we rack the value; then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

Whiles it was ours.

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