"A bird can roost but on one branch; a mouse can drink no more than its fill from a river" (Chinese). "He is rich enough who does not want" (Italian).
Where all is eaten up it is pretty certain that the commons were but short. "There is not enough if there is not too much" (French).
"It bursts the bag" (Italian).
Covetousness is scarcely consistent with honesty.
"The dust alone can fill the eye of man" (Arab); i.e., the dust of the grave can alone extinguish the lust of the eye and the cupidity of man. Among the Arabs, the phrase, "His eye is full," signifies he possesses every object of his desire. The Germans say, "Greed and the eye can no man fill."
"The sharper soon cheats the covetous man" (Spanish).
This is the northern form of the proverb which Launcelot Gobbo speaks of as being well parted between Bassanio and Shylock. "You [Bassanio] have the grace of God, and he [Shylock] has enough."
"One may be surfeited with eating tarts" (French).
It is better to be content with a moderate fortune than attempt to increase it at the risk of being ruined. "Give me the ass that carries me, rather than the horse that throws me" (Portuguese).
"Who goes softly goes safely, and who goes safely
This seems to be derived from the Latin adage, Festinatio tarda est ("Haste is slow"). It defeats its own purpose by the blunders and imperfect work it occasions. A favourite saying of the Emperors Augustus and Titus was, Festina lente ("Hasten leisurely"), which Erasmus calls the king of adages. The Germans have happily translated it,
"He that goes too hastily along often stumbles on a fair road" (French).
He leaves some of his accoutrements behind him. Perhaps one reason why "It is good to have a hatch before your door" is, that it may act as a check upon such unprofitable haste. Sydney Smith adopted a similar expedient, which he called a screaming gate. "We all arrived once," he said, "at a friend's house just before dinner, hot, tired, and dusty—a large party assembled—and found all the keys of our trunks had been left behind. Since then I have established a screaming gate. We never set out on our journey now without stopping at a gate about ten minutes' distance from the house, to consider what we have left behind. The result has been excellent."
Excess in one direction induces excess in the opposite direction.
"Gentleness does more than violence" (French).
"It may be a fire—on the morrow it will be ashes"
No one will believe that he loves it the more for any such extravagant demonstration.
"Too many tirewomen make the bride ill dressed" (Spanish).
"This nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe in the sovereign efficacy of dulness. To be sure, dulness and solid vice are apt to go hand in hand. But then, according to our notions, dulness is in itself so good a thing—almost a religion. Now, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted Anglo-Saxons. Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months together would frown away mirth if it could—many of us with very gloomy thoughts about our hereafter. If ever there were a people who should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. 'They took
"The pot that boils too much loses flavour" (Portuguese).
Beware of pushing it to that point at which it ceases to be play. "Leave off the play (or jest) when it is merriest" (Spanish).
It is not wise to overstrain authority, or to drive even the weakest or most submissive to desperation.
A proverb of universal application in the physical as well as the moral world. Every one knows the saying of Napoleon, "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
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