English for Students

Beautiful Expressions

Beautiful Expressions Index


There are innumerable beautiful expressions in English. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever is one of the immortal lines of the great poet Keats.

The Beauty is ultimate reality is another immortal lines but of Tagore. The English language abounds in such beautiful expressions which bring us immense joy. Happy turns of phrases, striking imageries, peculiar styles, semantically interesting structures and memorable phrases are added in this page.

Here are few of those immortal lines and beautiful expressions.

1. Adventure is the champagne of life. (G. K. Chesterton)
   
   
2. Adversity's sweet milk is philosophy. (Romeo and Juliet 3: 3: 55)
   
   
3. All do not all things well. (Thomas Champion)
   
   
4. All experience is an arch to build upon. (Henry Brooks Adams)
   
   
5. All is at once sunk in their whirl-pool death. (Donne)
   
   
6. All things to end are made. (Thomas Nashe)
   
   
7. The almighty dollar is the only object of worship. (Anon)
   
   
8. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. (Julius Caesar 3:2:97)
   
   
9. And death shall be no more. death, thou shalt die. (Donne)
   
   
10. And justify the ways of God of men. (Paradise Lost 1 – 22)
    
    
11. And nature must obey necessity. (Julius Caesar 4:3:225)
    
    
12. And purer than the purest gold. (Ben Jonson : The Touchstone of Truth)
    
    
13. Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind. (Milton Samson 1.184)
    
    
14. Art is man added to nature. (Bacon)
    
    
15. Art lies in concealing art. (Latin Proverb)
    
    
16. As good luck would have it. (Merry Wives 3: 5: 86)
    
    
17. Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life. (Hendry Emerson Fosdick)
    
    
18. Awake, arise or be forever fallen. (Paradise Lost 1 - 330)
    
    
19. A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother. (Mark Twain)
    
    
20. Bad's the best of us. (Beaumont and Fletcher. The Bloody Brother 4-2)
    
    
21. The ballot is stronger than the bullet. (Abraham Lincoln)
    
    
22. Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease. (Dryden : Absalom 168)
    
    
23. A barren superfluity of words. (Sir Samuel Garth)
    
    
24. Beauty’s sweet but beauty’s frail. (Thomas Carew)
    
    
25. The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merry man. (Swift : Polite Conversation)
    
    
26. The best is yet to be. (Browning)
    
    
27. Better than the best. (Paradise Lost 1 - 262)
    
    
28. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. (Paradise Lost 1-262)
    
    
29. Brief is life but love is long. (Tennyson)
    
    
30. The busy candidates for power and fame. (Dr. Johnson)
    
    
31. Care - charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, Brother to death. (Beaumont and Fletcher)
    
    
32. The child is father of the man. (Wordsworth)
    
    
33. To choose time is to save time. (Bacon Essays)
    
    
34. Cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity. (Chesterfield)
    
    
35. Danger comes in silence and in secret. (Isaac Pocock)
    
    
36. Dark with excessive bright. (Paradise Lost : 3 – 380)
    
    
37. A day is miniature eternity. (Emerson: Journals)
    
    
38. Death be not proud, though some have called thee. (Donne)
    
    
39. Death hath so many doors to let out life. (Beaumont and Fletcher)
    
    
40. The custom of the country. (2-2)
    
    
41. Deeds, not words shall speak me. (Beanmont and Fletcher : The Lover's Progress 3-6)
    
    
42. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? (Hamlet 3-2-393)
    
    
43. Earth laughs in flowers. (Emerson)
    
    
44. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. (Pope)
    
    
45. Even God can not change the past. (Agathon)
    
    
46. Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor. (Goethe)
    
    
47. Excessive scruple is only hidden pride. (Goethe)
    
    
48. Faint heart wins not lady fair. (William James Linton)
    
    
49. The fairest things have the fleetest end. (F. Thomson)
    
    
50. Faith is love taking the form of aspiration. (William Ellery Channing)
    
    
51. Fame is food that dead men eat. (A. Dopson)
    
    
52. A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. (Winston Churchill)
    
    
53. Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more. (Tennyson)
    
    
54. The fault's not in the object, but their eyes. (Ben Jonson in Authorem)
    
    
55. And feel that I am happier than I Know. (Paradise Lost 8-282)
    
    
56. For every why, he had a wherefore. (Samuel Butler)
    
    
57. For her own person, It beggar'd all description. (Antony and Cleopatra : 2-2-199)
    
    
58. For love is lust and life is a dream of death. (James Elroy Flecker)
    
    
59. For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. (Tennyson. The Brook. St. 6)
    
    
60. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time. (Hamlet 3:1:70)
    
    
61. Friends are born, not made. (Hendry Brooks Adams)
    
    
62. From softness only softness comes. (Marcus Curtius)
    
    
63. Give it an understanding, but no tongue. (Hamlet 1: 2: 249)
    
    
64. God became man, that men might become God. (St. Augustine)
    
    
65. A good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured upon purpose to a life beyond life. (Milton : Aeropagitica)
    
    
66. A good face is a letter of recommendation. (Joseph Addison)
    
    
67. Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source of human offspring. (Paradise Lost 4-750)
    
    
68. Happiness is the shadow of thing past. (Paradise Lost 4-299)
    
    
69. He for God only. She for God in him. (Paradise Lost 4-299)
    
    
70. He was not of an age, but for all time. (Ben Jonson)
    
    
71. He wears the rose of youth upon him. (Antony & Cleopatra 3 : 11 : 20)
    
    
72. He, who will not when he may, may not when he will. (John of Salisbury)
    
    
73. Heaven lies about us in our infancy. (Wordsworth)
    
    
74. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. (Keats)
    
    
75. Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage. (Thomas Nashe)
    
    
76. A heaven on earth. (Paradise Lost 4-208)
    
    
77. The heart is not a clock, it will not wind again. (Sacheverell Sitwell)
    
    
78. Hector is dead. There is no more to say. (Troilus & Cressida 5-10-22)
    
    
79. Hills whose heads touch heaven. (Othello 1 : 3: 141)
    
    
80. Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. (Paradise Lost 5-165)
    
    
81. His time is forever, everywhere his place. (Abraham Cowley)
    
    
82. An honest man's the noble work of God.
    
    
83. Honest labour bears a lovely face. (Thomas Dekker)
    
    
84. How noiseless falls the foot of time. (W. R. Spencer)
    
    
85. Hypocrisy in the homage that vice offers to virtue. (La Rochefaocauld)
    
    
86. I am not in the roll of common men. (Henry IV PTI 3 : 1 : 43)
    
    
87. I am that I am. (Exodus 3: 14)
    
    
88. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. (William Ernest Henley)
    
    
89. I can resist everything except temptation. (Oscar Wilde)
    
    
90. I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence. (Disraeli)
    
    
91. I have immortal longings in me. (Antony & Cleopatra 5 : 2 : 282)
    
    
92. I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness. (Henry VIII 3 : 2: 224)
    
    
93. I love not Man the less, but Nature more. (Byron : Childe Harold)
    
    
94. I shall temper so justice with mercy. (Paradise Lost 9 – 77)
    
    
95. I want what I want when I want it. (Henry Blossom)
    
    
96. I was in the middle of the stream and must sink or swim. (Hazlitt)
    
    
97. I would be married to a single life. (Richard Crashaw)
    
    
98. Ice and iron can be welded. (R. L. Stevenson)
    
    
99. If summer come not, how can winter go? (Richard Crashaw)
    
    
100. If the worst comes to the worst.
     
     
101. It is better to be Socrates in prison than Caliban on the throne. (Wil Durant)
     
     
102. Tis hard to part when friends are dear. (Anna Letitia Barbauld)
     
     
103. The inaudible and noiseless foot of time. (All's well 5: 3: 41)
     
     
104. Language is the dress of thought. (Dr. Johnson)
     
     
105. Large was his health, but larger was his heart. (Dryden : Absalom 1.826)
     
     
106. The law allows it and the court awards it. (Merchant of Venice 4 : 1 : 303)
     
     
107. Law is the bottomless pit. (John Arbuthnot)
     
     
108. Laws grind the poor and rich men rule the law. (Goldsmith)
     
     
109. Let bus do or die. (Robert Burns)
     
     
110. Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!
     
     
111. Liquid lapse of murmuring streams. (Paradise Lost : 8 – 263)
     
     
112. A Little learning is dangerous thing. (Pope)
     
     
113. Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. (Venus and Adonis 1-799)
     
     
114. Love has found out a way to Live by Dying. (John Dryden)
     
     
115. Love is love’s reward. (John Dryden)
     
     
116. Love’s the noblest frailty of the mankind. (John Dryden)
     
     
117. Love is the perfect sum of all delight. (Tobias Hume)
     
     
118. Love makes all things equal. (Shelley)
     
     
119. Love will find out the way.
     
     
120. Make temples of my hears to God we must. (Lord Brooke)
     
     
121. Man delights not me, no not women neither. (Hamlet 2: 2: 328)
     
     
122. A man is good in ruin. (Emerson)
     
     
123. Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman. (Nietzsche)
     
     
124. Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. (G K. Chesterton)
     
     
125. Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to.
     
     
126. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. (Johnson)
     
     
127. May you live all the days of your life? (Swift)
     
     
128. A maxim consists of a minimum of sound and a maximum of sense. (Mark Twain)
     
     
129. Memory, the warder of the brain. (Macheth 1 : 7: 65)
     
     
130. Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that's all. (Tristan Bernard)
     
     
131. A mind content both crown and kingdom is. (Robert Greene)
     
     
132. The moan of doves in immemorial elms.
     
     
133. And murmuring of innumerable bees. (Tennyson)
     
     
134. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. (Somerset Maugham)
     
     
135. Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand. (Aphra Sehn)
     
     
136. A moon, the eye of light, the star of wars. (Aeschylus)
     
     
137. More honor's in the breath than the observance. (Hamlet 1 : 4 : 14)
     
     
138. Much might be said on both sides. (Joseph Addison)
     
     
139. A multitude of people, yet a solitude. (Dickens)
     
     
140. O! My offence is rank. It sells to heaven. (Hamlet 3 : 3 : 36)
     
     
141. Nature is the art of God Eternal. (Dante)
     
     
142. Never complain and never explain. (Disraeli)
     
     
143. None but the brave deserves the fair. (J. Dryden)
     
     
144. Now join your hands and with your hands your hearts. (Henry IV pt 3. 4 : 6: 39)
     
     
145. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps the end of the beginning. (Winston Churchill)
     
     
146. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. (Troilus & Cressida 3 : 3 : 171)
     
     
147. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (F D. Roosevelt)
     
     
148. An ornament to her profession. (John Bunyan)
     
     
149. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. (Wordsworth)
     
     
150. The path of duty was the way to glory. (Tennyson)
     
     
151. The pit of hell is as deep as despair. (Abbot William)
     
     
152. A place for everything and everything in its place.
     
     
153. Plain living and high thinking. (Wordsworth)
     
     
154. Pleasure is deaf when told of future pain. (Cowper)
     
     
155. Poetry is criticism of life. (M. Arnold)
     
     
156. A politician …. one that would circumvent God. (Hamlet 5: 1 : 84)
     
     
157. Politicians have no politics. (G.K.Chesterton)
     
     
158. Prayer is conversation with God.
     
     
159. Pride will spit in pride's face. (Thomas Fuller)
     
     
160. Progress is not mere movement, but it is improvement. (L. S. N. Sarma)
     
     
161. Promise made is a debt unpaid. (Robert William Service)
     
     
162. Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. (Publius Syrus)
     
     
163. The quite mind is richer than crown. (Robert Greeny)
     
     
164. The remedy is worse than the disease. (Bacon)
     
     
165. The river glideth at his own sweet will. (Wordsworth)
     
     
166. In a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite. (Sri Aurobindo)
     
     
167. Sadder than sorrow : sweeter than delight. (C. Patmore)
     
     
168. See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds. (Paradise Lost 3-337)
     
     
169. She was perfect past all parallel. (Bayron)
     
     
170. The shirt of Nessus is upon me. (Antony & Cleopatra 4 : 10 : 56)
     
     
171. The shortest answer is doing. (Lord Herbert)
     
     
172. The silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills. (Wordsworth)
     
     
173. Sing away sorrow. Cast away care. (Cervantes)
     
     
174. A soft embalmer of the still midnight. (John Keats : To Sleep)
     
     
175. Some folks are wise and some are otherwise. (Smollet, Tobies)
     
     
176. Some people are more nice than wise. (Cowper)
     
     
177. Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. (Max Muller)
     
     
178. Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips. (Othello 4 : 2 : 49)
     
     
179. (Lucy Gray) The sweetest thing that ever grew beside a human door. (Wordsworth)
     
     
180. The sweets of love are mixed with tears. (Robert Herrick)
     
     
181. The sum of earthly bliss. (Paradise Lost 8-522)
     
     
182. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds. (Burke)
     
     
183. Suspense in news is a torture. (Milton Samson 1 – 1569)
     
     
184. There is a divinity that shapes our end. (Shakespeare)
     
     
185. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. (Hamlet 5-2-232)
     
     
186. There is danger in delay. (Giles Fletcher)
     
     
187. There is nothing either good or bad. But thinking makes it so. (Hamlet 2 – 2 -259)
     
     
188. There is nothing great or small. (E. B. Browning)
     
     
189. This only I know that I know not the things which I cannot know. (St. Ambrose)
     
     
190. This was the most unkindest cut of all. (Julius Caesar 3: 2: 188)
     
     
191. Those thoughts that wander through eternity. (Paradise Lost 2-147)
     
     
192. Thou wander'st in the labyrinth of life. (Dryden)
     
     
193. Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friend. (Pope)
     
     
194. Thou life is short, let us not make it so. (Ben Jonson)
     
     
195. Thoughts that breathe and words that burn. (Gray)
     
     
196. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. (Hamlet 3 : 1 : 83)
     
     
197. Time alone doth change and last. (John Ford)
     
     
198. Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.
     
     
199. Time will not be ours for ever. (Ben Jonson)
     
     
200. Time, the subtle thief of youth. (Milton : Sonnets : 7)
     
     
201. The timely dew of sleep. (Paradise Lost)
     
     
202. Times change and we change with them.
     
     
203. To be or not to be : that is the question. (Hamlet 3 : 1 : 56)
     
     
204. To take arms against a sea of trouble. (Hamlet 3 : 1 : 56)
     
     
205. In trouble to be troubl’d.
     
     
206. Is to have your trouble doubl’ d. (Daniel Defoe)
     
     
207. Too greatness a greatness greatness does confound. (Barten Hobyday)
     
     
208. The Unknown are better than ill known. (Abraham Cowley)
     
     
209. Usually we praise only to be praised. (La Rochefoucauld)
     
     
210. The vagabond, when rich, is called a tourist. (Paul Richard)
     
     
211. Variety is the soul of pleasure. (Aphra Benn)
     
     
212. Victory smiles on those who dare. (William James Linton)
     
     
213. Voyaging thro' strange seas of thought, Alone. (Wordsworth)
     
     
214. Warbling murmurs of brook. (Lord Herbert)
     
     
215. We only part to meet again. (John Gay)
     
     
216. We refuse praise from a desire to be praised twice. (La Rochefoucauld)
     
     
217. We that live to please must please to live. (Johnson)
     
     
218. What a piece of work is man! (Hamlet)
     
     
219. What is this life, if full of care. We have no time to stand and stare. (W. H. Davies)
     
     
220. When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody. (William Schwenck Gilbert)
     
     
221. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. (Hamlet 3 : 1 : 67)
     
     
222. Whoever lives true life, will love true love. (E. B. Browning)
     
     
223. A wilderness of Sweets. (Paradise Lost 5 : 294)
     
     
224. Wisdom married to immortal verse. (Wordsworth)
     
     
225. Woe came with war and want with woe. (W. Scott)
     
     
226. The world is changed with the grandeur of God. (G. M. Hopkins)
     
     
227. The world is too much with us. (Wordsworth)
     
     
228. The world's a prison, no man can get out. (Berten)
     
     
229. The word Alms has no singular, as if to teach us that a solitary act of charity scarcely deserves the name.
     
     
230. Words are but empty thanks. (Colley Cibber)
     
     
231. You shall be more beloving than belov'd. (Antony & Cleopatra 1 : 2 : 24)
     
     
232. You shall be yet for fairer than you are. (Antony & Cleopatra 1 : 2 : 18)