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Monoculus Miscellany:
One-Eyed Quotations
The truth appears so naked on my side
That any purblind eye may find it out.
~William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, c.1591 [II, 4, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester]
Better to have one eye than be blind altogether. ~English proverb, quoted in John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs, 1670
Let him that hath but one eye keepe it well. ~French proverb, quoted in A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, compiled by Randle Cotgrave, 1611 ["Qui n’a qu’un oeil bien le garde."
He that has but one Eye, had need look well to That. ~Proverb, restated, Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, 1732
As if the Future weren't full enough of bugbears as it is, along comes a noted eye-specialist and tells us that our eyes are growing gradually closer together, so that some time there will be just one big eye in the middle of our face...
First, there is the probability that taxes will be higher before they are lower, then that there will be another war, then that there will be more taxes to pay for that war, and then, as the last straw, that our eyes will grow closer together until they form just one big eye. What provision, if any, is the NRA making against this catastrophe?
According to Dr. Shastid, of Duluth, it will take some years for this unpleasant change to take place in the human physiognomy. "Countless ages" is the way he puts it, and that ought to let most of us out. "In distant centuries or millenaries man will be a Cyclops, a Polyphemus, a being with only one eye. That eye, however, will not be situated in the center of the forehead. It will stand instead in the center of the face. In the spot where now the bridge of the nose appears, there will stand the one great eye."
But there! We don't have to worry about all this quite yet. The main thing is not to get panicky. ~Robert Benchley, "The Drift to One Eye," From Bed to Worse, 1934
A one-eyed man, who has not a film over the eye, conceals any sort of villany. ~Spanish proverb, translated by John Collins, 1823 ["Tuerto, y no de nube, sola piel gran mal encubre." Or, "Tuerto y no de nube, no hay maldad que no encubre." Refranes o Proverbios Castellanos Traduzidos en Lengua Francesa, César Oudin, 1609
He that winketh with one eye, and seeth with the other,
I would not trust him, though he were my brother.
~English proverb, quoted in John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs, 1670
He has chang’d his one ey’d horse for a blind one. ~Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1733 ["The blind horse is hardiest." Scottish proverb
When my friends are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile. ~Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert, translated from the French by George H. Calvert, 1866
Here he went through the not very difficult process of winking upon the company with his solitary eye... ~Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836
Miff is so stingy that he looks at you with one eye, so as not to waste the other. If you ask him what time it is, he takes off four minutes as his fee for telling you. ~George V. Hobart, "The Tipping Boobs," BOOBS: As Seen by John Henry, 1914
A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye. ~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste; or, Transcendental Gastronomy, 1825
An one-eyed woman is beautiful among blind women. ~Kashmiri proverb, quoted in J. Hinton Knowles, A Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs & Sayings, 1885
It is better to enter heaven with one eye, than with two eyes to enter hell. ~Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), The Robbers, 1781, translated by Christopher Wharton Mann, 1842
Monocular-eyeglass, n. The breech; bum; arse. ~John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, Slang and its Analogues: A Dictionary of Heterodox Speech, 1890s
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published 2015 Oct 6
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