UMBRELLA
We bear our shades about us; self-deprived
Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread,
And range an Indian waste without a tree.
Of doues I haue a dainty paire
Which, when you please to take the aier,
About your head shall gently houer,
Your cleere browe from the sunne to couer,
And with their nimble wings shall fan you
That neither cold nor heate shall tan you,
And like umbrellas, with their feathers
Sheeld you in all sorts of weathers.
Michael Drayton—Davis.
Good housewives all the winter's rage despise,
Defended by the riding-hood's .disguise;
Or, underneath the umbrella's oily shade,
Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread,
Let Persian dames the umbrella's ribs display,
To guard their beauties from the sunny ray;
Or sweating slaves support the shady load,
When eastern monarchs show their state abroad;
Britain in winter only knows its aid,
To guard from chilling showers the walking maid.
Gay—Trivia. Bk. I. L. 209.
When my water-proof umbrella proved a sieve,
sieve, sieve,
When my shiny new umbrella proved a sieve.
Rossiter Johnson—A Rhyme of the Rain.
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{{Hoyt quote
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| text = The inseparable gold umbrella which in that
country [Burma] as much denotes the grandee
as the star or garter does in England.
J. W. Palmer—Up and Down the Irrawadde.
See, here's a shadow found; the human nature
Is made th' umbrella to the Deity,
To catch the sunbeams of thy just Creator;
Beneath this covert thou may'st safely he.
Quarles—Emblems. Bk. IV. 14.
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that
is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella
has become the acknowledged index of social
position. . . . Crusoe was rather a moralist
than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an
example of the civilized mind striving to express
itself under adverse circumstances as we have
ever met with.
Stevenson—Philosophy of Umbrellas. Written in collaboration with J. W. Ferrier.
It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella
has become the very foremost badge of modern
civilization—the Unm and Thummim of respectability. ... So strongly do we feel on this
point, indeed, that we are almost inclined to
consider all who possess really well-conditioned
umbrellas as worthy of the Franchise.
Stevenson—Philosophy of Umbrellas.
Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the individual who carries them.
. . . May it not be said of the bearers of
these inappropriate umbrellas, that they go
about the streets "with a lie in their right
hand?" . . . Except in a very few cases of
hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men,
not by nature, umbrellarians, have tried again
and again to become so by art, and yet have
failed—have expended their patrimony in the
purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet
have systematically lost them, and have finally,
with contrite spirits and shrunken purses, given
up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and
borrowing for the remainder of their lives.
Stevenson—Philosophy of Umbrellas.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty
strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's
sides.
Swift—Description of a City Shower.
UNBELIEF
The fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself.
Carlyle—Sartor Resartus. The Everlasting
No. Bk. II. Ch. VII.
There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It
is the truth shining from behind that gives the
strength to disbelieve.
George Macdonaid—The Marquis of Lossie.
Ch. XLII.
Unbelief is blind.
| author = Milton
| work = Comus. L. 519.
u
I'm from Missouri; you must show me.
Col. Willard D. Vandiver. See Literary
Digest, Jan. 28, 1922. P. 42, where origh is discussed at length.
UNCERTAINTY
Quis scit, an adjiciant hodieroae crastina summsp
Tempora di superi?
Who knows whether the gods will add tomorrow to the present hour?
Horace—€armina. IV. 7. 17.
Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo:
Et subito casu, quae valuere, ruunt.
All human things hang on a slender thread:
the strongest fall with a sudden crash.
Ovid—EpistoUe Ex Ponto. IV. 3. 35.
Nothing is but what is not.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 141.
is This
I ever held worse than all certitude,
To know not what the worst ahead might be.
Swinburne—Marino Faliero. Act V.
Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento hue
illuc impellitur.
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty
the smallest impulse directs it to either side.
Terence—Andria. I. 5. 32.
