lady

Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man and work like a dog.

—Simon, Caroline K(lein)   d.1993

The Red Cow was very respectable, shealways behaved like a perfect lady and she knew What was What. To her a thing was either black or whiteöthere was no question of it being grey or perhaps pink. People were good or they were badöthere was nothing in between. Dandelions were either sweet or souröthere were never any moderately nice ones.

—Travers, P(amela) L(yndon)

I'm leaning on a lamp-post at the corner of the street In case a certain little lady comes by.

—Gay, Noel pseudonym of  Richard Moxon Armitage

Come, lady, let not this appall your thoughts. Marlowe

—Marlowe, Christopher

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges'side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood.

—Marvell, Andrew

   A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes and hearts ears, bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude, and this is love. Fair lady, will you any?

—Lyly,John

For I have a song to sing,O!† It is sung to the moon By a love-lorn loon, Who fled from the mocking throng,O! It's the song of a merryman moping mum, Whose soul was sad and whose glance was glum Who sipped no sup and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she did not remember to hang on to her jewelry.

—Loos, Anita

As I was walking all alane, I heard twa corbies making a mane; The tane unto the tother say, 'Where sall we gang and dine to-day?' 'In behint yon auld fail dye, I wot there lies a new-slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair. 'His hound is to the hunting gane, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate, So we may mak our dinner sweet.'

—Ballads

Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three, And of medicos marvelling sweetly on her ills.

—Ransom,John Crowe

   I hold my lady's head like a crystal and ossify myself by gazing: I am screes on her escarpments, a chalk giant carved upon her downs. Soon my hands, on the sunken fosse of her spine move towards the passes.

—Heaney, SeamusJustin

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own; And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy, And who'doesn't think she dances, but would rather like to try'; And that singular anomaly, the lady novelistö I don't think she'd be missedöI'm sure she'd not be missed!

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

'Mindandmatter,'saidthelady inthewig,'glideswift into the vortex of immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination.'

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Lady, lady, should you meet One whose ways are all discreet, One who murmurs that his wife Is the lodestar of his life, One who keeps assuring you That he never was untrue, Never loved another one† Lady, lady, better run!

—Parker, Dorothy ne¤  e Rothschild

His harmonical and ingenious soul did lodge in a beautiful and well proportioned body. He was a spare man†. He was so fair that they called him the lady of Christ's College.

—Aubrey,John

Three years she grew in sun and shower, 924 The Nature said,'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own.'

—Wordsworth,William

Four grey walls, and four grey towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

—Tennyson

Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,'said The Lady of Shalott.

—Tennyson

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me', cried The Lady of Shalott.

—Tennyson

Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott.

—Tennyson

But Lancelot mused a little space; He said,'She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.'

—Tennyson

   'That isthe Ladye of the Lake,'seyde Merlion.'There ys a grete roche, and therein ys as fayre a paleyce as ony on erthe, and rychely besayne. And thys damesel woll come to you anone, and than speke ye fayre to hir, that she may gyff you that swerde.'

—Malory, SirThomas   d.1471

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rareörare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country?

—de la Mare,Walter

The Lady's Not for Burning.

—Fry, C(harles) B(urgess)

   Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat dangerous Dan McGrew, And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

—Service, Robert William

   It is a fact that a lady wants to be dressed exactly like everybody else but she gets pretty upset if she sees anybody else dressed exactly like her.

—Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

They sought her baith by bower and ha'; The ladie was not seen! She's o'er the Border and awa' Wi' Jock of Hazeldean.

—Scott, Sir Walter

As we have seen Modern Art does not have to be actually new; itonlyhastobe new tosomebodyötothe last lady who found out about the driftwood.

—Rosenberg, Harold

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

—Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake: Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; But every lady would be Queen for life.

—Pope, Alexander

My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow, An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast: But thirty thousand to the rest. An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For Lady you deserve this state; Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.

—Marvell, Andrew

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

He poured, to lord and lady gay, The unpremeditated lay.

—Scott, Sir Walter

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Lydia theTattooed Lady.

—Harburg, E(dgar) Y(ip)

Grannie remarked that I might have the spirit of an Australian but I had by no means the manners of a lady.

—of Bin Bin

Ballard admitted he was no hand at giving descriptions; the man was apparentlya gentleman and the womanö well, not exactlya lady, although shehad a very fine flow of language.

—Ridge,W(illiam) Pett

So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, No more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower, Of manya lady, and many a paramour: Gather therefore the rose, whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower: Gather the rose of love, whilst yet is time, Whilst loving thou mayst love'  d be with equal crime.

—Spenser, Edmund

He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the ba'; And the bonnie Earl of Murray Was the flower amang them a'. He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the glove; And the bonnie Earl of Murray, O he was the Queen's luve. O lang will his lady Look owre the castle Doune, Ere she sees the Earl of Murray Come sounding thro'the toun.

—Ballads

Breathless and bewildered like an old ladyat a busy intersection.

—Acheson, Dean Gooderham

Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady they neither of them care for.

—Halifax, George Savile, 1st Marquis of

New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic. San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one- trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle. St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

TrueThomas lay on Huntlie bank, A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e, And there he saw a ladye bright, Come riding down by the EildonTree.

—Ballads

I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.

—Shaw, George Bernard

  I get too hungry for dinner at eight. I like the theater, but never come late. I never bother with people I hate. That's why the lady is a tramp.

—Hart, Lorenz

And when a lady's in the case, You know, all other things give place.

—Gay,John

Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong.That is of a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.

—Thurber,James Grover

Tu es le Corps, Dame, et je suis ton ombre. You are the body, lady, and I am your shadow.

—Sce'  ve, Maurice