V is for VARIETY

Amidst the soft variety I'm lost.
- Joseph Addison, Letter from Italy (l. 100)

There is a variety in tempers of good men.
- Francis Atterbury

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.
- Francis Bacon



God hath varied the inclinations of men according to the variety of actions to be performed.
- Sir Thomas Browne

Nature, through all her works, in great degree,
Borrows a blessing from variety.
Music itself her needful aid requires
To rouse the soul, and wake our dying fires.
- Charles Churchill

Variety is the very spice of life.
- William Cowper



The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
- William Cowper, Task (bk. I, l. 506)

Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.
- William Cowper, Task (bk. II, l. 506)

That divine gift which makes a woman charming.
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield



Variety is the mother of enjoyment.
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

The variety of all things forms a pleasure.
- Euripides, Orestes (234)

In books and love the mind one end pursues, and only change the expiring flame renews.
- John Gay



Variety's the source of joy below,
From whence still fresh-revolving pleasures flow,
In books and love the mind one end pursues,
And only change the expiring flames renews.
- John Gay,
Epistles--To Bernard Lintot, on a Miscellany of Poems

Countless the various species of mankind,
Countless the shades which sep'rate mind from mind;
No general object of desire is known,
Each has his will, and each pursues his own.
- William Gifford, Perseus

The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")



The great source of pleasure is variety.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

All concord's born of contraries.
- Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
(act V, sc. 2)

Diversity, that is my motto.
[Fr., Diversite, c'est ma devise.]
- Jean de la Fontaine, Pate d' Anguille



There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.
- William Mason

All sorts are here that all the earth yields, variety without end.
- John Milton

God hath here varied His bounty so with new delights!
- John Milton



The most universal quality is diversity.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Even pleasure cloys without variety.
- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

Treat a thousand dispositions in a thousand ways.
[Lat., Mille animos excipe mille modis.]
- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Ars Amatoria
(bk. I, 756)



Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
- Francesco Petrarch

As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
- Pliny the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus)

That each from other differs, first confess; next that he varies from himself no less.
- Alexander Pope



The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.
- Alexander Pope

Tired of the last, and eager of the new.
- Matthew Prior

Variety alone gives joy;
The sweetest meats the soonest cloy.
- Matthew Prior, The Turtle and the Sparrow
(l. 234)



For variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.
[Ger., Weil Verschiedenheit des Nichts mehr ergotzt, als Einerleiheit des Etwas.]
- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (Johann Paul Richter) (used ps. Jean Paul),
Levana--Fragment V (I, 100)

When our old Pleasures die,
Some new One still is nigh;
Oh! fair Variety!
- Nicholas Rowe, Ode for the New Year

Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
- John Ruskin



Every change of place becomes a delight.
[Lat., Omnis mutatio loci jucunda fiet.]
- Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca), Epistles
(28)

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
- William Shakespeare

How nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects; the ill-nature of the wasp, the sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug!
- Sydney Smith



Variety is nothing else but a continued novelty.
- Bishop Robert South

Whatever is natural admits of variety.
- Madame de Stael (Baronne Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein)

The most delightful pleasures cloy without variety.
- Syrus (Publilius Syrus)



No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.
- Syrus (Publilius Syrus), Maxims

I take it to be a principal rule of life, not to be too much addicted to any one thing.
- Terence (Publius Terentius Afer)

Gods, that never change their state, vary oft their love and hate.
- Edmund Waller