“I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.”
Epistle to the Reader.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)
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Izaak Walton 28
English author and biographer 1593–1683Related quotes

First Treatise of Government
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Context: The imagination is always restless and suggests a variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: And when Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the Nations of the World, will find so much of the Governments, Religion, and Manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that they will have but little Reverence for the Practices which are in use and credit amongst Men.

Attributed to Marx (possibly in jest) in W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion (2003).
Misattributed

A parody of the "Give a man a fish..." proverb alluding to the subprime mortgage crisis of the aughts on The Colbert Report (14 May 2008)

Lucy's Song in The Village Coquettes (1836); later published in The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens (1903)
Context: p>Love is not a feeling to pass away,
Like the balmy breath of a summer day;
It is not — it cannot be — laid aside;
It is not a thing to forget or hide.
It clings to the heart, ah, woe is me!
As the ivy clings to the old oak tree.Love is not a passion of earthly mould,
As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold:
For when all these wishes have died away,
The deep strong love of a brighter day,
Though nourished in secret, consumes the more,
As the slow rust eats to the iron’s core.</p

“If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.”
Tales of Southern Rivers (1924).

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“And new-laid eggs, which Baucis' busy care
Turn'd by a gentle fire and roasted rare.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book viii. Baucis and Philemon, Line 97.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 35.