Source: Platero and I (1917), Ch. 2 : White Butterflies, as translated by Eloïse Roach (1957).
Context: The man wants to stick his iron pick in the little basket, and I do not prevent him. I open the knapsack, and he sees nothing in it. And the food for the soul passes, candid and free, without paying tribute to the customs.
“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”
“Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.”
St. 20
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)
“The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.”
"The Vietnam Fallout," speech to the Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Association, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City (April 28, 1966), in Senator Fulbright: Portrait of a Public Philosopher (1966)
“We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.”
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird
“Partisanship may be King in Washington – but the rest of us don’t have to pay tribute.”
http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/public_health/mayor_bloomberg_delivers_opening_address_at_ceasefire_bridging_the_political_divide_conference
Partisanship
“This is a day of great events. We can pay tribute to our State President and to our Republic.”
Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux
Context: The pass-word now is lost
To that initiation full and free;
Daily we pay the cost
Of our slow schooling for divine degree.
We know no means to feed an undying lamp;
Our lights go out in every wind or damp.
