Promises

Promises are commitments by someone to do or not do something. In the law of contract, an exchange of promises is usually held to be legally enforceable, according to the Latin maxim pacta sunt servanda.

Sourced

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 636.

• Promise is most given when the least is said.
  • George Chapman, translation of Musœus, Hero and Leander, line 234.

• Promettre c'est donner, espérer c'est jouir.
  • To promise is to give, to hope is to enjoy.
  • Jacques Delille, Jardins, I.

• You never bade me hope, 'tis true;
  I asked you not to swear:
  But I looked in those eyes of blue,
  And read a promise there.
  • Gerald Griffin, You Never Bade Me Hope.

• We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims. No. 39.

• Giants in
  Their promises, but those obtained, weak pigmies
  In their performance.
  • Philip Massinger, Great Duke, Act II, scene 3.

• Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens
  That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, Act I, scene 6, line 6.

• His promises were, as he then was, mighty;
  But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (1613), Act IV, scene 2, line 41.

• And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,
  That palter with us in a double sense:
  That keep the word of promise to our ear,
  And break it to our hope.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act V, scene 8, line 19.

• There buds the promise of celestial worth.
  • Edward Young, The Last Day, Book III, line 317.