The ablest wits and aptest wills hath given.
Sylvester, Du Bartas; Seventh Day of the First Week.
Neither did he this for want of better instructions, having had the learnedest and wisest man reputed of all Britain, the instituter of his youth.—Milton, History of England, b. iii.
A Short Catechism for the institution of young persons in the Christian Religion.—Title of a Treatise by Jeremy Taylor.
| Intend, | } |
| Intention. |
The inveterate habit of procrastination has brought us to say now that we ‘intend’ a thing, when we mean hereafter to do it. Our fathers with a more accurate use of the word ‘intended’ that which they were at that moment actually and earnestly engaged in doing. The same habit of procrastination has made ‘by-and-bye’ mean not straightway, but at a comparatively remote period; and ‘presently’ not at this present, but in a little while. ‘Intention’ too, or ‘intension,’ for Jeremy Taylor in the same work spells the word both ways, was once something not future but present.
The Devil sleepeth not. He ever intendeth to withdraw us from prayer.—Latimer, Sermons, vol. i. p. 342.
So often as he [Augustus] was at them [the games], he did nothing else but intend the same.—Holland, Suetonius, p. 60.
He [Lord Bacon] saw plainly that natural philosophy hath been intended by few persons, and in them hath occupied the least part of their time.—Bacon, Filum Labyrinthi, 6.
It is so plain that every man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon.—Id., Essays, 29.