A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

disease see DESPERATEdiseases must havedesperate remedies.
disgrace see POVERTY is nodisgrace, but it is a great inconvenience.
dishsee BETTER are small fish than an emptydish; REVENGE is adish that can be eaten col.
dismount see he who RIDES a tiger is afraid to dismount.
dispose see MAN proposes, God disposes.
DISTANCE lends enchantment to the view

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  1799 T. CAMPBELL Pleasure of Hope I. 3 Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?—‘Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. 1827 T. HOOD Poems (1906) 78 What black Mont Blancs arose, Crested with soot and not with snows. ..I fear the distance did not ‘lend enchantment to the view’. 1901 C. FITCH Captain Jinks II. 118 ‘I wish you’d taike me hout of the second row and put me in the front.’.. ‘You forget the old adage,.. “Distance lends enchantment.” ‘1974 T. SHARPE Porterhouse Blue xviii. As ever with Lady Mary’s affections, distance lent enchantment to the view, and.. she was herself the intimate patroness of this idol of the media. ■ absence
  

ditch see when the BLIND lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
DIVIDE and rule
Government is more easily maintained if factions are set against each other, and not allowed to unite against the ruler. A common maxim (in Latin divide et impera, in German entzwei und gebiete), it should not (pace quot. 1732) be laid at the door of the Italian political philosopher Niccold Machiavelli (1469-1527), who in fact denounced this principle. Cf. 1588 tr. M. Hurault’s Discourse upon Present State of France 44 It hath been alwaies her [Catherine de Medici’s] cus-tome, to set in France, one against an other, that in the meane while shee might rule in these diuisions.

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