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Suspicion is a sense of mistrust in which a person doubts a proposition, including those regarding the claims or honesty of others, or believes others to be guilty of some type of wrongdoing or crimes without sure proof. Suspicions of error or evil can often be easily aroused in response to objects, ideas or circumstances that differ from expectations.
- Quoth Sidrophel, If you suppose,
Sir Knight, that I am one of those,
I might suspect, and take th' alarm,
Your bus'ness is but to inform;
But if it be, 'tis ne'er the near,
You have a wrong sow by the ear.- Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto III, line 575.
- Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955), Section 184.
- All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 568.
- O you who believe! Avoid many suspicions, for indeed, some suspicions are sinful. And do not spy, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of their dead brother? You would despise that! And fear God. Surely, God is the Accepter of Repentance, Most Merciful.
- Quran 49:12
- A person does not incur suspicion unless he has done the thing; and if he has not done it wholly he has done it partly; and if he has not done it partly, he has a mind to do it; and if he has not had a mind to do it, he has seen others doing it and enjoyed
- Rabbi Reuben ben Estrobile, Talmud, tractate Mo'ed Katan 18b
- All is not well;
I doubt some foul play.- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 2, line 255.
- Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act V, scene 6, line 11.
- Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius.- William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 2, line 198.
- Narrator: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices...to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is...that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone.
- The Twilight Zone, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street written by Rod Serling
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 771-72.
- Multorum te etiam oculi et aures non sentientem, sicuti adhuc fecerunt, speculabuntur atque custodient.
- Cautus enim metuit foveam lupus, accipiterque
Suspectos laqueos, et opertum milvius hamum.
- Argwohnen folgt auf Misstrauen.
- Suspicion follows close on mistrust.
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise, V. 8.
- Que diable alloit-il faire dans cette galère?
- What the devil was he doing in this galley?
- Molière, Fourberies de Scapin, Act II, 11. Cyrano de Bergerac, Pédant Joué, Act II, scene 4.
- Julius Cæsar divorced his wife Pompeia, but declared at the trial that he knew nothing of what was alleged against her and Clodius. When asked why, in that case, he had divorced her, he replied: "Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion."
- As to Cæsar, when he was called upon, he gave no testimony against Clodius, nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said, "He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Cæsar ought not only to be clear of such a crime, but of the very suspicion of it."
- Plutarch, Life of Cicero.
- Les soupçons importuns
Sont d'un second hymen les fruits les plus communs.- Disagreeable suspicions are usually the fruits of a second marriage.
- Jean Racine, Phèdre, II. 5.
- Ad tristem partem strenua est suspicio.
- The losing side is full of suspicion.
- Syrus, Maxims.
- Omnes quibus res sunt minus secundæ magis sunt, nescio quomodo,
Suspiciosi; ad contumeliam omnia accipiunt magis;
Propter suam impotentiam se credunt negligi.- All persons as they become less prosperous, are the more suspicious. They take everything as an affront; and from their conscious weakness, presume that they are neglected.
- Terence, Adelphi, IV. 3. 14.
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