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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Jeremy Taylor

A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night.

A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained, and, indeed, never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.

A good wife is heaven’s last gift to man; his angel and minister of graces innumerable; his gem of many virtues; his casket of jewels; her voice his sweet music; her smiles his brightest day; her kiss the guardian of his innocence; her arms the pale of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life; her industry, his surest wealth; her economy, his safest steward; her lips, his faithful counselors; her bosom, the softest pillow of his cares; and her prayers, the ablest advocates of heaven’s blessings on his head.

A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.

A pure and simple revenge does in no way restore man towards the felicity which the injury did interrupt; for revenge is but doing a simple evil, and does not, in its formality, imply reparation.

A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and self-denial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish pleasure of unchastity.

A slight answer to an intricate and useless question, is a fit cover to such a dish,—a cabbage-leaf is good enough to cover a dish of mushrooms.

A true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest of trials.

A wise man shall overrule his stars, and have a greater influence upon his own content than all the constellations and planets of the firmament.

Abstain from dissolute laughter, uncomely jests, loud talking, and jeering.

All is well as long as the sun shines and the fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own purpose; but if you will try the excellency and feel the work of faith, place the man in a persecution.

All the ends of human felicity are secured without revenge, for without it we are permitted to restore ourselves; and therefore it is against natural reason to do an evil that no way co-operates the proper and perfective end of human nature. And he is a miserable person, whose good is the evil of his neighbor; and he that revenges in many cases does worse than he that did the injury; in all cases as bad.

All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the valley of humility.

Amongst true friends there is no fear of losing anything.

An heiress, remaining unmarried, is a prey to all manner of extortion and imposition, and with the best intentions, becomes—through a bounty—a corruption to her neighborhood and a curse to the poor; or, if experience shall put her on her guard, she will lead a life of suspicion and resistance, to the injury of her own mind and nature.

Anger is like the waves of a troubled sea; when it is corrected with a soft reply, as with a little strand, it retires, and leaves nothing behind but froth and shells,—no permanent mischief.

Be not confident and affirmative.

Children, honor your parents in your hearts; bear them not only awe and respect, but kindness and affection: love their persons, fear to do anything that may justly provoke them; highly esteem them as the instruments under God of your being: for “Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father.”

Conscience is a clock which, in one man, strikes aloud and gives warning; in another, the hand points silently to the figure, but strikes not. Meantime, hours pass away, and death hastens, and after death comes judgment.

Covetousness swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes.

Covetousness teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched.

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit. Knock therefore at the door before you enter upon your neighbor’s privacy; and remember that there is no difference between entering into his house and looking into it.

Death hath no advantage but where it comes a stranger.

Enjoy the blessings of the day if God sends them; and the evils bear patiently and sweetly. For this day only is ours; we are dead to yesterday, and we are not born to to-morrow.

Every degree of recession from the state of grace Christ first put us in is a recession from our hopes.

Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy; a friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety, but he swells my joy and makes it double.

Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory.

For no chance is evil to him who is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it is unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death. No pleasure or pain, to hope or fear; command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings.

For spiritual blessings, let our prayers be importunate, perpetual and persevering; for temporal blessings, let them be general, short, conditional and modest.

For the death of the righteous is like the descending of ripe and wholesome fruits from a pleasant and florid tree. Our senses entire, our limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures; after provision made for our children, with a blessing entailed upon posterity, in the presence of our friends, out dearest relatives closing our eyes and binding our feet, leaving a good name behind us.

Friendship is the alloy of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we meditate. And although I love my friend because he is worthy, yet he is not worthy if he can do no good.

Friendship is the greatest honesty and ingenuity in the world.

From David learn to give thanks in everything. Every furrow in the book of Psalms is sown with seeds of thanksgiving.

From the violence and rule of passion, from a servile will, and a commanding lust, from pride and vanity, from false opinion and ignorant confidence; from improvidence and prodigality, from envy and the spirit of slander; from sensuality, from presumption and from despair; from a state of temptation and a hardened spirit; from delaying of repentance and persevering in sin; from unthankfulness and irreligion, and from seducing others; from all infatuation of soul, folly and madness; from willfulness, self-love and vain ambition; from a vicious life and an unprovided death, good Lord, deliver us.

Give thy friend counsel wisely and charitably, but leave him to his liberty whether he will follow thee or no; and be not angry if thy counsel be rejected, for advice is no empire, and he is not my friend that will be my judge whether I will or no.

God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.

God is pleased with no music below so much as the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the tongue.

Habits are the daughters of action; but they nurse their mothers, and give birth to daughters after her image, more lovely and prosperous.

He that boasts of his ancestors, the founders and raisers of a family, doth confess that he hath less virtue.

He that does as well in private between God and his own soul as in public hath given himself a testimony that his purposes are full of honesty, nobleness, and integrity.

He that doth a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea’s hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia’s sparrow; and because he loves it he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort whilst he is encircled with blessings.

He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be exalted above his neighbors because he hath more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine!

He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain no man serves God with a good conscience who serves Him against his reason.

He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever.

He that would die well must always look for death, every day knocking at the gates of the grave; and then the grave shall never prevail against him to do him mischief.

He walks in the presence of God that converses with Him in frequent prayer and communion; that runs to Him with all his necessities, that asks counsel of Him in all his doubtings, that opens all his wants to Him; weeps before Him for all his sins; and that asks remedy and support for all his weakness, that fears Him as a Judge, reverences Him as a Lord, and obeys Him as a Father.

He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words, and names of man’s invention, talking of essence and existence, hypostases and personalities, priority in co-equality, and unity in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head, and talk something—he knows not what; but the renewed man, that feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctification, and redemption, in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is shed abroad—this man, tho he understand nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, would seem vicious and miserable.

Hope is like the wing of an angel, soaring up to heaven, and bearing our prayers to the throne of God.

How many people there are who are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity!

Humility is like a tree, whose root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher, and spreads fairer and stands surer, and lasts longer, and every step of its descent is like a rib of iron.

I account that one of the greatest demonstrations of real friendship, that a friend can really endeavor to have his friend advanced in honor, in reputation, in the opinion of wit or learning, before himself.

I have often thought of death, and I find it the least of all evils.

If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.

If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.

If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of faith.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.

Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.

In sickness the soul begins to dress for immortality. And first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy.

In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well or ill using it we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent as death, harmless as a rose’s breath to a distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of death than life.

It conduces much to our content if we pass by those things which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous; that by the representation of the better the worse may be blotted out.

It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

It is not the eye, that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear, that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.

It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon man as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly.

It will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life.

Let no man choose him for his friend whom it shall be possible for him ever after to hate; for though the society may justly be interrupted, yet love is an immortal thing, and I will never despise him whom I could once think worthy of my love.

Let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.

Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As the snow gathers together, so are our habits formed. No single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change; no single action creates, however it may exhibit, a man’s character.

Lust is a captivity of the reason and an enraging of the passions. It hinders business and distracts counsel. It sins against the body and weakens the soul.

Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which, if thou procrastinatest, thou losest; which loss is lost forever.

Man and wife are equally concerned, to avoid all offence of each other, in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom.

Man is frail, and prone to evil.

Many are idly busy.—Domitian was busy, but then it was catching flies.

Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity; it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye,—glorious indeed in itself, but not proportioned to such an instrument.

Many believe the article of remission of sins, but they believe it without the condition of repentance or the fruits of holy life.

Many men profess to hate another, but no man owns envy, as being an enmity or displeasure for no cause but goodness or felicity.

Marriage has in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath not more ease, but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity; and those burdens are delightful.

Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.
***Marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.

Marriage is the nursery of heaven!

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; and according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.

Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.

Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellence and usefulness are its great endearments.

No friendship can excuse a sin.

No man can be provident of his time who is not prudent in the choice of his company.

No man can hinder our private addresses to God; every man can build a chapel in his breast, himself the priest, his heart the sacrifice, and the earth he treads on the altar.

No man can tell but he that loves his children how many delicious assents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges.

No man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

No sin is small. It is a sin against an infinite God, and may have consequences immeasurable. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.

Nothing does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulence of present things, as a look above them and a look beyond them,—above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled; and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought.

Nothing is a greater sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.

Nothing is intolerable that is necessary. Now God hath bound thy trouble upon thee by His special providence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and crown thee. These cords thou canst not break, and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what He pleases.

Nothing is more unreasonable than to entangle our spirits in wildness and amazement; like a partridge flattering in a net, which she breaks not, though she breaks her wings.

Nothing is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sanction.

Now when men either are unnatural or irreligious they will not be friends; when they are neither excellent nor useful, they are not worthy to be friends; when they are strangers or unknown, they cannot be friends actually and practically; but yet, as any man hath anything of the good, contrary to those evils, so he can have and must have his share of friendship.

Now, God hath bound thy troubles upon thee with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and crown thee. The cords thou canst not break; and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what He please.

Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do; so shalt thou be thy greatest friend.

Of all the authorities to which men can be called to submit, the wisdom of our ancestors is the most whimsically absurd.

Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its accusation.

On him that takes revenge revenge shall be taken, and by a real evil he shall dearly pay for the goods that are but airy and fantastical; it is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.

Parents must give good example and reverent deportment in the face of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each other—sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition—all signification of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed towards children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.

Pity and forbearance, and long-sufferance and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.

Plato said that of all things in the world we should beware of that folly by which most men please themselves and despise a better judgment.

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest: prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity and the sister of meekness.

Prayers are but the body of the bird; desires are its angel’s wings.

Pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from being felt, may prevent them from being shown.

Private devotions and secret offices of religion are like the refreshing of a garden with the distilling and petty drops of a water-pot; but addressed from the temple are like rain from heaven.

Prosperities can only be enjoyed by those who fear not at all to lose them.

Religion cannot change, though we do; and, if we do, we have left God; and whither he can go that goes from God, his own sorrows will soon enough instruct him.

Religion is no friend to laziness and stupidity, or to supine and sottish despondencies of mind.

Repentance is not like the summer fruits, fit to be taken a little and in their own time; it is like bread, the provisions and support of life, the entertainment of every day; but it is the bread of affliction to some, and the bread of carefulness to all; and he that preaches this with the greatest severity, it may be, takes the liberty of an enemy, but he gives the counsel and the assistance of a friend.

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

Secure their religion; season their younger years with prudent and pious principles.

Sermons are not like curious inquiries after new nothings, but pursuance of old truths.

She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness and the jewels of faith and charity. She must have no painting but blushings; her brightness must be purity, and she must shine round about with sweetness and friendship; and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.

She that is loved is safe.

Since we stay not here, being people but of a day’s abode, and our age is like that of a fly, and contemporary with that of a gourd, we must look somewhere else for an abiding city, a place in another country, to fix our house in, whose walls and foundation is God, where we must rest, or else be restless forever.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.

Solitude is a good school, but the world is the best theater; the institution is best there, but the practice here; the wilderness hath the advantage of discipline, and society opportunities of perfection.

Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls.

Temperance is reason’s girdle and passion’s bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue.

That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation; for many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of a great calamity.

The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter’s cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearses, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind up our graves.

The dearest thing in nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship.

The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.

The greatest talkers in the days of peace have been the most pusillanimous in the day of temptation.

The Lord’s Prayer is short, mysterious, and, like the treasures of the spirit, full of wisdom and latent sense: it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every petition, that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God.

The love of money is a vertiginous pool, sucking all in to destroy it. It is troubled and uneven, giddy and unsafe; serving no end but its own, and that also in a restless and uneasy motion.

The more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more ready we are to let in grief.

The shadow, wheresoever it passes, leaves no track behind it; and of the greatest personages of the world, when they are once dead, then there remains no more than if they had never lived. How many preceding emperors of the Assyrian monarchy were lords of the world as well as Alexander! and now we remain not only ignorant of their monuments, but know not so much as their names. And of the same great Alexander, what have we at this day except the vain noise of his fame?

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living which are to be desired when dying.

The sun is the eye of the world; and he is indifferent to the negro or the cold Russian; to them that dwell under the line, and them that stand near the tropics,—the scalded Indian, or the poor boy that shakes at the foot of the Riphean hills; so is the mercy of God.

The sun, reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in his beam.

The thing formed says that nothing formed it; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not! The folly is infinite.

The truly virtuous do not easily credit evil that is told them of their neighbors; for if others may do amiss then may these also speak amiss. Man is frail, and prone to evil, and therefore may soon fail in words.

The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty. Religion is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts, and we shall then see and perceive and understand.

There is but one way to heaven for the learned and the unlearned.

There is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of ambition; for it makes the present certainly miserable, unsatisfactory, troublesome, and discontented, for the uncertain acquisition of an honor which nothing can secure; and, besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater certainty than our life; and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool.

Think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designs to get thither.

Those great and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of grief that they presently admit a comfort and contrary affection; while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its period with expectation and the distance of a just time.

To be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain he must die, is to mourn because thy friend was not born an angel.

To be perpetually longing and impatiently desirous of anything, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man’s liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke.

To secure a contented spirit, measure your desires by your fortune, and not your fortune by your desires.

War mends but few, and spoils multitudes; it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder; and these crimes must be ministered to by their lesser relatives, by covetousness and anger and pride and revenge, and heats of blood, and wilder liberty, and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief.

We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever.

We should enjoy more peace if we did not busy ourselves with the words and deeds of other men, which appertain not to our charge.

We should reflect that whatever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded on the pavement of heaven.

We so converse every night with the image of death that every morning we find an argument of the resurrection. Sleep and death have but one mother, and they have one name in common.

We think poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?

When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness; but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I need them; but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better.

When thou receivest praise, take it indifferently, and return it to God, the giver of the gift, or blesser of the action.

When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a short method of duty and salvation only, but as a perpetual monition of duty; by what we require of God we see what He requires of us.

When you lie down close your eyes with a short prayer, committing yourself into the hands of your faithful Creator; and when you have done trust Him with yourself, as you must do when dying.

Whether confirmation be a sacrament or not, it is no use to dispute; and if it be disputed, it cannot follow that it is not of very great use and holiness.

Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.