104 Jeremy Taylor Quotes

Love is friendship set on fire.

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.

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!

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.

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

The Pharisees broke Moses' tables into pieces, and, gathering up the fragments, took to themselves what part of duty they pleased, and left the rest alone.

The private and personal blessings we enjoy - the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty and integrity - deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.

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 unprejudiced 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 good wife is heaven's last, best gift to man, - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares.

Look at that beautiful butterfly, and learn from it to trust in God. One might wonder where it could live in tempestuous nights, in the whirlwind, or in the stormy day; but I have noticed it is safe and dry under the broad leaf while rivers have been flooded, and the mountain oaks torn up from their roots.

He, who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.

In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. So shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thine own candle, and then shaft thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.

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

Mercy is like the rainbow, which God hath set in the clouds; it never shines after it is night. If we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice in eternity.

Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.

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

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

Every temptation is great or small according as the man is.

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

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.

Faith is a certain image of eternity. All things are present to it - things past, and things to come; it converses with angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving song for the blessed sentence of doomsday.

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.

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.

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 occurrence, 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.

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

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

To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite.

Hasty conclusions are the mark of a fool; a wise man doubteth; a fool rageth and is confident; the novice saith, "I am sure that it is so"; the better learned answers, "Peradventure, it may be so; but, I pray thee, inquire."

Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility as the fringes are to a garment.

Do not burn false fire upon God's altar; do not pose and pretend, either to Him or to yourself, in your religious exercises; do not say more than you mean, or use exaggerated language that goes beyond the facts, when speaking to Him whose word is truth.

An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction.

Conscience in most men is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.

In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well cry ill using it we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent at death, yet it is rather the state of death than life.

Never be a judge between thy friends in any matter where both set their hearts upon the victory. If strangers or enemies be litigants, whatever side thou favorest, thou gettest a friend; but when friends are the parties thou losest one.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

The labor and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing. If it were not for labor, men could neither eat so much, nor relish so pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful, so useful, so strong, so patient, so noble, nor so untempted.

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

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.

Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come toward you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.

Nothing does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulences of present things, as to look above them and 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.

Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.

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 roundabout with sweetness and friendship; and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.

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 calamity.