JEREMY TAYLOR

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.

Revenge... 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.

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

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

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

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

Dive on them and squash them if you must.

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

The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.

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

Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.

Love is friendship set on fire.

Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth.

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

Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.

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.

A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

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

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.

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

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