Francis Quarles Quotes

Deceit is the false road to happiness; and all the joys we travel through to vice, like fairy banquets, vanish when we touch them.

Satan would have you believe that happiness comes only as you surrender to his enticements, but one only needs to look at the shattered lives of those who violate God's laws to know why Satan is called the Father of Lies.

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss, he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.

One musts avoid that wicked temptress, Laziness.

There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression “trick of the light” applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination” .

The most dangerous and successful conspiracies take place in public, in plain sight, under the clear, bright light of day -- usually with TV cameras focused on them.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

O sin, how you paint your face! how you flatter us poor mortals on to death! You never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make fair promises, but you never fulfil one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lip!

Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace.

The lazy man claims he is too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot.

The devil's script sells you the heart of a blackbird.

I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.

The devil helps his servants for a season; but when they get into a pinch; he leaves them in the lurch.

And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.

Drink promises you everything, but gives nothing.

The idle man is the devil's cushion.

Deceiving world, that with alluring toysHast made my life the subject of thy scorn,And scornest now to lend thy fading joys,T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;How well are they that die ere they be born,And never see thy sleights, which few men shunTill unawares they helpless are undone!

Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them.

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.

When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead.

Idle minds are the devil's research-and-development department.

We've fallen for the devil's lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. However, in reality, sin robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn't make life interesting; it makes life empty. Sin doesn't create adventure; it blunts it. Sin doesn't expand life; it shrinks it. Sin's emptiness inevitably leads to boredom. When there's fulfillment, when there's beauty, when we see God as he truly is-an endless reservoir of fascination-boredom becomes impossible.