Great Throughts Treasury

"Men lay the blame of those evils whereof they know not the ground upon public misgovernment."

"Men once fallen away from undoubted truth do often wander forever more in vices unknown, and daily travel towards their eternal perdition."

"No man is esteemed for colorful garments except by fools and women."

"Never was man whose apprehensions are sober, and by pensive inspection advised, but hath found by an irresistible necessity one everlasting being all forever causing and all forever sustaining."

"Never add artificial heat to thy body by wine or spice until thou findest that time hath decayed thy natural heat."

"No man is esteemed for gay garments, but by fools and women."

"Men well governed should seek after no other liberty, for there can be no greater liberty than a good government."

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay."

"No one is wise or safe, but they that are honest."

"No mortal thing can bear so high a price, but that with mortal thing it may be bought."

"No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world."

"Of womenkind such indeed is the love, or the word love abused, under which many childish desires and conceits are excused."

"O! reputation, dearer far than life, thou precious balsam, lovely, sweet of smell, whose cordial drops once spilt by some rash hand, not all thy owner's care, nor the repenting toil of the rude spiller, ever can collect to its first purity and native sweetness."

"Our bodies are but the anvils of pain and disease and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares."

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!"

"Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during, glory and termless joy."

"On death and judgment, heaven and hell, who oft doth think, must needs die well."

"Power, light, virtue, wisdom, and goodness, being all but attributes of one simple essence, and of one God, we in all admire, and in part discern."

"Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude."

"Prescience or foreknowledge, considered in order and nature, if we may speak of God after the manner of men, goeth before providence; for God foreknew all things before he had created them, or before they had being to be cared for; and prescience is no other than an infallible foreknowledge."

"Passions are likened best to floods and streams, the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."

"Prevention is the daughter of intelligence."

"Remember if you marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year: and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all."

"Providence is an intellectual knowledge, both foreseeing, caring for, and ordering all things, and doth not only behold all past, all present, and all to come, but is the cause of their being so provided, which prescience is not."

"Remember the divine saying, He that keepeth his Mouth, keepeth his life."

"Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied."

"Shall I, like an hermit, dwell on a rock or in a cell?"

"Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds."

"Silence in love bewrays more woe than words, though ne?er so witty: a beggar that is dumb, you know, may challenge double pity."

"So the heart be right, it is not matter which way the head lies."

"That man which prizeth virtue for itself, and cannot endure to hoise and strike his sails as the divers natures of calms and storms require, must cut his sails of mean length and breadth, and content himself with a slow and sure navigation."

"That most divine light only shineth on those minds which are purged from all worldly dross and human uncleanness."

"Take care thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue: and because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men?s praises is most perilous. Do not, therefore, praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vainglorious fool; neither take delight in the praise of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue; they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling; it is said by Isaiah in this manner: My people, they that praise thee seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet: and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer. But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestation; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter."

"So, when affection yields discourse, it seems"

"Tell zeal it lacks devotion."

"That they are poor in that which makes a lover."

"The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish, or remain a shame to thy name."

"That which seemeth most casual and subject to fortune, is yet disposed by the ordinance of God."

"The devil is more laborious now than ever; the long day of mankind drawing towards an evening, and the world?s tragedy and time near an end."

"The bottom is but shallow whence they come."

"The bodies of men, munition, and money may justly be called the sinews of war."

"The empire being elective, and not successive, the emperors, in being, made profit of their own times."

"The exceeding umbrageousness of this tree he compareth to the dark and shadowed life of man; through which the sun of justice being not able to pierce, we have all remained in the shadow of death till it pleased Christ to climb the tree of the cross for our enlightening and redemption."

"The longer it possesseth a man the more he will delight in it, and the older he groweth the more he shall be subject to it; for it dulleth the spirits, and destroyeth the body as ivy doth the old tree, or as the worm that engendereth in the kernal of the nut."

"The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this -- the former eats when he pleases, and the latter when he can get it."

"The mind of man hath two parts: the one always frequented by the entrance of manifold varieties; the other desolate and overgrown with grass, by which enter our charitable thoughts and divine contemplations."

"The most divine light only shineth on those minds which are purged from all worldly dross and human uncleanliness."

"The practices of war are so hateful to God, that were not his mercies infinite, it were in vain for those of that profession to hope for any portion of them."

"The tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and the greatest evil that is done in the world."

"The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."