Quotes from Joseph Hall

Our body is a well-set clock, which keeps good time, but if it be too much or indiscreetly tampered with, the alarm runs out before the hour.

This field is so spacious that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it; and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end than my way.

Perfection is the child of time.

'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,O, let me lead an academic life;To know much, and to think for nothing, knowNothing to have, yet think we have enow.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

He is great enough that is his own master.

A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.

The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.

I account this body nothing but a close prison to my soul; and the earth a larger prison to my body. I may not break prison till I be loosed by death; but I will leave it, not unwillingly,when I am loosed.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

The homeliest service that we do in an honest calling, though it be but to plough or dig, if done in obedience and conscience of God's commandment, is crowned with an ample reward; whereas the best works for their kind, preaching, praying, offering evangelical sacrifices, if without respect of God's injunction and glory, are loaded with curses. God loveth adverbs; and careth not how good, but how well.

Where the father of the family brings sin home to the house, it is not easily swept out.

Happy is the man, that by an unfeigned repentance, acquits his soul from his known evils, and improves the days of his peace to the prevention of future vengeance, which if it be not done, the hand of God shall as surely overtake us in judgment, as the hand of Satan hath overtaken us in miscarriage unto sin.

I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together.

God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well.

What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!

Every day is a little life ... live every day as if it would be the last. Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it are desperate.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

A man's opinion is in others; his being is in himself.