Quotes from Jeremy Taylor

This temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in hell.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

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.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands, and there is no knowledge that is not power.

Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.

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

A wise man shall overrule his stars, and have a greater influence upon his own content than all the constellations and planets of the firmament.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

No man ever repented that he arose from the table sober, healthful, and with his wits about him.

Too quick a sense of constant infelicity.

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

Every schoolboy knows it.

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.

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.

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

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

To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him.