Quotes from Jeremy Taylor

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.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

The union of hands and hearts.

Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man's enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.

Curiosity is the direct incontinence of the spirit.

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.

Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counselor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds.

God hath prepared a little coronet or special reward (extraordinary and beside the great crown of all faithful souls) for those who have not defiled themselves with women.

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.

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.

Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.

No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

No sin is small.

Nothing is greater or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.

Love is friendship set on fire.

there are sicknesses that walk in darkness, and there are exterminating angels who fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature; whom we cannot see but we feel their foorce and sink under their sword.

De Waal's argument is, I believe, one of the most egregious fallacies in studies of evolution. It is to claim that, simply because we are closely related genetically, we must be closely related behaviourally.

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.

Look with great forgiveness upon the weakness of others.

Faith is the root of all blessings. Believe, and you shall be saved; believe, and your needs must be satisfied; believe, and you cannot but be comforted and happy.

Nothing is intolerable that is necessary. Now God hath bound thy trouble upon thee by His special providence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and crown thee. These cords thou canst not break, and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what He pleases.

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit.

My life is blessed; I have held my children's children.

Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.