Quotes by Jeremy Taylor

• Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth.
• He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
• Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
• 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.
• A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.
• Conscience in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.
• Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit.
• Dive on them and squash them if you must.
• God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.
• 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 loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.
• Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for 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.
• The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.
• 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.
• Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.
• Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.
• Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.
• Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.
• Love is friendship set on fire.