“Many are idly busy; Domitian was busy, but then it was in catching flies.”
“The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.”
“If thou has a bundle of thorns in thy lot, there is no need to sit down on it.”
“Friendship is the strongest bond in the world.”
“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.”
Source: The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings
“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.”
“...Learn to give thanks for everything.”
“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.”
Source: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying: Together with Prayers and Acts of Virtue, and Rules for the Visitation of the Sick, and Offices Proper for that Ministry
“It is not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.”
“An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction.”
“All dreams reflect inborn creativity and ability to face and solve life's problems.”
Source: The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life
“The greatest evils, are from within us; and from ourselves also we must look for the greatest good.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: The rule and exercises of holy living and dying
“The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.”
“The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings.”
“This temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in hell.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D. ...: With a Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings,
“Love is friendship set on fire. Hate is friendship burned.”
“Covetousness teaches people to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched.”
Source: Holy Living and Dying: Together with Prayers : Containing the Whole Duty of a Christian, and the Parts of Devotion Fitted to All Occasions and Furnished for All Necessities
“A great fear, when it is ill-managed, is the parent of superstition; but a discreet and well-guided fear produces religion.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: The rule and exercises of holy living and dying
“God fails not to sow blessings in the furrows.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: The rule and exercises of holy living and dying
“To be perpetually longing and impatiently desirous of anything, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man's liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke.”
Source: The Works of Jeremy Taylor
“Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: Sermons
“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.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: The rule and exercises of holy living and dying
“A good wife is heaven's last, best gift to man, - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety.”
“Man and wife are equally concerned, to avoid all offence of each other, in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom.”
Source: Summaries of the sermons and discourses of Sherlock and Jeremy Taylor
“Too quick a sense of constant infelicity.”
“Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue.”
Source: Summaries of the sermons and discourses of Sherlock and Jeremy Taylor
“Mercy is like the rainbow, which God hath set in the clouds; it never shines after it is night. If we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice in eternity.”
“The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.”
Source: The Whole Sermons of Jeremy Taylor ...: And, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying : with a Biographical Memoir
“Laughing, if loud, ends with a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty in the face.”
“I have seen the sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the powers of darkness, and without violence and noise, climbing up the hill, hath made night so retire that its memory was lost in the joys and sprightliness of the morning.”
“Marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments: it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is "holiness to the Lord.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore: Sermons
“So are the early unions of an unfixed Marriage: watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first Scenes, but in the succession of a long Society.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore: Sermons
“Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it; so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: Sermons
“Faith gives new light to the soul, but it does not put our eyes out; and what God hathgivenusinournature could never be intended as a snare to Religion, or engage us to believe a lie.”
“He that is choice of his time will be choice of his company, and choice of his actions.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor
“This grace (purity of intention) is so excellent that it sanctifies the most common actions of our life and yet is so necessary that without it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vicious.”
Source: The Works of Jeremy Taylor
“since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world and that is a contented spirit.”
Source: The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings
“For there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: The rule and exercises of holy living and dying
“In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.”
Source: Readings for every day in Lent
“Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: Sermons
“God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.”
Source: The House of Understanding: Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Taylor by Margaret Gest
“All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.”
Source: The Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life Described in the History of the Life and Death of the Ever Blessed Jesus Christ: The Saviour of the World
“Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles.”
Source: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying: Together with Prayers and Acts of Virtue, and Rules for the Visitation of the Sick, and Offices Proper for that Ministry
“Aquinas was once asked, with what compendium a man might become learned? He answered "By reading of one book.”
Source: The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings
“Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of drink. That I call immoderation that is besides or beyond that order of good things for which God hath given us the use of drink.”
“In matters of conscience that is the best sense which every wise man takes in before he hath sullied his understanding with the designs of sophisters and interested persons.”
Source: Ductor Dubitantium, Or, The Rule of Conscience in All Her Generall Measures: Serving as a Great Instrument for the Determination of Cases of Conscience : In Four Books
“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.”
Source: The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings
“He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.”
Source: The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings
“Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.”
Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: With an Essay, Biographical and Critical ...
“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.”
