Jeremy Collier Quotes - Page 2

Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.

Envy is of all others the most ungratifying and disconsolate passion. There is power for ambition, pleasure for luxury, and pelf even for covetousness; but envy gets no reward but vexation.

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

Confidence, as opposed, to modesty and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, and is occasioned by ignorance and flattery.

Not that the moderns are born with more wit than their predecessors, but, finding the world better furnished at their coming into it, they have more leisure for new thoughts, more light to direct them, and more hints to work upon.

Emulation is a handsome passion; it is enterprising, but just withal. It keeps a man within the terms of honor, and makes the contest for glory just and generous. He strives to excel, but it is by raising himself, not by depressing others.

Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.

I would not despair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was passed; saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by neces-sity.

Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according to the predominancy of the element.

Remorse of conscience is like an old wound; a man is in no condition to fight under such circumstances. The pain abates his vigor and takes up too much of his attention.

Dependence goes somewhat against the grain of a generous mind; and it is no wonder that it should do so, considering the unreasonable advantage which is often taken of the inequality of fortune.

Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

True courage is the result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable. Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and of religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with the ages past; and this way of running up beyond one's nativity is better than Plato's pre-existence.

A man by tumbling his thoughts, and forming them into expressions, gives them a new fermentation, which works them into a finer body.

Goodness is generous and diffusive; it is largeness of mind, and sweetness of temper,--balsam in the blood, and justice sublimated to a richer spirit.

What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?

It is a difficult task to talk to the purpose, and to put life and perspicuity into our discourse.

Modesty was designed by Providence as a guard to virtue, and that it might be always at hand it is wrought into the mechanism of the body. It is likewise proportioned to the occasions of life, and strongest in youth when passion is so too.

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.

Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.

What sun is there within us that shoots his rays with so sudden a vigor? To see the soul flash in the face at this rate one would think would convert an atheist. By the way, we may observe that smiles are much more becoming than frowns. This seems a natural encouragement to good-humor; as much as to say, if people have a mind to be handsome, they must not be peevish and untoward.