Jeremy Taylor Quotes - Page 2

...Learn to give thanks for everything.

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

The Holy Ghost is certainly the best preacher in the world, and the words of Scripture the best sermons.

Children, honor your parents in your hearts; bear them not only awe and respect, but kindness and affection: love their persons, fear to do anything that may justly provoke them; highly esteem them as the instruments under God of your being: for Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father.

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

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness.

Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.

To secure a contented spirit, measure your desires by your fortune, and not your fortune by your desires.

Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.

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

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, - meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.

Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue.

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.

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.

The pharisees minded what God spoke, but not what He intended. They were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. So God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into His purpose; and therefore they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts.

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.

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

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Friendship is the strongest bond in the world.

God fails not to sow blessings in the furrows.

God is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.

since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world and that is a contented spirit.

Humility is like a tree, whose root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher, and spreads fairer and stands surer, and lasts longer, and every step of its descent is like a rib of iron.

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

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.