Joseph Hall Quotes - Page 4

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced.

A man's opinion is in others; his being is in himself.

Nothing doth so fool a man as extreme passion. This doth make them fools which otherwise are not, and show them to be fools which are so.

The idle man is the devil's cushion.

I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together.

...Covetousness, looking more at what we would have than at what we have.

Those that dare lose a day, ate dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, are desperate.

Virtues go ever in troops; they go so thick, that sometimes some are hid in the crowd; which yet are, but appear not.

And, if I were so low that I accounted myself the worst of all, yet some would account themselves in worse case.

Mark in what order: first, our calling; then, our election; not beginning with our election first. By our calling, arguing our election.

I account this body nothing but a close prison to my soul; and the earth a larger prison to my body. I may not break prison till I be loosed by death; but I will leave it, not unwillingly,when I am loosed.

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.

God loves to see his creatures happy; our lawful delight is His; they know not God that think to please Him with making themselves miserable. The idolaters thought it a fit service for Baal to cut and lance themselves; never any holy man looked for thanks from the true God by wronging himself.

Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite.

I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist

That which the French proverb hath of sickness is true of all evils, that they come on horseback, and go away on foot; we have often seen a sudden fall or one meal's surfeit hath stuck by many to their graves; whereas pleasures come like oxen, slow, and heavily, and go away like post-horses, upon the spur.

This field is so spacious that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it; and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end than my way.