Owen Feltham Quotes - Page 2

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man.

All men will be Peters in their bragging tongue, and most men will be Peters in their base denial; but few men will be Peters in their quick repentance.

God has made no one absolute.

There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.

Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.

Human life has not a surer friend, nor oftentimes a greater enemy, than hope. It is the miserable man's god, which in the hardest gripe of calamity never fails to yield to him beams of comfort. It is the presumptuous man's devil, which leads him a while in a smooth way, and then suddenly breaks his neck.

Take heed of a speedy professing friend; love is never lasting which flames before it burns.

Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.

Gold is the fool's curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.

Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness.

Surely, if we considered detraction to be bred of envy, nested only in deficient minds, we should find that the applauding of virtue would win us far more honor than the seeking slyly to disparage it. That would show we loved what we commended, while this tells the world we grudge at what we want in ourselves.

Truth and fidelity are the pillars of the temple of the world; when these are broken, the fabric falls, and crushes all to pieces.

It is a most unhappy state to be at a distance with God: man needs no greater infelicity than to be left to himself.

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.

Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer--it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend.

If ever I should affect injustice, it would be in this, that I might do courtesies and receive none.

Reason and right give the quickest despatch.

Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful; joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.

I love the man that is modestly valiant; that stirs not till he most needs, and then to purpose. A continued patience I commend not.

Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.

To be gentle is the test of a lady.

There is no detraction worse than to overpraise a man, for if his worth proves short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie to his honor.

We pick our own sorrows out of the joys of other men, and from their sorrows likewise we derive our joys.