Richard Hooker Quotes

God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright.

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.

For men to be tied and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of judgment, and though there be reason to the contrary not to listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first in the herd, they know not, nor care not whither, this were brutish.

The church is in Christ, as Eve was in Adam.

Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living; not as a flower that has withered, but as one that is transplanted, and touched by a Divine hand, is blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth.

See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?

Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.

Whatsoever is good; the same is also approved of God.

To live by one man's will becomes the cause of all misery.

Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.

Even ministers of good things are like torches, a light to others, waste and destruction to themselves.

Man doth seek a triple perfection: first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth either as necessary supplements, or as beauties and ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly a spiritual and divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them.

Angels are unsatisfiable in their longing to do by all means all manner of good unto all the creatures, ...especially the children of men.

The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance

The reason why the simpler sort are moved with authority, is the consciousness of their own ignorance; whereby it cometh to pass that having learned men in admiration, they rather fear to dislike them than know wherefore they should allow and follow their judgments. Contrariwise with them that are skilful authority is much more strong and forcible; because they only are able to discern how just cause there is why to some men's authority so much should be attributed.

So that every man lawfully ordained must bring a bow which hath two strings, a title of present right and another to provide for future possibility or chance.

I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.

Of two Evils we take the less.