Teach us to pray often, that we may pray oftener.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Prayer
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.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Gratitude
Idleness is the burial of a living man.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Idleness
In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well cr ill using it we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent at death, yet it is rather the state of death than life.
—Jeremy Taylor
The private devotions and secret offices of religion are like the refreshing of a garden with the distilling and petty drops of a waterpot; but addressed from the temple, they are like ram from heaven.
—Jeremy Taylor
A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man,—his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counsellors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Wife
That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation; for many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of calamity.
—Jeremy Taylor
Nothing does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulences of present things, as to look above them and beyond them—above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled, and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought.
—Jeremy Taylor
In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. So shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thine own candle, and then shaft thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Mystery
Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend.
—Jeremy Taylor
Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Consequences
A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation; sober counsels and ingenuous actions; open deportment and sweet carriage; sincere principles and unprejudiced understanding; love of God and self-denial; peace and confidence; holy prayers and spiritual comfort; and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish pleasure of unchastity.
—Jeremy Taylor
No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Children
From David learn to give thanks for everything.—Every furrow in the Book of Psalms is sown with the seeds of thanksgiving.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Gratitude
He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be exalted above his neighbors because he hath more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Wealth, Riches
Temperance is reason’s girdle, and passion’s bride, the strength of the soul, and the foundation of virtue.
—Jeremy Taylor
Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Enemy, Self-love
Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity; it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye, glorious, indeed, in itself, but not proportioned to such an instrument.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Prosperity
It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon man as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Misfortune
Covetousness swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes.
—Jeremy Taylor
No man can be provident of his time, who is not prudent in the choice of his company.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Associates
The labor and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing.—If it were not for labor, men could neither eat so much, nor relish so pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful, so useful, so strong, so patient, so noble, nor so untempted.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Labor
Marriage has in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath not more ease, but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity; and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Marriage
Never be a judge between thy friends in any matter where both set their hearts upon the victory. If strangers or enemies be litigants, whatever side thou favorest, thou gettest a friend; but when friends are the parties thou losest one.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Judgment
Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body, or the root to the tree.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Intentions
If these little sparks of holy fire thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Quotations
The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Religion
An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction.
—Jeremy Taylor
He that doth a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Friendship
He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Family
In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity, but examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.
—Jeremy Taylor
Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Happiness, Generosity
Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Hypocrisy
Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.
—Jeremy Taylor
Many men profess to hate another, but no man owns envy, as being an enmity or displeasure for no cause but another’s goodness or felicity.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Envy
Laughing, if loud, ends in a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Laughter
Lust is a captivity of the reason and an enraging of the passions. It hinders business and distracts counsel. It sins against the body and weakens the soul.
—Jeremy Taylor
Pity, forbearance, long-sufferance, fair interpretation, excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are certainly our duty; and he that does not so is an unjust person.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Charity
A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Marriage
Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offense of each other in the beginning of their conversation. A little thing can blast an infant blossom.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Marriage