The private and personal blessings we enjoy, the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity, deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings, Thankfulness, Appreciation
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
Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Work, Prayer
No man can hinder our private addresses to God; every man can build a chapel in his breast, himself the priest, his heart the sacrifice, and the earth he treads on, the altar.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Prayer
It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance; for it requires knowledge to perceive it, and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Ignorance
To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Life
Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend.
—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
She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness, and the jewels of faith and charity. She must have no painting but blushings; her brightness must be purity, and she must shine round about with sweetness and friendship; and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Marriage
An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction.
—Jeremy Taylor
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Chance, Atheism, Creation
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
Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary of our calamities, the counselor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we dedicate.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Friendship
A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Mystery
Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Secrets, Secrecy
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
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
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence. A just man does justice to every man and to everything; and then, if he be also wise, he knows there is a debt of mercy and compassion due to the infirmities of man’s nature; and that is to be paid; and he that is cruel and ungentle to a sinning person, and does the worst to him, is in his debt and is unjust.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Justice
He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Reason
Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility as the fringes are to a garment.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Modesty
It is the greatest and dearest blessing that ever God gave to men, that they may repent; and therefore to deny or to delay it is to refuse health when brought by the skill of the physician—to refuse liberty offered to us by our gracious Lord.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Repentance
By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Friendship
Mercy is like the rainbow, which God hath set in the clouds; it never shines after it is night.—If we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice in eternity.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Mercy
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
Teach us to pray often, that we may pray oftener.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Prayer
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
He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Family
He that hath so many and great causes of joy, and yet is in love with sorrow and peevishness, deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort, while he is encircled with blessings.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Sorrow
Idleness is the burial of a living man.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Idleness
Hasty conclusions are the mark of a fool; a wise man doubteth; a fool rageth and is confident; the novice saith, “I am sure that it is so” the better learned answers, “Peradventure, it may be so; but, I pray thee, inquire.” It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Learning, Modesty
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