So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Idleness
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
Every temptation is great or small according as the man is.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Temptation
Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils bear patiently and sweetly; for only this day is ours; we are dead to yesterday, and not born tomorrow.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Day, Present
Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Prayer, Work
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
Idleness is the burial of a living man.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Idleness
The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living which are to be desired when dying.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Wisdom
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
Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Habits, Habit
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
Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Secrecy, Secrets
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect,—meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Meditation
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 not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Understanding
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
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
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
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
Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Self-love, Enemy
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
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
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
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
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
Nothing is a greater, or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Profanity, Swearing, Vulgarity
He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever.
—Jeremy Taylor
No sin is small.—It is against an infinite God, and may have consequences immeasurable.—No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Sin
In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. And first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy.
—Jeremy Taylor
Topics: Sickness
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