Conyers Middleton (1683–1750) was an English clergyman. Mired in controversy and disputes, and with a reputation as an unbeliever, he was also considered one of the best stylists in English of his time.
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There is many a wounded heart without a contrite spirit.—The ice may be broken into a thousand pieces but it is ice still.—But expose it to the beams of the sun of righteousness, and then it will melt.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Humility
There is no part of history which seems capable of either more instruction or entertainment, than that which offers to us the lives of great and virtuous men who have made an eminent figure on the public stage of the world. In these we see what the annals of a whole age can afford that is worthy of notice; and in the wide field of universal history gather all its flowers, and possess ourselves of all that is good in it.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Example
Nothing truly can be termed my own, but what I make my own by using well; those deeds of charity which we have done, shall stay forever with us; and that wealth which we have so bestowed, we only keep; the other is not ours.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Charity
In the election of a wife, as in a project of war, to err but once is to be undone forever.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Wife
Lands mortgaged may return, but honesty once pawned is ne’er redeemed.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Honesty
Manner is everything with some people, and something with everybody.
—Conyers Middleton
Topics: Manners
This is the fruit of craft, that he that shoots up high, looks for the shaft, and finds it in his own forehead.
—Conyers Middleton
Virtue itself often offends, when coupled with bad manners.
—Conyers Middleton
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