Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) was an Anglican Church historian, clergyman, and theater critic. He was the leader of the Nonjurors, Anglican clergy who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II in 1689.
Born in Stow, Cambridgeshire, and educated at Ipswich and Cambridge, Collier became rector of Ampton, and a lecturer at Gray’s Inn, London. He opposed William III and Mary II, refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance in 1689. Vicious in his polemics, Collier spent some time in prison and short-term exile abroad as a political outlaw.
Collier is best known for A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698,) an intense attack on Restoration dramatists.
Collier also wrote the Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical, and Poetical Dictionary (4 vols., 1701–21) and the scholarly An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (2 vols., 1708–14.)
In 1713, Collier was consecrated as a ‘bishop of the Nonjurors,’ and he joined in their effort at the reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jeremy Collier
Those who come last enter with advantage—They are born to the wealth of antiquity.—The materials for judging are prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their hands.—Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity would lose it, for the present age is really the oldest, and has the largest experience to plead.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Knowledge
Patient waiting is often the highest way of doing God’s will.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Patience
Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Knowledge
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Reading
Prudence is the necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Prudence
Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person; it gives you the command of your head, secures your health, and preserves you in a condition for business.
—Jeremy Collier
Dependence goes somewhat against the grain of a generous mind; and it is no wonder that it should do so, considering the unreasonable advantage which is often taken of the inequality of fortune.
—Jeremy Collier
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Reading, Books
Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Books
Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Opportunities, Opportunity
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed, and argument put in order.
—Jeremy Collier
The abuse of a thing is no argument against the use of it.
—Jeremy Collier
The arrogant man does but blast the blessings of life and swagger away his own enjoyments.—To say nothing of the folly and injustice of such behavior, it is always the sign of a little and unbenevolent temper, having no more greatness in it than the swelling of the dropsy.
—Jeremy Collier
Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of countenance, and makes a seeming impossibility give way.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Perseverance, Difficulty, Persistence, Hope, Motivation
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Vanity
Atheism, if it exists, is the result of ignorance and pride, of strong sense and feeble reason, of good eating and ill living.—It is the plague of society, the corrupter of morals, and the underminer of property.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Atheism
Power, unless managed with gentleness and discretion, does but make a man the more hated; no intervals of good humor, no starts of bounty, will atone for tyranny and oppression.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Tyranny
He that would make sure of success should keep his passion cool, and his expectation low.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Success
Avoid all singularity and affectation.—What is according to nature is best, while what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Affectation
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness.—People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Disorder, Self-Discovery, Laziness, Idleness
As the language of the face is universal, so ’tis very comprehensive; ’tis the shorthand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Face, Language
How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Cowardice, Coward
Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty: for the more a man knows, the more he discovers his ignorance.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Learning
Despair is the offspring of fear, of laziness, and impatience; it argues a delect of spirit and resolution, and often of honesty too. I would not despair unless I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Despair
The lower your senses are kept, the better you may govern them.—Appetite and reason are like two buckets—when one is up, the other is down.—Of the two, I would rather have the reason-bucket uppermost.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Appetite
Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.
—Jeremy Collier
True courage is a result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Courage, Bravery
True courage is the result of reasoning.—Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins; and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and of religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Courage
We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Truth
Envy lies between two beings equal in nature though unequal in circumstances.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Envy
Modesty was designed by Providence as a guard to virtue, and that it might be always at hand it is wrought into the mechanism of the body. It is likewise proportioned to the occasions of life, and strongest in youth when passion is so too.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Modesty
To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Secrets of Success, Courage to Begin
Those who despise fame seldom deserve it.—We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better.—It is a spark that kindles upon the best fuel, and bums brightest in the bravest breast.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Fame
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Reason
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
Beilby Porteus Bishop of London
John Wilkins English Anglican Clergyman
William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
Sydney Smith English Preacher
William Cowper English Anglican Poet
William Ernest Henley English Poet
F. L. Lucas English Literary Critic
John Churton Collins English Literary Critic