It the best to be with those in time, that we hope to be within eternity.
– Thomas Fuller
Friendship | Eternity
It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.
– Thomas Fuller
Hope
If I speak what is false, I must answer for it; if truth, it will answer for me.
– Thomas Fuller
Lying | Truth
He that fears not the future may enjoy the present.
– Thomas Fuller
Fear | The Future
Health is not valued till sickness comes.
– Thomas Fuller
Health | Illness
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.
– Thomas Fuller
Wisdom | Light | Knowledge
Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help.
– Thomas Fuller
Anger
Learn to hold thy tongue; five words cost Zacharias forty weeks of silence.
– Thomas Fuller
Gossip | Discretion | The Tongue
If you have one true friend you have more than your share.
– Thomas Fuller
Friendship
He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.
– Thomas Fuller
Hypocrisy | Believing
For a wife take the daughter of a good mother.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage | Mothers | Daughters
Kindness is the noblest weapon to conquer with.
– Thomas Fuller
Kindness
Let thy child’s first lesson be obedience, and the second may be what thou wilt.
– Thomas Fuller
Children | Obedience
It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf.
– Thomas Fuller
Peace
She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage
Nature hath appointed the twilight, as a bridge, to pass us out of night into day.
– Thomas Fuller
Life | Nature
He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.
– Thomas Fuller
Forgiveness
As for those parents who will not use the rod upon their children, I pray God He useth not their children as a rod for them.
– Thomas Fuller
Parents
Pride, perceiving humility honorable, often borrows her cloak.
– Thomas Fuller
Pride | Hypocrisy
Better hazard once than always be in fear.
– Thomas Fuller
Perseverance | Fear
Lord, be pleased to shake my clay cottage before Thou throwest it down.
– Thomas Fuller
Justice
The schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself who beats nature in a boy for a fault. And I question whether all the whippings in the world can make their parts which are naturally sluggish rise one minute before the hour nature hath appointed.
– Thomas Fuller
Hypocrisy
Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but once on flame there is no coming near to quench them.
– Thomas Fuller
Fire | Men
Pride had rather go out of the way than go behind.
– Thomas Fuller
Pride
A coward’s fear can make a coward valiant.
– Thomas Fuller
Fear
It was said of one who preached very well, and lived very ill, “that when he was out of the pulpit it was pity he should ever go into it; and when he was in the pulpit, it was pity he should ever come out of it.”
– Thomas Fuller
Preaching
Better one’s house be too little one day than too big all the year after.
– Thomas Fuller
Family
He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.
– Thomas Fuller
Family | Foolishness
If you would have a good wife, marry one who has been a good daughter.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage
He knows little, who will tell his wife all he knows.
– Thomas Fuller
Family
It is a shame when the church itself is a cemetery, where the living sleep above the ground, as the dead do beneath.
– Thomas Fuller
Church
Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.
– Thomas Fuller
Drunkenness
Unseasonable kindness gets no thanks.
– Thomas Fuller
Kindness
That which is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.
– Thomas Fuller
Suffering | Bitterness | Endurance
All commend patience, but none can endure to suffer.
– Thomas Fuller
Patience | Suffering | Endurance
Men are more prone to revenge injuries than to requite kindness.
– Thomas Fuller
Kindness | Revenge | Men
Try to be happy in this very present moment; and put not off being so to a time to come; as though that time should be of another make from this, which is already come, and is ours.
– Thomas Fuller
Happiness | Time
Hope is one of the principal springs that keep mankind in motion.
– Thomas Fuller
Hope
Miracles are the swaddling clothes of infant churches.
– Thomas Fuller
Miracles | Church
He that resolves to deal with none but honest men, must leave off dealing.
– Thomas Fuller
Honesty | Discretion | Men
Disobedient children, if preserved from the gallows, are reserved for the rack, to be tortured by their own posterity. One complaining, that never father had so undutiful a child as he had, yes, said his son, with less grace than truth, my grandfather had.
– Thomas Fuller
Children
A man in passion rides a horse that runs away with him.
– Thomas Fuller
Patience | Passion
The fool wanders, a wise man travels.
– Thomas Fuller
Wisdom | Foolishness
All doors open to courtesy.
– Thomas Fuller
Kindness
It is better to have a hen tomorrow than an egg today.
– Thomas Fuller
Patience
History maketh a young man to be old, without wrinkles or gray hairs, privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof.
– Thomas Fuller
History | Youth | Age
Ingratitude is the abridgment of all baseness; a fault never found unattended with other viciousness.
– Thomas Fuller
Gratitude
With foxes we must play the fox.
– Thomas Fuller
Discretion
If thou would’st be borne with, then bear with others.
– Thomas Fuller
Friendship | Discretion
Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage
If thou art a master, be sometimes blind, if a servant, sometimes deaf.
– Thomas Fuller
Discretion
Dwell not too long upon sports; for as they refresh a man that is weary, so they weary a man that is refreshed.
– Thomas Fuller
Sports
Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day!) in recreations, for sleep is a recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauce. Pastime, like wine, is poison in the morning. It is then good husbandry to sow the head, which hath lain fallow all night, with some serious work.
– Thomas Fuller
Laziness
Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage
Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.
– Thomas Fuller
LoveFriendshipEnemies
What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed.
– Thomas Fuller
Contentment
Men never think their fortunes too great, nor their wit too little.
– Thomas Fuller
Greed | Men
The Golden Age was never the present Age.
– Thomas Fuller
Contentment
Riches are long in getting with much pains, hard in keeping with much care, quick in losing with more sorrow.
– Thomas Fuller
Wealth
Gravity is the ballast of the soul, which keeps the mind steady.
– Thomas Fuller
Reasoning
If an ass goes traveling he will not come home a horse.
– Thomas Fuller
Character
Haste and rashness are storms and tempests, breaking and wrecking business; but nimbleness is a full fair wind blowing it with speed to the haven.
– Thomas Fuller
Apathy | Discretion | Business
With devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.
– Thomas Fuller
Satan | Piety
He will be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault.
– Thomas Fuller
Life
It is riches of the mind only that make a man rich and happy.
– Thomas Fuller
Finances
Those who are surly and imperious to their inferiors are generally humble, flattering, and cringing to their superiors.
– Thomas Fuller
Hypocrisy
Soft words are hard arguments.
– Thomas Fuller
Discretion
Choose a wife rather by your ear than your eye.
– Thomas Fuller
Discretion
He is idle that might be better employed.
– Thomas Fuller
Idleness
Prospect is often better than possession.
– Thomas Fuller
Achievement
The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir.
– Thomas Fuller
Health
If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
– Thomas Fuller
Hope | The Heart
We shall never have friends if we expect to find them without fault.
– Thomas Fuller
Friendship
Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.
– Thomas Fuller
Character
Prescribe no positive laws to thy will; for thou mayest be forced tomorrow to drink the same water thou despisest today.
– Thomas Fuller
Hypocrisy | Discretion
Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and turn even the rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.
– Thomas Fuller
Truth | Beauty
He is not poor that hath not much, but he that craves much.
– Thomas Fuller
Greed
If thou wouldst please the ladies, thou must endeavor to make them pleased with themselves.
– Thomas Fuller
Encouragement
The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
– Thomas Fuller
Achievement | Knowledge
None can pray well but he that lives well.
– Thomas Fuller
Prayer
Often the cockloft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high.
– Thomas Fuller
Philosophy
Love, the itch, and a cough cannot be hid.
– Thomas Fuller
Love
It is much better to have your gold in the hand than in the heart.
– Thomas Fuller
Finances | The Heart
As the sword of the best tempered metal is most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behavior to their inferiors.
– Thomas Fuller
Giving
If you run after two hares, you will catch neither.
– Thomas Fuller
Contentment | Discretion
Thou oughtest to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
– Thomas Fuller
Honesty
God send me a friend that will tell me of my faults.
– Thomas Fuller
Friendship
The good wife is none of our dainty dames, who love to appear in a variety of suits every day new; as if a gown, like a stratagem in war, were to be used but once. But our good wife sets up a sail according to the keel of her husband’s estate; and, if of high parentage, she doth not so remember what she was by birth, that she forgets what she is by match.
– Thomas Fuller
Marriage
Good counsels observed, are chains to grace, which, neglected, prove halters to strange, undutiful children.
– Thomas Fuller
Children
Every tub must stand on its own bottom.
– Thomas Fuller
Character
All the while that thou livest ill, thou hast the trouble, distraction, and inconveniences of life, but not the sweet and true use of it.
– Thomas Fuller
Life
He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.
– Thomas Fuller
Discouragement | Discretion
Contentment consists not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire.
– Thomas Fuller
Contentment | Discretion
Bad excuses are worse than none.
– Thomas Fuller
Discretion
He that flings dirt at another dirtieth himself most.
– Thomas Fuller
Hypocrisy
I will not meddle with that which I cannot mend.
– Thomas Fuller
Contentment
An index is a necessary implement, without which a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within.
– Thomas Fuller
Books
My son is my son till he have got him a wife, But my daughter’s my daughter all the days of her life.
– Thomas Fuller
Fathers
A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.
– Thomas Fuller
Religion
Better be alone than in bad company.
– Thomas Fuller
Character