Love is friendship set on fire.
– Jeremy Taylor
Love | Friendship | Fire
No man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.
– Jeremy Taylor
Character | Impatience
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!
– Jeremy Taylor
Atheism | Foolishness | Creation
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
Prayer | Sacrifice
Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly: for this day only is ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow.
– Jeremy Taylor
Blessings
The Pharisees broke Moses’ tables into pieces, and, gathering up the fragments, took to themselves what part of duty they pleased, and left the rest alone.
– Jeremy Taylor
Hypocrisy
He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
– Jeremy Taylor
Family | Home
A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man, – his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage | Music
Look at that beautiful butterfly, and learn from it to trust in God. One might wonder where it could live in tempestuous nights, in the whirlwind, or in the stormy day; but I have noticed it is safe and dry under the broad leaf while rivers have been flooded, and the mountain oaks torn up from their roots.
– Jeremy Taylor
Adversity | Beauty | Nature
He, who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.
– Jeremy Taylor
Giving | Sacrifice
The private and personal blessings we enjoy – the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty and integrity – deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.
– Jeremy Taylor
Blessings | Thankfulness | Integrity
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
Holiness | Wisdom | Comfort
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
Scripture | Doubt
God is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.
– Jeremy Taylor
Thankfulness | Music
He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
– Jeremy Taylor
Friendship | Zeal
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
Envy | Hatred | Men
Every temptation is great or small according as the man is.
– Jeremy Taylor
Temptation
Covetousness swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes.
– Jeremy Taylor
Jealousy
A fair reputation is a plant delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night, like the gourd of the prophet, but like that gourd, it may perish in a night.
– Jeremy Taylor
Character | Nature | Growth
Faith is a certain image of eternity. All things are present to it – things past, and things to come; it converses with angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving song for the blessed sentence of doomsday.
– Jeremy Taylor
Faith | Thankfulness
If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.
– Jeremy Taylor
Anger
To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.
– Jeremy Taylor
Learning | Ignorance
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
Reasoning | Music | Beauty
Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend.
– Jeremy Taylor
Friendship | Enemies
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
Atheism
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.”
– Jeremy Taylor
Ignorance | Doubt | Foolishness
Do not burn false fire upon God’s altar; do not pose and pretend, either to Him or to yourself, in your religious exercises; do not say more than you mean, or use exaggerated language that goes beyond the facts, when speaking to Him whose word is truth.
– Jeremy Taylor
Hypocrisy
An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction.
– Jeremy Taylor
Honesty
Conscience in most men is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.
– Jeremy Taylor
Conscience | Men
In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well cry 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
Gossip
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
Mercy
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
Friendship | Enemies | Judging
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
Habits | Beauty | Daughters
Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy; a friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety, but he swells my joy and makes it double.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage | Joy
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
Friendship | Romance
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
Ignorance
Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.
– Jeremy Taylor
Impatience
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
Prosperity
A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.
– Jeremy Taylor
Religion
The labor and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing. If it were not for labor, men could neither eat so much, nor relish so pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful, so useful, so strong, so patient, so noble, nor so untempted.
– Jeremy Taylor
Blessings
Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquility of thy life.
– Jeremy Taylor
Adversity | Life
Marriage has in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath not more ease, but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity; and those burdens are delightful.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage
Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come toward you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.
– Jeremy Taylor
Habits
Nothing does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulences of present things, as to look above them and beyond them – above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled, and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought.
– Jeremy Taylor
Faith | Beauty
Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage
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 roundabout with sweetness and friendship; and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage | Modesty | Purity
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
Suffering
He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he is exalted above his neighbors because he has more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine.
– Jeremy Taylor
Finances | Foolishness
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the bond of perfection; it is the old, the new, and the great commandment, and all the commandments, for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all the other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue.
– Jeremy Taylor
Love
No man can be provident of his time who is not prudent in the choice of his company.
– Jeremy Taylor
Friendship | Choices
Faith is the root of all blessings. Believe, and you shall be saved; believe, and you must needs be satisfied; believe, and you cannot but be comforted and happy.
– Jeremy Taylor
Faith | Believing
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
Idleness | Temptation
A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage
Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit.
– Jeremy Taylor
Character
Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer | Service
Many are idly busy; Domitian was busy, but then it was in catching flies.
– Jeremy Taylor
Laziness
The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.
– Jeremy Taylor
Theology
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
Gossip | The Tongue
Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.
– Jeremy Taylor
Pride | Enemies
The Lord’s Prayer is short and mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses: it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every petition, that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer | Authority
In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity, but examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.
– Jeremy Taylor
Character | Circumstances
God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.
– Jeremy Taylor
Eternity | Time
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
Illness
It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon man as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly.
– Jeremy Taylor
Suffering
Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.
– Jeremy Taylor
Virtue | Rewards
From David learn to give thanks for everything. Every furrow in the Book of Psalms is sown with the seeds of thanksgiving.
– Jeremy Taylor
Thankfulness
When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayer should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a method of good and salvation only, but as a perpetual monition of duty. By what we require of God we see what he requires of us.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer | Virtue
When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator; and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer | Commitment | Trust
The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living which are to be desired when dying.
– Jeremy Taylor
Wisdom
Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.
– Jeremy Taylor
Happiness | Men
Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
– Jeremy Taylor
Friendship
Idleness is the burial of a living man.
– Jeremy Taylor
Idleness
Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.
– Jeremy Taylor
Idleness | Lust | Work
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
Repentance | Health | Liberty
Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.
– Jeremy Taylor
Marriage
The private devotions and secret offices of religion are like the refreshing of a garden with the distilling and petty drops of a water pot; but addressed from the temple, they are like ram from heaven.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer
God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.
– Jeremy Taylor
Happiness
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
Prayer | Meditation
Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body, or the root to the tree.
– Jeremy Taylor
Good and Evil
Solitude is a good school, but the world is the best theatre; the institution is best there, but the practice here; the wilderness hath the advantage of discipline, and society opportunities of perfection.
– Jeremy Taylor
Education | Discipline
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
Sin
Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppression, 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
Friendship | Doubt
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
Justice | Mercy
Temperance is reason’s girdle, and passion’s bride, the strength of the soul, and the foundation of virtue.
– Jeremy Taylor
Virtue | Strength
It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.
– Jeremy Taylor
Faith
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
Friendship | Women
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
The Holy Spirit | Fire | Passion
Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard, that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, are hushed and appeased upon the bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolution of the tongue.
– Jeremy Taylor
Character | The Tongue | Knowledge
Laughing, if loud, ends in a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face.
– Jeremy Taylor
Hypocrisy | Beauty | Laughter
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
Conscience | Reasoning
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
Lust | Business
Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth.
– Jeremy Taylor
Truth | Men
The body of our prayer is the sum of our duty; and as we must ask of God whatsoever we need, so we must watch and labor for all that we ask.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer
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
Blessings | Comfort | Joy
Teach us to pray often, that we may pray oftener.
– Jeremy Taylor
Prayer
It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.
– Jeremy Taylor
Humility | Learning | Modesty
He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever.
– Jeremy Taylor
Drunkenness
Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit’s power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.
– Jeremy Taylor
Apathy
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
Forgiveness | Gentleness
The pharisees minded what God spoke, but not what He intended. They were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. So God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into His purpose; and therefore they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts.
– Jeremy Taylor
Hypocrisy | Choices | The Heart