I believe the promises of God enough to venture an eternity on them.
– Isaac Watts
Faith | Eternity
How divinely full of glory and pleasure shall that hour be when all the millions of mankind that have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God shall meet together and stand around Him, with every tongue and every heart full of joy and praise! How astonishing will be the glory and the joy of that day when all the saints shall join together in one common song of gratitude and love, and of everlasting thankfulness to this Redeemer! With that unknown delight, and inexpressible satisfaction, shall all that are saved from the ruins of sin and hell address the Lamb that was slain, and rejoice in His presence!
– Isaac Watts
Heaven | Joy | Thankfulness
In matters of equity between man and man, our Savior has taught us to put my neighbor in place of myself, and myself in place of my neighbor.
– Isaac Watts
Friendship | Giving
Do not be deceived; happiness and enjoyment do not lie in wicked ways.
– Isaac Watts
Happiness | Sin | Deception
Roses grow on thorns and honey wears a sting.
– Isaac Watts
Contentment
The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest.
– Isaac Watts
Religion | Passion
To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
– Isaac Watts
Anger
I love the soul that dares tread the temptations of his years beneath his youthful feet.
– Isaac Watts
Temptation | Youth
Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument.
– Isaac Watts
Patience
The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.
– Isaac Watts
Children | Education
Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning | Judging
The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on everything; and the soul tinctured with any passion diffuses a false color over the appearance of things.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning | Passion
In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome.
– Isaac Watts
Scripture
Among all the accomplishments of youth there is none preferable to a decent and agreeable behavior among men, a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good-humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of human life.
– Isaac Watts
Contentment | Youth | Freedom
The very substance which last week was grazing in the field, waving in the milk pail, or growing in the garden, is now become part of the man.
– Isaac Watts
Animals
Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
– Isaac Watts
Perseverance | Circumstances
A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does.
– Isaac Watts
Praise
Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks – love, and the contemplation of the Deity.
– Isaac Watts
Love | Worship
Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.
– Isaac Watts
Virtue | God
Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.
– Isaac Watts
Books | Reading
When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge.
– Isaac Watts
Education
Then let these useless streams be stayed; wear native courage in your face.
– Isaac Watts
Courage
In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.
– Isaac Watts
Character | Wisdom
Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
– Isaac Watts
Apathy | Truth | Parents
I would not change my blest estate for all the world calls good or great.
– Isaac Watts
Contentment
Fancy and humor, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.
– Isaac Watts
Life | Age
Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning
Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment.
– Isaac Watts
Reading | Meditation
Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light.
– Isaac Watts
Preaching
Academical disputation gives vigor and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation.
– Isaac Watts
Education | Meditation
For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.
– Isaac Watts
Suffering | Grief
When a false argument puts on the appearance of a true one, then it is properly called a sophism or fallacy.
– Isaac Watts
Lying
Were both the golden Indies mine, I’d give both Indies for a tear.
– Isaac Watts
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Compassion
The calmest and serenest hours of life, when the passions of nature are all silent, and the mind enjoys its most perfect composure.
– Isaac Watts
Life
Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.
– Isaac Watts
Trust | Learning
Earth, thou great footstool of our God, who reigns on high; thou fruitful source of all our raiment, life, and food; our house, our parent, and our nurse.
– Isaac Watts
God
Satirists do expose their own ill nature.
– Isaac Watts
Character
May I govern my passions with absolute sway, and grow wiser and better as life wears away.
– Isaac Watts
Life | Wisdom | Passion
Let me be dressed fine as I will, Flies, worms, and flowers, exceed me still.
– Isaac Watts
Humility
As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.
– Isaac Watts
Books
Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance.
– Isaac Watts
Ignorance
Nothing tends so much to enlarge the mind as travelling, that is, making visits to other towns, cities, or countries beside those in which we were born and educated.
– Isaac Watts
Happiness
When two or three sciences are pursued at the same time if one of them be dry, as logic, let another be more entertaining, to secure the mind from weariness.
– Isaac Watts
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Cheerfulness
Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.
– Isaac Watts
Idleness | Satan
Learn good-humor, never to oppose without just reason; abate some degree of pride and moroseness.
– Isaac Watts
Cheerfulness
Thou sun, whose beams adorn the spheres, and with unwearied swiftness move to form the circles of our years.
– Isaac Watts
Life
A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.
– Isaac Watts
Apathy
Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.
– Isaac Watts
Scripture
Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above the beasts, in this lower world.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning
It was a saying of the ancients, “Truth lies in a well;” and to carry on this metaphor, we may justly say that logic does supply us with steps, whereby we may go down to reach the water.
– Isaac Watts
Truth
Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking; they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative.
– Isaac Watts
Preaching
The fondness we have for self furnishes another long rank of prejudices.
– Isaac Watts
Selfishness
Preserve your conscience always soft and sensitive. If but one sin force its way into that tender part of the soul and dwell there, the road is paved for a thousand iniquities.
– Isaac Watts
Conscience | Sin
Disputation carries away the mind from that calm and sedate temper which is so necessary to contemplate truth.
– Isaac Watts
Truth
Instructors should not only be skilful in those sciences which they teach, but have skill in the method of teaching, and patience in the practice.
– Isaac Watts
Education
Raillery and wit were never made to answer our inquiries after truth, and to determine a question of rational controversy, though they may be sometimes serviceable to expose to contempt those inconsistent follies which have been first abundantly refuted by argument; they serve indeed only to cover nonsense with shame, when reason has first proved it to be mere nonsense.
– Isaac Watts
Truth
If a book has no index or good table of contents, it is very useful to make one as you are reading it.
– Isaac Watts
Books