Jeremy Taylor Quotes & Sayings

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

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Friendship is the strongest bond in the world. — Jeremy Taylor

Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it. — Jeremy Taylor

Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of drink. That I call immoderation that is besides or beyond that order of good things for which God hath given us the use of drink. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Laughing, if loud, ends with a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty in the face. — Jeremy Taylor

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

All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions. — Jeremy Taylor

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

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

Covetousness teaches people to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched. — Jeremy Taylor

In matters of conscience that is the best sense which every wise man takes in before he hath sullied his understanding with the designs of sophisters and interested persons. — Jeremy Taylor

An unjust acquisition is like a barbed arrow, which must be drawn backward with horrible anguish, or else will be your destruction. — Jeremy Taylor

He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together. — Jeremy Taylor

Marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments: it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is holiness to the Lord. — Jeremy Taylor

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

If thou has a bundle of thorns in thy lot, there is no need to sit down on it. — Jeremy Taylor

To secure a contented spirit, measure your desires by your fortune, and not your fortune by your desires. — Jeremy Taylor

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; hol — Jeremy Taylor

There are sicknesses that walk in darkness, and there are exterminating angels who fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature; whom we cannot see but we feel their foorce and sink under their sword. — Jeremy Taylor

Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father. — Jeremy Taylor

Revenge ... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion. — Jeremy Taylor

All dreams reflect inborn creativity and ability to face and solve life's problems. — Jeremy Taylor

In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment. — Jeremy Taylor

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows. — Jeremy Taylor

A man had been in prison for twenty years. When he left they gave him his old clothes. In the pocket he found a ticket from a shoe repair shop. Perhaps the shop is still there. Perhaps they still have my old shoes, he thought to himself. So off he went and sure enough it was there." I've been on holiday for a long time, I wonder if you have my shoes?" asked the man. The old man went into the back of the shop and came back after two minutes. "They'll be ready on Thursday. — Jeremy Taylor

Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. — Jeremy Taylor

Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend. — Jeremy Taylor

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

I have seen the sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the powers of darkness, and without violence and noise, climbing up the hill, hath made night so retire that its memory was lost in the joys and sprightliness of the morning. — Jeremy Taylor

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

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

Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Aeropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles. — Jeremy Taylor

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

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

God hath prepared a little coronet or special reward (extraordinary and beside the great crown of all faithful souls) for those who have not defiled themselves with women. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy. — Jeremy Taylor

The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings. — Jeremy Taylor

Too quick a sense of constant infelicity. — Jeremy Taylor

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit. — Jeremy Taylor

Humility is like a tree, whose root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher, and spreads fairer and stands surer, and lasts longer, and every step of its descent is like a rib of iron. — Jeremy Taylor

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance. — Jeremy Taylor

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

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

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 ... — Jeremy Taylor

The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship. — Jeremy Taylor

Dive on them and squash them if you must. — Jeremy Taylor

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit. — Jeremy Taylor

Since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world and that is a contented spirit. — Jeremy Taylor

Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. — Jeremy Taylor

The greatest evils, are from within us; and from ourselves also we must look for the greatest good. — Jeremy Taylor

God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word. — Jeremy Taylor

Many are idly busy; Domitian was busy, but then it was in catching flies. — Jeremy Taylor

God fails not to sow blessings in the furrows. — Jeremy Taylor

The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed. — Jeremy Taylor

A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity. — Jeremy Taylor

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends. — Jeremy Taylor

So are the early unions of an unfixed Marriage: watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first Scenes, but in the succession of a long Society. — Jeremy Taylor

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Nothing is intolerable that is necessary. — Jeremy Taylor

The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing. — Jeremy Taylor

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it; so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. — Jeremy Taylor

Man and wife are equally concerned, to avoid all offence of each other, in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom. — Jeremy Taylor

Love is friendship set on fire. Hate is friendship burned. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth. — Jeremy Taylor

Teach us to pray often, that we may pray oftener. — Jeremy Taylor

Faith gives new light to the soul, but it does not put our eyes out; and what God hathgivenusinournature could never be intended as a snare to Religion, or engage us to believe a lie. — Jeremy Taylor

From David learn to give thanks for everything. Every furrow in the book of Psalms is sown with the seeds of thanksgiving. — Jeremy Taylor

Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counselor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds ... — Jeremy Taylor

He that is choice of his time will be choice of his company, and choice of his actions. — Jeremy Taylor

To be perpetually longing and impatiently desirous of anything, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man's liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke. — Jeremy Taylor

Aquinas was once asked, with what compendium a man might become learned? He answered By reading of one book. — Jeremy Taylor

Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life. — Jeremy Taylor

For there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens ... — Jeremy Taylor

A great fear, when it is ill-managed, is the parent of superstition; but a discreet and well-guided fear produces religion. — Jeremy Taylor

This temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in hell. — Jeremy Taylor

To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him. — Jeremy Taylor

The private devotions and secret offices of religion are like the refreshing of a garden with the distilling and petty drops of a waterpot; but addressed from the temple, they are like ram from heaven. — Jeremy Taylor

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

Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue. — Jeremy Taylor

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness. — Jeremy Taylor

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. — Jeremy Taylor

Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls. — Jeremy Taylor

It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear. — Jeremy Taylor

This grace (purity of intention) is so excellent that it sanctifies the most common actions of our life and yet is so necessary that without it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vicious. — Jeremy Taylor