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COLLIER, Jeremy Quotes
(1650-1726), English bishop
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As the language of the face is universal, so it is very comprehensive.—It is the shorthand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.—A man may look a sentence as soon as speak a word.
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.
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness.—People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom.
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.
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.
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.
Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
Patient waiting is often the highest way of doing God's will.
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.
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.
Prudence is the necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed, and argument put in order.
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.
He that would make sure of success should keep his passion cool, and his expectation low.
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.
We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.
We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.
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.
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.
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