Jeremy Collier
Belief gets in the way of learning.Collection: Learning
Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
True courage is a result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.Collection: Courage
Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.
Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
A brave mind is always impregnable.
I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.
In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.
People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way.
Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.
Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.Collection: Strong
A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.Collection: Book
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being 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.Collection: Disappointment
True courage is the result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.Collection: Uplifting
Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.Collection: Excess
Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.Collection: Rivers
The more we sink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden, to be decrepit one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a desirable change. To call this dying is an abuse of language.Collection: Death
He that would be a master must draw from the life as well as copy from originals, and join theory and experience together.Collection: Together
Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.Collection: Body
Intemperance is a dangerous companion. It throws many people off their guard, betrays them to a great many indecencies, to ruinous passions, to disadvantages in fortune; makes them discover secrets, drive foolish bargains, engage in play, and often to stagger from the tavern to the stews.Collection: Passion
The road to heaven lies as near by water as by land.Collection: Lying
The abuse of a thing is no argument against the use of it.Collection: Addiction
People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.Collection: Tired
Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.Collection: Men
Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.Collection: Envy
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.Collection: Believe
Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.Collection: Sight
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 which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast.Collection: Fuel
He that would relish success to a purpose should keep his passions cool, and his expectations low; and then it is possible that his fortune might exceed his fancy; for an advantage always rises by surprise; and is almost always doubled by being unlooked for.Collection: Success
Envy lies between two beings equal in nature though unequal in circumstances.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Strong
Envy is of all others the most ungratifying and disconsolate passion. There is power for ambition, pleasure for luxury, and pelf even for covetousness; but envy gets no reward but vexation.Collection: Passion
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.Collection: Ease
True courage is the result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable. 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.Collection: Courage
People's opinions of themselves are legible in their countenances.Collection: People
Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.Collection: Truth
A man by tumbling his thoughts, and forming them into expressions, gives them a new fermentation, which works them into a finer body.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Passion
What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?Collection: Honor
Goodness is generous and diffusive; it is largeness of mind, and sweetness of temper,--balsam in the blood, and justice sublimated to a richer spirit.Collection: Blood
The end of pleasure is to support the offices of life, to relieve the fatigues of business, to reward a regular action, and to encourage the continuance.Collection: Office
Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing service.Collection: Character
Dangerous principles impose upon our understanding, emasculate our spirits, and spoil our temper.Collection: Understanding
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with the ages past; and this way of running up beyond one's nativity is better than Plato's pre-existence.Collection: Running
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.Collection: Book
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.Collection: Order
It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand; and their reason with their left.Collection: Hero
Heroes are a mischievous race.Collection: Hero