James Howell Quotes

James Howell offers witty, old-fashioned proverbs about fate, secrecy and wealth.

29 quotes

1. Burn not thy fingers to snuff another man's candle.

2. He that hath eaten a bear-pie, will always smell of the garden.

3. A hungry man is an angry man.

4. Owe money at Easter and Lent will seem short to thee.

5. Words and works eat not at one table.

6. The Devil turns his back to a door that is shut.

7. Happy is he that grows wise by other men's harms.

8. God consents but not always.

9. Neither go to a wedding nor a christening unbid.

10. Affection is blind reason.

11. To whom thy secret thou dost tell, to him thy freedom thou dost sell.

12. There's fence against all things except death.

13. He falls in the pit he digs for others.

14. Sometimes an ill favored bitch gnaws a good chord.

15. The wealth of a churchman God gives it, and the Devil takes it away.

16. Appetite is better than surfeit.

17. Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.

18. French wines may be said but to pickle meat in the stomach, but this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor; of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction: That good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.

19. One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.

20. Respect a man, he will do the more.

21. He that hath money in his purse cannot want a head for his shoulders.

22. Man's best candle is his understanding.

23. Good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humors, good humors cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.

24. Choose thy friends like thy books, few but choice.

25. Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

26. Respect a man, he will do it the more.

27. In time of prosperity friends will be plenty; In time of adversity not one in twenty.

28. We are saved from nothing if we are not saved from sin. Little sins are pioneers of hell. The backslider begins with what he foolishly considers trifling with little sins. There are no little sins. There was a time when all the evil that has existed in the world was comprehended in one sinful thought of our first parent; and all the now evil is the numerous and horrid progeny of one little sin.

29. Saying that most of the computer was filled with personal images is simply not accurate.