Jeremy Taylor Quotes

Jeremy Taylor offers a blunt look at faith and morality, questioning chance and temptation.

24 quotes

1. Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

2. He [God] threatened horrible things to us, if we would not be happy.

3. He hath given us an easy religion, and hath established our future felicity upon natural and pleasant conditions, and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here; and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish than to be happy.

4. The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.

5. And if any man pretends that he is now sure he shall be saved and that he cannot fall away from grace; there is no better way to confute him, than by advising him to send for the surgeon, and bleed to death.

6. We resolve against those sins that please us not, or where temptation is not present, and think, by an overacted zeal against some sins, to give indulgence for others.

7. Drunkenness calls off the watchman from the towers; and then all the evils that proceed from a loose heart, an untied tongue, and a dissolute spirit, we put upon its account.

8. Pity and forbearance, and long-sufferance and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.

9. The private and personal blessings we enjoy- the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty and integrity- deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.

10. 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.

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

12. Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly: for this day only is ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man's enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory.

20. By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds which brave men and women are capable.

21. 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.

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

23. For there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens.

24. Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth.