O Feltham Quotes

#1. Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful; joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.

Owen Feltham

#2. The irresolute man flecks from one egg to another, so hatches nothing.

Owen Feltham

#3. Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.

Owen Feltham

#4. Works without faith are like a fish without water, it wants the element it should live in. A building without a basis cannot stand; faith is the foundation, and every good action is as a stone laid.

Owen Feltham

#5. If ever I should affect injustice, it would be in this, that I might do courtesies and receive none.

Owen Feltham

#6. Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it.

Owen Feltham

#7. Zeal without humanity is like a ship without a rudder, liable to be stranded at any moment.

Owen Feltham

#8. There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.

Owen Feltham

#9. Take heed of a speedy professing friend; love is never lasting which flames before it burns.

Owen Feltham

#10. It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.

Owen Feltham

#11. There is no detraction worse than to overpraise a man, for if his worth proves short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie to his honor.

Owen Feltham

#12. Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to.

Owen Feltham

#13. Where there is plenty, charity is a duty, not a courtesy

Owen Feltham

#14. There is no one subsists by himself alone.

Owen Feltham

#15. He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man.

Owen Feltham

#16. It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.

Owen Feltham

#17. Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolves.

Owen Feltham

#18. Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

Owen Feltham

#19. By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man.

Owen Feltham

#20. God has made no one absolute.

Owen Feltham

#21. Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.

Owen Feltham

#22. Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one.

Owen Feltham

#23. Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.

Owen Feltham

#24. He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.

Owen Feltham

#25. I love the man that is modestly valiant; that stirs not till he most needs, and then to purpose. A continued patience I commend not.

Owen Feltham

#26. Honesty is a warrant of far more safety than fame.

Owen Feltham

#27. Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and in that man I will show you one who will never be admitted into heaven.

Owen Feltham

#28. Some are so uncharitable as to think all women bad, and others are so credulous as to believe they are all good. All will grant her corporeal frame more wonderful and more beautiful than man's. And can we think God would put a worse soul into a better body?

Owen Feltham

#29. Reason and right give the quickest despatch.

Owen Feltham

#30. He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.

Owen Feltham