Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness.
Jeremy TaylorLust is a captivity of the reason and an enraging of the passions. It hinders business and distracts counsel. It sins against the body and weakens the soul.
Jeremy TaylorA good wife is heaven's last, best gift to man, - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety.
Jeremy TaylorFaith 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.
Jeremy TaylorChildren, honor your parents in your hearts; bear them not only awe and respect, but kindness and affection: love their persons, fear to do anything that may justly provoke them; highly esteem them as the instruments under God of your being: for Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father.
Jeremy TaylorHumility is like a tree, whose root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher, and spreads fairer and stands surer, and lasts longer, and every step of its descent is like a rib of iron.
Jeremy TaylorMarriage hath in it less of beauty but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger, it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful.
Jeremy TaylorNo man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.
Jeremy TaylorThe 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.
Jeremy TaylorThis 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.
Jeremy TaylorHe that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he is exalted above his neighbors because he has more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine.
Jeremy TaylorIt is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.
Jeremy TaylorImpatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.
Jeremy TaylorWhoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to Him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy.
Jeremy TaylorWhen you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator; and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.
Jeremy TaylorCovetousness teaches people to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it has snatched.
Jeremy TaylorRevenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
Jeremy TaylorBy 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.
Jeremy TaylorIt is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.
Jeremy TaylorGod is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.
Jeremy TaylorIn matters of conscience that is the best sense which every wise man takes in before he hath sullied his understanding with the designs of sophisters and interested persons.
Jeremy TaylorIt is not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.
Jeremy TaylorLove is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law.
Jeremy TaylorMeditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, - meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
Jeremy TaylorWhen we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayer should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a method of good and salvation only, but as a perpetual monition of duty. By what we require of God we see what he requires of us.
Jeremy TaylorTo preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him.
Jeremy TaylorAvoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.
Jeremy TaylorHe that is choice of his time will be choice of his company, and choice of his actions.
Jeremy TaylorAll virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.
Jeremy TaylorFriendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counselor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds.
Jeremy TaylorIf anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.
Jeremy TaylorI have seen the sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the powers of darkness, and without violence and noise, climbing up the hill, hath made night so retire that its memory was lost in the joys and sprightliness of the morning.
Jeremy TaylorAquinas was once asked, with what compendium a man might become learned? He answered "By reading of one book.
Jeremy Taylor