C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Hooker
Although the beauties, riches, honors, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men living were in the present possession of one, yet somewhat above and beyond all this would still be sought and earnestly thirsted for.
Death is as the foreshadowing of life. We die that we may die no more.
Every effect doth, after a sort, contain, or at least resemble, the cause from which it proceedeth.
Everywhere, through all generations and ages of the Christian world, no church ever perceived the Word of God to be against it.
Evil ministers of good things are as torches,—a light to others, a waste to none but themselves only.
In matters of fact, they say there is some credit to be given to the testimony of men, but not in matters of judgment.
In moral action divine law helpeth exceedingly the law of reason to guide life, but in the supernatural it alone guideth.
It is of things heavenly and universal declaration, working in them whose hearts God inspireth with the due consideration thereof, and habit or disposition of mind whereby they are made fit vessels both for the receipt and delivery of whatsoever spiritual perfection.
Love is represented as the fulfilling of the law,—a creature’s perfection. All other graces, all divine dispensations, contribute to this, and are lost in it as in a heaven. It expels the dross of our nature; it overcomes sorrow; it is the full joy of our Lord.
Many never think on God but in extremity of fear; and then, perplexity not suffering them to be idle, they think and do as it were in a frenzy.
Not that God doth require nothing unto happiness at the hands of men saving only a naked belief, but that without belief all other things are as nothing.
Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things do her homage, the very least as feeling her care; and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.
Prosperity, in regard of our corrupt inclination to abuse the blessings of Almighty God, doth prove a thing dangerous to the soul of man.
Reason is the director of man’s will, discovering in action what is good; for the jaws of well-doing are the dictates of right reason.
So much of our lives is celestial and divine as we spend in the exercise of prayer.
Suspense of judgment and exercise of charity were safer and seemlier for Christian men than the hot pursuit of these controversies.
The life of a pious minister is visible rhetoric.
The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance.
There are men born under that constellation which maketh them, I know not how, as unapt to enrich themselves as they are ready to impoverish others.
They that are more frequent to dispute be not always the best able to determine.
Things confirmed by long practice and usage have all the force of law.
Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living; not as a flower that has withered, but as one that is transplanted, and touched by a divine hand, is blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth.
What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound?
When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.