Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Edward Stillingfleet

We are not only to look at the bare action, but at the reason of it.

Their skill in astronomy dwindled into that which, by a great catachresis, is called judicial astrology.

Astrological prayers seem to me to be built on as good reason as the predictions.

A man must have great impudence to profess himself a Christian, and yet to think himself not obliged to do acts of charity.

After this time came on the midnight of the church, wherein the very names of the councils were forgotten, and men did only dream of what was past.

Kircher lays it down as a certain principle, that there never was any people so rude which did not acknowledge and worship one supreme Deity.

The fawning, sneaking, and flattering hypocrite, that will do or be anything for his own advantage.

Philosophers and common heathen believed one God, to whom all things were referred; but under this God they worshipped many inferior and subservient gods.

Two things speak much of the wisdom of a nation; good laws and a prudent management of them.

They had altogether as good take up with the dull ways of lying … as make use of such refinings as these.

If we subdue our unruly and disorderly passions within ourselves we should live more easily and quietly with others.

The most careful endeavours do not always meet with success; and even our blessed Saviour’s preaching, who spake as never man spake, was ineffectual to many.

How common it is for men first to throw dirt in the face of religion, and then persuade themselves it is its natural complexion! They represent it to themselves in a shape least pleasing to them, and then bring that as a plea why they give it no better entertainment.

Virgil was so critical in the rites of religion that he would never have brought in such prayers as these, if they had not been agreeable to the Roman customs.

No one kind of true peace is consistent with any sort of prevailing wickedness.

Words of different significations, taken in general, are of an equivocal sense: but being considered with all their particular circumstances they have their sense restrained.

Those who apply themselves to learning are forced to acknowledge one God, incorruptible and unbegotten; who is the only true being, and abides forever above the highest heavens, from whence He beholds all the things that are done in heaven and earth.

True wisdom and greatness of mind raise a man above the need of using little tricks and devices. Sincerity and honesty carries one through many difficulties which all the arts he can invent would never help him through. For nothing doth a man more real mischief in the world than to be suspected of too much craft; because every one stands upon his guard against him, and suspects plots and designs where there are none intended: insomuch that though he speaks with all the sincerity that is possible, yet nothing he saith can be believed.

That is the truest wisdom of a man which doth most conduce to the happiness of life. For wisdom as it refers to action lies in the proposal of a right end, and the choice of the most proper means to attain it: which end doth not refer to any one part of a man’s life, but to the whole as taken together. He therefore only deserves the name of a wise man, not that considers how to be rich and great when he is poor and mean, nor how to be well when he is sick, nor how to escape a present danger, nor how to compass a particular design; but he that considers the whole course of his life together, and what is fit for him to make the end of it, and by what means he may best enjoy the happiness of it.