Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Thomas Fuller

Good counsels observed, are chains to grace, which neglected, prove halters to strange undutiful children.

To divert, at any time, a troublesome fancy, run to thy Books. They presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness.

What a gift has John Harlebach, professor at Vienna, in tediousness! who, being to expound the prophet Isaiah to his auditors, read twenty-one years on the first chapter, and yet finished it not.

They who constantly converse with men far above their estates shall reap shame and loss thereby: if thou payest nothing, they will count thee a sucker, no branch; a wen, no member of their company.

If thou desirest ease, in the first take care of the ease of thy mind, for that will make other sufferings easy.

Use makes practice easy: and practice begets custom, and a habit of things, to facilitate what thou couldst not conceive attainable at the first undertaking.

Fame may be compared to a scold: the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet.

A fond fame is best confuted by neglecting it. By fond, understand such a report as is rather ridiculous than dangerous if believed.

Let friendship creep gently to a height: if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath.

The true gentleman is extracted from ancient and worshipful parentage. When a pepin is planted on a pepin-stock the fruit growing thence is called a renate, a most delicious apple, as both by sire and dame well descended. Then his blood must needs be well purified who is gentilely born on both sides.

History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or gray hairs, privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof.

Jars concealed are half reconciled; which if generally known, ’tis a double task to stop the breach at home and men’s mouths abroad. To this end, a good husband never publicly reproves his wife. An open reproof puts her to do penance before all that are present; after which, many study revenge rather than reformation.

A divine benediction is always invisibly breathed on painful and lawful diligence. Thus, the servant employed in making and blowing of the fire (though sent away thence as soon as it burneth clear) oft-times getteth by his pains a more kindly and continuing heat than the master himself, who sitteth down by the same; and thus persons industriously occupying themselves thrive better on a little of their own honest getting, than lazy heirs on the large revenues left unto them.

Where jealousie is the jailour, many break the prison; it openeth more waves to wickednesse than it stoppeth; so that where it findeth one it maketh ten dishonest.

Some men are of a very cheerful disposition, and God forbid that all such should be condemned for lightness. O let not any envious eye disinherit men of that which is their “portion in this life, comfortably to enjoy the blessings thereof!”… Harmless mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore, jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality, or season.

Take heed of jesting: many have been ruined by it. It is hard to jest, and not sometimes jeer too; which oftentimes sinks deeper than was intended or expected.

He lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived, but lost. Besides, God is better than His promise, if He takes from him a long lease, and gives him a freehold of a greater value.

As the sword of the best-tempered metal is most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behaviour to their inferiors.

Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth. It is the policy of the Londoners, when they send a ship into the Levant or Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo, dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are the deeper sharers in that state wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty.

Reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best light. The faithful minister avoids such stories whose mention may suggest bad thoughts to the auditors, and will not use a light comparison to make thereof a graven application, for fear lest his poison go further than his antidote.

Surely that preaching which comes from the soul most works on the soul.

He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, may be a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.

Suspiciousness is as great an enemy to wisdom as too much credulity.

Learn to hold thy tongue. Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks’ silence.

He is a good time-server that improves the present for God’s glory and his own salvation.

Be always precisely true in whatever thou relatest of thy own knowledge, that thou mayest give an undoubted and settled reputation for veracity.

The reasons that moved her to remove were, because Rome was a place of riot and luxury, her soul being almost stifled with the frequencies of ladies’ visits.

It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well-furnished armoury…. Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely, first voluminous books, the task of a man’s life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are merely pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheates, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.

Our common education is not intended to render us good and wise, but learned: it hath not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and prudence, but hath imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; it hath chosen out for us not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin; and by these rules has instilled into our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity. But a good education alters the judgment and manners…. ’Tis a silly conceit that men without languages are also without understanding. It’s apparent, in all ages, that some such have been even prodigies for ability: for it’s not to be believed that wisdom speaks to her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which was there rather tacked than fastened? Whereas those notions which get in by “violenta possessio” will abide there till “ejectio firma,” sickness, or extreme age, dispossess them. It is best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching it the next morning.

Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be over full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof.

The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion, that heats not; whereas conference teaches and exercises at once. If I confer with an understanding man and a rude jester, he presses hard upon me on both sides: his imagination raises up mine to more than ordinary pitch. Jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and a consent of judgment is a quality totally offensive in conference.

An Index is a necessary implement and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein the Carriages of an Army are termed Impediments. Without this, a large Author is but a labyrinth, without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of Learning which is only indical: when Scholars (like Adders which onely bite the Horse-heels) nibble but at the Tables, which are calces librorum, neglecting the body of the Book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them) pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious Scholars prohibited the accommodation of an Index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it.