Jeremy Collier

Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.

Power, unless managed with gentleness and discretion, does but make a man the more hated. No intervals of good-humor, no starts of bounty, will atone for tyranny and oppression.

Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.

Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person; it gives you the command of your head, secures your …

He that would relish success to a good purpose should keep his passions cool, and his expectations low; and then it is possible that his fortune might exceed his fancy; for an advantage always rises by surprise, and is almost always …

Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.

Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.

Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing …

A poet's mind should be clear and unsullied; and the muses being virgins, their performances should agree with their condition.

The size of a man's sense and improvement is discovered by his pleasures as much as by anything else.

The end of pleasure is to support the offices of life, to relieve the fatigues of business, to reward a regular action, and to encourage the continuance.

Modesty was designed by Providence as a guard to virtue, and that it might be always at hand it is wrought into the mechanism of the body. It is likewise proportioned to the occasions of life, and strongest in youth when passion is so too.

Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty for the more a man knows, the more he discovers his ignorance.

Those who come last seem to enter with advantage. They are born to the wealth of antiquity. The materials for judging are prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their hands. Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, …

Intemperance is a dangerous companion. It throws people off their guard; betrays them to a great many indecencies, to ruinous passions, to disadvantages in fortune; makes them discover secrets, drive foolish bargains, engage in play, and …

Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.

Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom. Socrates, whom the oracle, that is, the united opinion of the world in which he moved, pronounced to be the wisest man, was content with the title of a lover, rather than a professor, of wisdom.

Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of …

It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Her-cules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand, and their reason with their left.

If wrecks and ruins and desolation of kingdoms are marks of greatness, why do we not worship a tempest, and erect a statue to the plague? A panegyric upon an earthquake is every jot as reasonable as upon such conquests as these.