Thomas Fuller

Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh 't is cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches.

Heat of passion makes our souls to chap, and the devil creeps in at the crannies.

Let not thy anger be so hot, but that the most torrid zone thereof may be habitable. Fright not people from thy pre∣sence with the terrour of thy intolerable impatience. Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but …

Be not mortally angry with any for a venial fault. He will make a strange combustion in the state of his soul, who at the landing of every cockboat sets the beacons on fire. To be angry for every toy debases the worth of thy anger; for he …

Be not angry with any without a cause. If thou beest, thou must not onely, as the Proverb saith, be appeas'd with∣out amends (having neither cost nor damage given thee) but, as our Saviour saith, be in danger of the judgement.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind

Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.

They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.

Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room.

The lion is not so fierce as painted.

Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.

But our captain counts the image of God — nevertheless his image — cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.

One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience.

[T]hey which play with the devils rattles, will be brought by degrees to wield his sword[.]

She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him.

He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune.

Many favors which God giveth us ravel out for want of hemming, through our own unthankfulness; for though prayer purchaseth blessings, giving praise doth keep the quiet possession of them.

By the same proportion that a penny saved is a penny gained, the preserver of books is a Mate for the Compiler of them.