L'Estrange Quotes

He that serves God for Money, will serve the Devil for better Wages.

Wickedness may prosper for a while.

The devil helps his servants for a season; but when they get into a pinch; he leaves them in the lurch.

A universal applause is seldom less than two thirds of a scandal

Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works.

Of all injustice that is the greatest which goes under the name of law.

If we should cease to be generous and charitable because another is sordid and ungrateful, it would be much in the power of vice to extinguish Christian virtues.

Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves.

The common people do not judge of vice or virtue by morality or immorality, so much as by the stamp that is set upon it by men of figure.

Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.

By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there's no more future left for them.

Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable.

Unruly ambition is deaf, not only to the advice of friends, but to the counsels and monitions of reason itself.

The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.

Riches are gotten with pain, kept with care, and lost with grief. The cares of riches lie heavier upon a good man than the inconveniences of an honest poverty.

Live and let live is the rule of common justice.

A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.

Ingratitude is abhorred by God and man.

Resolve to see the world on the sunny side and you have almost won the battle at the outset.

Partiality in a parent is unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools.

It is a way of calling a man a fool when no attention is given to what he says.

The very soul of the slothful does effectually but lie drowsing in his body, and the whole man is totally given up to his senses.

All duties are matters of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one.

It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit.

What signifies the sound of words in prayer without the affection of the heart, and a sedulous application of the proper means that may naturally lead us to such an end?

There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of human reason.

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit.

The blessings of fortune are the lowest; the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health; but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind.

A body may well lay too little as too much stress upon a dream; but the less he heed them the better.

Humor is the offspring of man; it comes forth like Minerva, fully armed from the brain.

So long as we stand in need of a benefit, there is nothing dearer to us; nor anything cheaper when we have received it.

Tutors should behave reverently before their pupils.

Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none; their vows and promises are no more than words, of course.

Some natures are so sour and ungrateful that they are never to be obliged.

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.

When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it.

It must be an industrious youth that provides against age; and he that fools away the one must either beg or starve in the other.

It may serve as a comfort to us, in all our calamities and afflictions, that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss.

One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life.

Imperfections would not be half so much taken notice of, if vanity did not make proclamation of them.

Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.

Money does all things,--for it gives and it takes away; it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter.

Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind.

Nothing is so fierce but love will soften; nothing so sharp-sighted in other matters but it will throw a mist before its eyes.

We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.

Tis not necessity, but opinion, that makes men miserable; and when we come to be fancy-sick, there's no cure.

There are braying men in the world, as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than away of braying?

Wickedness may prosper for awhile, but in the long run, he that sets all the knaves at work will pay them.