Roger L'Estrange Quotes
The devil helps his servants for a season; but when they get into a pinch; he leaves them in the lurch.
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.
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.
Unruly ambition is deaf, not only to the advice of friends, but to the counsels and monitions of reason itself.
Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.
It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable.
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.
By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there's no more future left for them.
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.
A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.
Resolve to see the world on the sunny side and you have almost won the battle at the outset.
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.
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.
All duties are matters of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one.
Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.
It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit.
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.
Imperfections would not be half so much taken notice of, if vanity did not make proclamation of them.
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.
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?
The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit.
He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.
He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the ink-pot.
He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.
Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law, and of all sorts of tyranny the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity, is the most insupportable.