Inspirational Quotes by Owen Feltham
“Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolves.”
topics: Apathy
“When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys.”
topics: Friendship
“God has made no one absolute. The rich depend on the poor, as well as the poor on the rich. The world is but a magnificent building; all the stones are gradually cemented together. No one subsists by himself alone.”
“To trust God when we have securities in our iron chest is easy, but not thankworthy; but to depend on him for what we cannot see, as it is more hard for man to do, so it is more acceptable to God.”
“Show me the man who would go to heaven alone, and I will show you one who will never be admitted there.”
topics: Heaven
“All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.”
topics: Holiness
“This wonder we find in hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend. How many would die did not hope sustain them; how many have died by hoping too much!”
topics: Hope
“Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.”
topics: Ignorance
“Perfection is immutable, but for things imperfect, to change is the way to perfect them. Constancy without knowledge cannot be always good; and in things ill, it is not virtue but an absolute vice.”
“Laws were made to restrain and punish the wicked; the wise and good do not need them as a guide, but only as a shield against rapine and oppression; they can live civilly and orderly, though there were no law in the world.”
topics: Justice
“To go to law is for two persons to kindle a fire, at their own cost, to warm others and singe themselves to cinders; and because they cannot agree as to what is truth and equity, they will both agree to unplume themselves that others may be decorated with their feathers.”
“A consciousness of inward knowledge gives confidence to the outward behavior, which, of all things, is the best to grace a man in his carriage.”
topics: Knowledge
“There is no detraction worse than to overpraise a man; for if his worth prove short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie to his honor.”
topics: Lying
“The married man is like the bee that fixes his hive, augments the world, benefits the republic, and by a daily diligence, without wronging any, profits all; but he who contemns wedlock, like a wasp, wanders an offence to the world, lives upon spoil and rapine, disturbs peace, steals sweets that are none of his own, and, by robbing the hives of others, meets misery as his due reward.”
“He who always waits upon God, is ready whensoever he calls. He is a happy man who so lives that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.”
topics: Obedience
“We do not wisely when we vent complaint and censure. We cry out for a little pain, when we do but smile for a great deal of contentment.”
topics: Pain
“The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two-common sense and perseverance.”
topics: Perseverance
“Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.”
“A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can measure.”
topics: Reasoning
Group of Brands
© 2025 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
Owen Feltham was an English writer, author of a book entitled Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political (c. 1620), containing 146 short essays. It had great popularity in its day. Though sometimes stiff and affected in style, it contains many sound, if not original or brilliant, reflections, and occasional felicities of expression. Feltham was for a time in the household of the Earl of Thomond as chaplain or sec., and published (1652), Brief Character of the Low Countries.