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Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty.

John Selden

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John Selden
Age: 69 †
Born: 1584
Born: December 16
Died: 1654
Died: November 30
Jurist
Politician
Writer
Tell
Never
Onerous
Beforehand
Resolution
Twice
Duty

More quotes by John Selden

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The House of Commons is called the Lower House, in twenty Acts of Parliament but what are twenty Acts of Parliament amongst Friends?
John Selden
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While you are upon earth, enjoy the good things that are here (to that end were they given), and be not melancholy, and wish yourself in heaven.
John Selden
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Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?
John Selden
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There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing.
John Selden
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Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.
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Nothing is text but what is spoken of in the Bible and meant there for person and place the rest is application which a discreet man may do well but it is his scripture, not the Holy Ghost's. First, in your sermons use your logic, and then your rhetoric rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root.
John Selden
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The law against witches does not prove there be any but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives.
John Selden
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He that hath a scrupulous conscience is like a horse that is not well weighed he starts at every bird that flies out of the hedge.
John Selden
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They that are against Superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I will wear all colours but black, then am I superstitious in not wearing black.
John Selden
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All things are God's already we can give him no right, by consecrating any, that he had not before, only we set it apart to his service - just as a gardener brings his master a basket of apricots, and presents them his lord thanks him, and perhaps gives him something for his pains, and yet the apricots were as much his lord's before as now.
John Selden
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Those that govern most make least noise.
John Selden
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In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.
John Selden
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Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.
John Selden
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Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice and yet everybody is content to hear.
John Selden
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The Parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made, he governs the Parish.
John Selden
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Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that he knows best what is good for us.
John Selden
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No man is the wiser for his learning it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon but wit and wisdom are born with a man.
John Selden
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The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.
John Selden
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Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is.
John Selden
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We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn whereas , if we take it all together, and considered what went before and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing.
John Selden