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Ignorance of the law excuses no man not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
John Selden
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John Selden
Age: 69 †
Born: 1584
Born: December 16
Died: 1654
Died: November 30
Jurist
Politician
Writer
Excuses
Excuse
Ignorance
Law
Tell
Every
Men
Refute
Plead
More quotes by John Selden
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
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
The world cannot be governed without juggling.
John Selden
Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another lashed, another plain but every man has a doublet so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.
John Selden
There is no book on which we can rest in a dying moment but the Bible.
John Selden
Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why He should grant this or that He knows best wheat is good for us. If your boy should ask you for a suit of clothes and give you reasons, would you endure it? You know his needs better than he let him ask for a suit of clothes.
John Selden
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
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
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
Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty.
John Selden
The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.
John Selden
Men say they are of the same religion, for quietness' sake but if the matter were well examined, you would scarce find three anywhere of the same religion on all points.
John Selden
Of all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all the actions of our lives, 'tis the most meddled with by other people.
John Selden
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves.
John Selden
Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking 'tis not the eating, and 'tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.
John Selden
A gallant man is above ill words.
John Selden
Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor, that has an army at his heels.
John Selden
No man is the wiser for his learning
John Selden
Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.
John Selden
Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.
John Selden