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Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.

John Selden

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John Selden
Age: 69 †
Born: 1584
Born: December 16
Died: 1654
Died: November 30
Jurist
Politician
Writer
Make
Things
Men
Masters
Speak
Write
Writing

More quotes by 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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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
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Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes they were the easiest for his feet.
John Selden
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More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels.
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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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
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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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Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.
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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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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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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Wit and wisdom are born with a man.
John Selden
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There is no book on which we can rest in a dying moment but the Bible.
John Selden
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Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet every body is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.
John Selden
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Philosophy is nothing but discretion.
John Selden
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Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.
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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Marriage is a desperate thing.
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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Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.
John Selden