Quote

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

John Selden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by John Selden

Image
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
Image
No man is the wiser for his learning
John Selden
Image
If the prisoner should ask the judge whether he would be content to be hanged, were he in his case, he would answer no. Then, says the prisoner, do as you would be done to.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.
John Selden
Image
A gallant man is above ill words.
John Selden
Image
Wit and wisdom are born with a man.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
Commonly we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
Marriage is a desperate thing.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The world cannot be governed without juggling.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.
John Selden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.
John Selden