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Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.

John Selden

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John Selden
Age: 69 †
Born: 1584
Born: December 16
Died: 1654
Died: November 30
Jurist
Politician
Writer
Little
World
Foolery
Governs
Thou
Atheism
Littles

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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.
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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.
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The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness.
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Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.
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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.
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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.
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Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.
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There is no book on which we can rest in a dying moment but the Bible.
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Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes they were the easiest for his feet.
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Wit and wisdom are born with a man.
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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.
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Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty.
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Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit.
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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.
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The Parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made, he governs the Parish.
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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.
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Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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