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Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced.

Joseph Hall

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Joseph Hall
Age: 82 †
Born: 1574
Born: July 1
Died: 1656
Died: September 8
Clergyman
Poet
Priest
Writer
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Leicestershire
Ambition
Attainment
Necessary
Implies
Pride
Advanced
Present
Founded
Opinion
Worldly
Attainments
Actually
Envy
Laudable
Think
Lows
Emulation
Thinking
Humility
Evidently

More quotes by Joseph Hall

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It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.
Joseph Hall
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He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God He hath bidden me they cannot burden Him.
Joseph Hall
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I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together. The sun, rising and declining, makes long shadows at mid day, when he is highest, none at all.
Joseph Hall
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Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.
Joseph Hall
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This field is so spacious that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end than my way.
Joseph Hall
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Revenge commonly hurts both the offerer and sufferer as we see in a foolish bee, which in her anger invenometh the flesh and loseth her sting, and so lives a drone ever after.
Joseph Hall
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The proud man hath no God the envious man hath no neighbor the angry man hath not himself.
Joseph Hall
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As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works.
Joseph Hall
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The idle man is the Devil's cushion, on which he taketh his free ease: who, as he is uncapable of any good, so he is fitly disposed for all evil motions.
Joseph Hall
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The ear and the eye are the mind's receivers but the tongue is only busy in expending the treasures received. It, therefore, the revenues of the mind be uttered as fast or faster than they are received, it must needs be bare, and can never lay up for purchase.
Joseph Hall
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God loves to see his creatures happy our lawful delight is His they know not God that think to please Him with making themselves miserable. The idolaters thought it a fit service for Baal to cut and lance themselves never any holy man looked for thanks from the true God by wronging himself.
Joseph Hall
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I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist
Joseph Hall
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How easy it is for men to be swollen with admiration of their own strength and glory, and to be lifted up so high as to lose sight both of the ground whence they rose, and the hand that advanced them.
Joseph Hall
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The blood that is once inflamed with wine is apt to boil with rage.
Joseph Hall
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There is no enemy can hurt us but by our own hands. Satan could not hurt us, if our own corruption betrayed us not. Afflictions cannot hurt us without our own impatience. Temptations cannot hurt us, without our own yieldance. Death could not hurt us, without the sting of our own sins. Sins could not hurt us, without our own impenitence.
Joseph Hall
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It is a shame for the tongue to cast itself upon the uncertain pardon of other's ears
Joseph Hall
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[W]e all lie down in our bed of earth as sure to wake as ever we can be to shut our eyes.
Joseph Hall
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Let me know myself let others guess at me.
Joseph Hall
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Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.
Joseph Hall
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Mark in what order: first, our calling then, our election not beginning with our election first. By our calling, arguing our election.
Joseph Hall