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Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.

Owen Feltham

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Owen Feltham
Died: 1668
Died: January 1
Writer
Owen Felltham
Imperfect
Perfection
Perfect
Change
Way
Things
Immutable
Imperfection
Cycles

More quotes by Owen Feltham

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Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness.
Owen Feltham
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Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.
Owen Feltham
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Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect change is the way to perfect them. It gets the name of wilfulness when it will not admit of a lawful change to the better. Therefore constancy without knowledge cannot be always good. In things ill it is not virtue, but an absolute vice.
Owen Feltham
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Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it.
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When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys.
Owen Feltham
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Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.
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Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.
Owen Feltham
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Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.
Owen Feltham
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Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.
Owen Feltham
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All men will be Peters in their bragging tongue, and most men will be Peters in their base denial but few men will be Peters in their quick repentance.
Owen Feltham
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Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to.
Owen Feltham
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Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.
Owen Feltham
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There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.
Owen Feltham
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He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man.
Owen Feltham
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It is a most unhappy state to be at a distance with God: man needs no greater infelicity than to be left to himself.
Owen Feltham
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Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.
Owen Feltham
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The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two - common sense and perseverance.
Owen Feltham
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It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.
Owen Feltham
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Virtue is the truest liberty.
Owen Feltham
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For converse among men, beautiful persons have less need of the mind's commending qualities. Beauty in itself is such a silent orator, that it is ever pleading for respect and liking, and by the eyes of others is ever sending, to their hearts for love.
Owen Feltham