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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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Owen Feltham
Died: 1668
Died: January 1
Writer
Owen Felltham
Without
Name
Ill
Way
Virtue
Admit
Good
Names
Vices
Always
Knowledge
Absolutes
Lawful
Things
Perfect
Absolute
Immutable
Cannot
Perfection
Constancy
Change
Therefore
Imperfect
Better
Gets
Vice

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Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to.
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There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.
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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.
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To be gentle is the test of a lady.
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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.
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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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Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.
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Some are so uncharitable as to think all women bad, and others are so credulous as to believe they are all good. All will grant her corporeal frame more wonderful and more beautiful than man's. And can we think God would put a worse soul into a better body?
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Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.
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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.
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I love the man that is modestly valiant that stirs not till he most needs, and then to purpose. A continued patience I commend not.
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It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.
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By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man.
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There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may be sometimes temptations to be otherwise but, all cards cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar, which, in all assays, can in himself protect him.
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Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.
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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.
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Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.
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In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.
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A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.
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Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness.
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