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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
Change
Therefore
Imperfect
Better
Gets
Vice
Without
Name
Ill
Way
Virtue
Admit
Good
Names
Vices
Always
Knowledge
Absolutes
Lawful
Things
Perfect
Absolute
Immutable
Cannot
Perfection
Constancy

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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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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 dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.
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The boundary of man is moderation. When once we pass that pale our guardian angel quits his charge of us.
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There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.
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The irresolute man flecks from one egg to another, so hatches nothing.
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In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.
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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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Where there is plenty, charity is a duty, not a courtesy
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Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and in that man I will show you one who will never be admitted into heaven.
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Zeal without humanity is like a ship without a rudder, liable to be stranded at any moment
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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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Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.
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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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Virtue is the truest liberty.
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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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That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs.
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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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Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.
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God has made no one absolute.
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