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Every man should study conciseness in speaking it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

Owen Feltham

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Owen Feltham
Died: 1668
Died: January 1
Writer
Owen Felltham
Study
Speaker
Though
Speakers
May
Torture
Every
Sign
Long
Speaking
Men
Ignorance
Hearer
Speech
Oratory
Please
Speeches

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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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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.
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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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Zeal without humanity is like a ship without a rudder, liable to be stranded at any moment
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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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How many would die did not hope sustain them.
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Where there is plenty, charity is a duty, not a courtesy
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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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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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The irresolute man flecks from one egg to another, so hatches nothing.
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Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to.
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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.
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Virtue is the truest liberty.
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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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That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs.
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We pick our own sorrows out of the joys of other men, and from their sorrows likewise we derive our joys.
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In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.
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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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Any man shall speak the better when he knows what others have said, and sometimes the consciousness of his inward knowledge gives a confidence to his outward behavior, which of all other is the best thing to grace a man in his carriage.
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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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