John Selden Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

He that has not religion to govern his morality, is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be, he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.

John Selden
Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.

John Selden
Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.

John Selden
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

John Selden
'Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.

John Selden
Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.

John Selden
First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.

John Selden
No man is wiser for his learning, wit and wisdom are born with a man.

John Selden
Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor, that has an army at his heels.

John Selden
In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

John Selden
We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth.

John Selden
A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.

John Selden
Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet: so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.

John Selden
If the prisoner should ask the judge whether he would be content to be hanged, were he in his case, he would answer no. Then, says the prisoner, do as you would be done to.

John Selden
Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.

John Selden
Scrutamini scripturas (Let us look at the scriptures). These two words have undone the world.

John Selden
Men say they are of the same religion, for quietness' sake; but if the matter were well examined, you would scarce find three anywhere of the same religion on all points.

John Selden
Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear.

John Selden
A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.

John Selden
All things are God's already; we can give him no right, by consecrating any, that he had not before, only we set it apart to his service - just as a gardener brings his master a basket of apricots, and presents them; his lord thanks him, and perhaps gives him something for his pains, and yet the apricots were as much his lord's before as now.

John Selden
We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn; whereas, if we take it all together, and considered what went before and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing.

John Selden
The Hall was the place where the great lord used to eat... He ate not in private, except in time of sickness... Nay, the king himself used to eat in the Hall, and his lords sat with him, and he understood men.

John Selden
Fine wits destroy themselves with their own plots, in meddling with great affairs of state.

John Selden
Commonly we say a judgement falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.

John Selden
Preaching, in the first sense of the word, ceased as soon as ever the gospel was written.

John Selden