Joseph Hall Quotes

Garments that have once one rent in them are subject to be torn on every nail, and glasses that are once cracked are soon broken; such is man’s good name once tainted with just reproach.

How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world! Every creature is a letter, every day a new page.

If the sun of God’s countenance shine upon me, I may well be content to be wet with the rain of affliction.

He is great enough that is his own master.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him.

The best ground untilled, soonest runs out into rank weeds. A man of knowledge that is negligent or uncorrected, cannot but grow wild and godless.

Our body is a well-set clock, which keeps good time, but if it be too much or indiscreetly tampered with, the alarm runs out before the hour.

Revenge commonly hurts both the offerer and sufferer; as we see in a foolish bee, which in her anger invenometh the flesh and loseth her sting, and so lives a drone ever after.

How easy it is for men to be swollen with admiration of their own strength and glory, and to be lifted up so high as to lose sight both of the ground whence they rose, and the hand that advanced them.

We must first pray, that God would make us wise; before we can wish, he would make us happy.

I will rather suffer a thousand wrongs than offer one. I have always found that to strive with a superior is injurious; with an equal, doubtful; with an inferior, sordid and base; with any, full of unquietness.