Joseph Hall
Joseph Hall
Joseph Hallwas an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth1 July 1574
long shadow together
I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together. The sun, rising and declining, makes long shadows; at mid day, when he is highest, none at all.
care god-love adverbs
God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well.
gratitude covetousness
...Covetousness, looking more at what we would have than at what we have.
troops crowds sometimes
Virtues go ever in troops; they go so thick, that sometimes some are hid in the crowd; which yet are, but appear not.
laziness desperate dare
Those that dare lose a day, ate dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, are desperate.
spiritual distance eye
Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.
nice greatness contentment
Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite.
men good-man enemy
A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men are to their friends.
passion men fool
Nothing doth so fool a man as extreme passion. This doth make them fools which otherwise are not, and show them to be fools which are so.
horse fall oxen
That which the French proverb hath of sickness is true of all evils, that they come on horseback, and go away on foot; we have often seen a sudden fall or one meal's surfeit hath stuck by many to their graves; whereas pleasures come like oxen, slow, and heavily, and go away like post-horses, upon the spur.
death hypocrite men
Death did not first strike Adam, the first sinful man, nor Cain, the first hypocrite, but Abel, the innocent and righteous. The first soul that met with death, overcame death; the first soul that parted from earth went to heaven. Death argues not displeasure, because he whom God loved best dies first, and the murderer is punished with living.
giving shows dies
Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.
time children perfection
Perfection is the child of time.
hurt hands temptation
There is no enemy can hurt us but by our own hands. Satan could not hurt us, if our own corruption betrayed us not. Afflictions cannot hurt us without our own impatience. Temptations cannot hurt us, without our own yieldance. Death could not hurt us, without the sting of our own sins. Sins could not hurt us, without our own impenitence.