Owen Feltham
Owen Feltham
Owen Felthamwas an English writer, author of a book entitled Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political, containing 146 short essays. It had great popularity in its day. Feltham was for a time in the household of the Earl of Thomond as chaplain or sec., and published, Brief Character of the Low Countries. His most cited essay is "How the Distempers of these Times should affect wise Men" which was selected for inclusion in John Gross' The Oxford Book of Essays, a...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
vices progression
Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.
rivers rowing virtue
Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.
liberty virtue truest
Virtue is the truest liberty.
misery kind fame
Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.
beautiful women believe
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?
together world stones
God has made no one absolute. The rich depend on the poor, as well as the poor on the rich. The world is but a magnificent building; all the stones are gradually cemented together. No one subsists by himself.
weed growing-up fall
Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.
balance would-be needs
He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.
crush fall broken
Truth and fidelity are the pillars of the temple of the world; when these are broken, the fabric falls, and crushes all to pieces.
heaven selfishness desire
It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.
business grateful giving
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.
deeds action contemplation
Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.
littles too-much economy
He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.
friends men annoyed
No man can expect to find a friend without faults; nor can he propose himself to be so to another. Without reciprocal mildness and temperance there can be no continuance of friendship. Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him. The sober man only can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite. It is better for a man to depend on himself, than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool.