William Temple quotes

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new. (William Temple)
When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.
William Temple
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.
William Temple
When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't.
William Temple
Man's wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy.
William Temple
No clap of thunder in a fair frosty day could astonish the world more than [England's] declaration of war against Holland in 1672.
William Temple
I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose.
William Temple
All the precepts of Christianity agree to teach and command us to moderate our passions, to temper our affections towards all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under the loss whenever he that gave it shall see fit to take away.
William Temple
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
William Temple
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.
William Temple
The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it. (William Temple)
The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.
William Temple
The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.
William Temple
The problem of evil... Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it?
William Temple
Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.
William Temple
Authority is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily distrusts the things which he and all men have been always bred up to.
William Temple
There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
William Temple
No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.
William Temple
You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.
William Temple
Science has its being in a perpetual mental restlessness.
William Temple
Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all. (William Temple)
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.
William Temple
When these children are four years old, they shall be sent to the country workhouse and there taught to read two hours a day and kept fully employed the rest of their time in any of the manufactures of the house which best suits their age, strength and capacity. If it be objected that at these early years, they cannot be made useful, I reply that at four years of age there are sturdy employments in which children can earn their living; but besides, there is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours in a day, whether they earn a living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them...
William Temple