John Selden Men Quotations

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

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

No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man.

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.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.

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.

No man is the wiser for his learning

Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.

Humility is a virtue all men preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servants, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves.

Commonly we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, and 'tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.

Of all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all the actions of our lives, 'tis the most meddled with by other people.

To preach long, loud, and Damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us.

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity.

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.

Nothing is text but what is spoken of in the Bible and meant there for person and place; the rest is application; which a discreet man may do well; but it is his scripture, not the Holy Ghost's. 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.

A gallant man is above ill words.

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

Patience is the chiefest fruit of study; a man that strives to make himself different from other men by much reading gains this chiefest good, that in all fortunes he hath something to entertain and comfort himself withal.

A wise man should never resolve upon anything, at least, never let the world know his resolution, for if he cannot reach that he is ashamed.

When men comfort themselves with philosophy, 'tis not because they have got two or three sentences, but because they have digested those sentences, and made them their own: philosophy is nothing but discretion.

Money makes a man laugh.

You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's - not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you - not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity - not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul - a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man.

Wit and wisdom are born with a man.

The law against witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives.