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
Owen Feltham quotes about
balance would-be needs
He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.
nurse promise may
Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.
dependence
There is no one subsists by himself alone.
anticipation dies
How many would die did not hope sustain them...
two-friends keys secret
When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys.
misery kind fame
Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.
hope true-friend recovery
Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer--it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend.
hope men yield
Human life has not a surer friend, nor oftentimes a greater enemy, than hope. It is the miserable man's god, which in the hardest gripe of calamity never fails to yield to him beams of comfort. It is the presumptuous man's devil, which leads him a while in a smooth way, and then suddenly breaks his neck.
deeds action contemplation
Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.