William Temple Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.”

“No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.”

“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.”