Thomas Fuller

Thomas Fuller was an English preacher, historian, and scholar.

Sourced

• Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.
  • Life of Monica (1642)

• He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it.
  • Life of the Duke of Alva (1642). Compare: "A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy-body to decay, And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay", John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, part i. line 156.

• It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.
  • Pisgah Sight (1650), Book II, ch. 2

• There is a great difference between painting a face and not washing it.
  • Church History, Book VII, Section 32

• Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high.
  • Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician (1646), Sect. vi. Par. 18, 1. Compare: "My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads", Francis Bacon, Apothegms, No. 17

The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

• He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.
  • The Good Husband

• She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him.
  • The Good Wife

• One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience.
  • The Good Advocate

• A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion. 2
  • The True Church Antiquary.

Compare: "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion", Francis Bacon, Of Atheism

• But our captain counts the image of God—nevertheless his image—cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.
  • The Good Sea-Captain

• To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.
  • The Virtuous Lady

• Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
  • Of Building

• The lion is not so fierce as painted.
  • Of Preferment. Compare: "is bark is worse than his bite", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum

• Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room.
  • Of Natural Fools

• The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.
  • Of Tombs

• Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.
  • Of Books

• Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.
  • Of Marriage

• They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.
  • Of Marriage

• Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.
  • Of Fame

• Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind.
  • Of Anger

• He will make a strange combustion in the state of his soul, who at the landing of every cockboat sets the beacons on fire.
  • Of Anger

• Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but once on flame there is no coming near to quench them.
  • Of Anger

• Do not in an instant what an age cannot recompense.
  • Of Anger

• Heat of passion makes our souls to chap, and the devil creeps in at the crannies.
  • Of Anger

• Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh 't is cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches.
  • Of Jesting