Top 90 Isaac Watts Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “A flower, when offered in the bud, is no vain sacrifice.”

— Isaac Watts

52. “Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.”

— Isaac Watts

53. “Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature.”

— Isaac Watts

54. “The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.”

— Isaac Watts

55. “And he that does one fault at first And lies to hide it, makes it two.”

— Isaac Watts

56. “For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.”

— Isaac Watts

57. “In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome.”

— Isaac Watts

58. “Earth, thou great footstool of our God, who reigns on high; thou fruitful source of all our raiment, life, and food; our house, our parent, and our nurse.”

— Isaac Watts

59. “Fancy and humour, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.”

— Isaac Watts

60. “Disputation carries away the mind from that calm and sedate temper which is so necessary to contemplate truth.”

— Isaac Watts

61. “Do not spend the day in gathering flowers by the way side, lest night come upon you before you arrive at your journey’s end, and then you will not reach it.”

— Isaac Watts

62. “No man is obliged to learn and know every thing; this can neither be sought nor required, for it is utterly impossible; yet all persons are under some obligation to improve their own understanding; otherwise it will be a barren desert, or a forest overgrown with weeds and brambles. Universal ignorance or infinite errors will overspread the mind which is utterly neglected and lies without any cultivation. Skill.”

— Isaac Watts

63. “Abandon the secret chamber and the spiritual life will decay.”

— Isaac Watts

64. “Instructors should not only be skilful in those sciences which they teach, but have skill in the method of teaching, and patience in the practice.”

— Isaac Watts

65. “Academical disputation gives vigor and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation.”

— Isaac Watts

66. “Custom and authority are no sure evidence of truth.”

— Isaac Watts

67. “Every one of his opinions appears to himself to be written with sunbeams.”

— Isaac Watts

68. “Some have a violent and turgid manner of talking and thinking; they are always in extremes, and pronounce concerning everything in the superlative.”

— Isaac Watts

69. “A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.”

— Isaac Watts

70. “Satirists do expose their own ill nature.”

— Isaac Watts

71. “Thoughts, like old vultures, prey upon their heart-strings.”

— Isaac Watts

72. “To prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.”

— Isaac Watts

73. “Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.”

— Isaac Watts

74. “When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge.”

— Isaac Watts

75. “Learn good-humor, never to oppose without just reason; abate some degree of pride and moroseness.”

— Isaac Watts

76. “Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light.”

— Isaac Watts

77. “You should therefore contrive and practice some proper methods to acquaint yourself with your own ignorance, and to impress your mind with a deep and painful sense of the low and imperfect degrees of your present knowledge, that you may be incited with labor and activity to pursue after greater measures.”

— Isaac Watts

78. “As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food.”

— Isaac Watts

79. “I love the soul that dares tread the temptations of his years beneath his youthful feet.”

— Isaac Watts

80. “The Word of God and the grace of Christ in the promises are our daily support, and the constant nourishment of our souls.”

— Isaac Watts

81. “It would be of great use to us to form our deliberate judgments of persons and things in the calmest and serenest hours of life, when the passions of nature are all silent, and the mind enjoys its most perfect composure.”

— Isaac Watts

82. “Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks – love, and the contemplation of the Deity.”

— Isaac Watts

83. “Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument.”

— Isaac Watts

84. “Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.”

— Isaac Watts

85. “The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest.”

— Isaac Watts

86. “The Great God values not the service of men, if the heart be not in it: The Lord sees and judges the heart; he has no regard to outward forms of worship, if there be no inward adoration, if no devout affection be employed therein. It is therefore a matter of infinite importance, to have the whole heart engaged steadfastly to God.”

— Isaac Watts

87. “How glad the heathens would have been, That worship idols, wood and stone, If they the book God had seen.”

— Isaac Watts

88. “The fondness we have for self furnishes another long rank of prejudices.”

— Isaac Watts

89. “Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.”

— Isaac Watts

90. “When two or three sciences are pursued at the same time if one of them be dry, as logic, let another be more entertaining, to secure the mind from weariness.”

— Isaac Watts

91. “In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.”

— Isaac Watts

92. “The very substance which last week was grazing in the field, waving in the milk pail, or growing in the garden, is now become part of the man.”

— Isaac Watts