Top 70 John Selden Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Ignorance of the law excuses no man.”

— John Selden

2. “Old friends are best.”

— John Selden

3. “Preachers say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?”

— John Selden

4. “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.”

— John Selden

5. “Wise people say nothing in dangerous times.”

— John Selden

6. “While you are upon the earth, enjoy the good things that are here.”

— John Selden

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

— John Selden

8. “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.”

— John Selden

9. “We see the judges look like lions, but we do not see who moves them.”

— John Selden

10. “Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were the easiest for his feet.”

— John Selden

11. “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.”

— John Selden

12. “A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.”

— John Selden

13. “A gallant man is above ill words.”

— John Selden

14. “Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.”

— John Selden

15. “Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear.”

— John Selden

16. “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.”

— John Selden

17. “The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness.”

— John Selden

18. “Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is.”

— John Selden

19. “There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing.”

— John Selden

20. “The world cannot be governed without juggling.”

— John Selden

21. “Money makes a man laugh.”

— John Selden

22. “Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be showing it, and so spoil it.”

— John Selden

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

— John Selden

24. “Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain, the enjoying of something I am in great trouble for till I have it.”

— John Selden

25. “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.”

— John Selden

26. “Marriage is a desperate thing.”

— John Selden

27. “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.”

— John Selden

28. “Every law is a contract between the king and the people and therefore to be kept.”

— John Selden

29. “Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it’s twice as onerous a duty.”

— John Selden

30. “The Parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made, he governs the Parish.”

— John Selden

31. “Those that govern most make least noise.”

— John Selden

32. “Wit and wisdom are born with a man.”

— John Selden

33. “It’s not the drinking to be blamed, but the excess.”

— John Selden

34. “We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth.”

— John Selden

35. “Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit.”

— John Selden

36. “More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels.”

— John Selden

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

— John Selden

38. “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.”

— John Selden

39. “Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.”

— John Selden

40. “Ceremony keeps up things: ’tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, and the spirit lost.”

— John Selden

41. “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; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.”

— John Selden

42. “No man is the wiser for his learning.”

— John Selden

43. “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.”

— John Selden

44. “He that hath a scrupulous conscience is like a horse that is not well weighed; he starts at every bird that flies out of the hedge.”

— John Selden

45. “In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.”

— John Selden

46. “Idolatry is in a man’s own thought, not in the opinion of another.”

— John Selden

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

— John Selden

48. “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.”

— John Selden

49. “Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.”

— John Selden

50. “They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.”

— John Selden