Top 70 Joseph Hall Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Perfection is the child of time.”

— Joseph Hall

2. “Fools measure actions, after they are done, by the event; wise men beforehand, by the rules of reason and right. The former look to the end, to judge of the act. Let me look to the act, and leave the end with God.”

— Joseph Hall

3. “The life of doctrine is in application.”

— Joseph Hall

4. “Every day is a little life, and our whole life is but a day repeated. Therefore live every day as if it would be the last. Those that dare lose a day, are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it are desperate.”

— Joseph Hall

5. “What I have done is worthy of nothing but silence and forgetfulness, but what God has done for me is worthy of everlasting and thankful memory.”

— Joseph Hall

6. “A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men are to their friends.”

— Joseph Hall

7. “God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well.”

— Joseph Hall

8. “I first adventure, follow me who list And be the second English satirist.”

— Joseph Hall

9. “Let me know myself; let others guess at me.”

— Joseph Hall

10. “Nothing fools people as much as extreme passion.”

— Joseph Hall

11. “What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!”

— Joseph Hall

12. “If the sun of God’s countenance shine upon me, I may well be content to be wet with the rain of affliction.”

— Joseph Hall

13. “He is a very humble man, that thinks not himself better than some others.”

— Joseph Hall

14. “He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him.”

— Joseph Hall

15. “Good prayers never come creeping home. I am sure I shall receive either what I ask, or what I should ask.”

— Joseph Hall

16. “Our body is a well-set clock, which keeps good time, but if it be too much or indiscreetly tampered with, the alarm runs out before the hour.”

— Joseph Hall

17. “Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.”

— Joseph Hall

18. “Ambition is torment enough for an enemy; for it affords as much discontentment in enjoying as in want, making men like poisoned rats, which, when they have tasted of their bane, cannot rest till they drink, and then can much less rest till they die.”

— Joseph Hall

19. “Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced.”

— Joseph Hall

20. “The blood that is once inflamed with wine is apt to boil with rage.”

— Joseph Hall

21. “Not to be afflicted is a sign of weakness; for, therefore God imposeth no more on me, because He sees I can bear no more.”

— Joseph Hall

22. “Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.”

— Joseph Hall

23. “It is not sin that kills the soul, but impenitence.”

— Joseph Hall

24. “Let others either envy or pity me; I care not, so long as I enjoy myself.”

— Joseph Hall

25. “I will rather suffer a thousand wrongs than offer one. I have always found that to strive with a superior is injurious; with an equal, doubtful; with an inferior, sordid and base; with any, full of unquietness.”

— Joseph Hall

26. “Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt, – as good no scythe as no edge.”

— Joseph Hall

27. “Tranquillity consisteth in a steadiness of the mind; and how can that vessel that is beaten upon by contrary waves and winds, and tottereth to either part, be said to keep a steady course? Resolution is the only mother of security.”

— Joseph Hall

28. “I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together.”

— Joseph Hall

29. “Seldom was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.”

— Joseph Hall

30. “Revenge commonly hurts both the offerer and sufferer; as we see in a foolish bee, which in her anger invenometh the flesh and loseth her sting, and so lives a drone ever after.”

— Joseph Hall

31. “It is not the bee’s touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet.”

— Joseph Hall

32. “Mark in what order: first, our calling; then, our election; not beginning with our election first. By our calling, arguing our election.”

— Joseph Hall

33. “I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together. The sun, rising and declining, makes long shadows; at mid day, when he is highest, none at all.”

— Joseph Hall

34. “Nothing doth so fool a man as extreme passion. This doth make them fools which otherwise are not, and show them to be fools which are so.”

— Joseph Hall

35. “Heaven hath many tongues to talk of it, more eyes to behold it, but few hearts that rightly affect it.”

— Joseph Hall

36. “Garments that have once one rent in them are subject to be torn on every nail, and glasses that are once cracked are soon broken; such is man’s good name once tainted with just reproach.”

— Joseph Hall

37. “How easy it is for men to be swollen with admiration of their own strength and glory, and to be lifted up so high as to lose sight both of the ground whence they rose, and the hand that advanced them.”

— Joseph Hall

38. “A man’s opinion is in others; his being is in himself.”

— Joseph Hall

39. “It is of no small commendation to manage a little well. To live well in abundance is the praise of the estate, not of the person. I will study more how to give a good account of my little, than how to make it more.”

— Joseph Hall

40. “Our good purposes foreslowed are become our tormentors upon our deathbed.”

— Joseph Hall

41. “There would not be so many open mouths if there were not so many open ears.”

— Joseph Hall

42. “The idle man is the Devil’s cushion, on which he taketh his free ease: who, as he is uncapable of any good, so he is fitly disposed for all evil motions.”

— Joseph Hall

43. “He is great enough that is his own master.”

— Joseph Hall

44. “The ear and the eye are the mind’s receivers; but the tongue is only busy in expending the treasures received. It, therefore, the revenues of the mind be uttered as fast or faster than they are received, it must needs be bare, and can never lay up for purchase.”

— Joseph Hall

45. “Society is the atmosphere of souls; and we necessarily imbibe from it something which is either infectious or healthful.”

— Joseph Hall

46. “If religion might be judged of according to men’s intentions, there would scarcely be any idolatry in the world.”

— Joseph Hall

47. “A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”

— Joseph Hall

48. “Rich people should consider that they are only trustees for what they posses, and should show their wealth to be more in doing good than merely in having it.”

— Joseph Hall

49. “As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works.”

— Joseph Hall

50. “How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world! Every creature is a letter, every day a new page.”

— Joseph Hall