Top 60 Owen Feltham Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Knowledge is the treasure of the mind, but discretion is the key to it, without which it is useless. The practical part of wisdom is the best.”

— Owen Feltham

2. “The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two – common sense and perseverance.”

— Owen Feltham

3. “In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.”

— Owen Feltham

4. “Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect change is the way to perfect them. It gets the name of wilfulness when it will not admit of a lawful change to the better. Therefore constancy without knowledge cannot be always good. In things ill it is not virtue, but an absolute vice.”

— Owen Feltham

5. “The greatest results in life are usually attained by common sense and perseverance.”

— Owen Feltham

6. “By gaming we lose both our time and treasure – two things most precious to the life of man.”

— Owen Feltham

7. “Truth and fidelity are the pillars of the temple of the world; when these are broken, the fabric falls, and crushes all to pieces.”

— Owen Feltham

8. “Where there is plenty, charity is a duty, not a courtesy.”

— Owen Feltham

9. “Discontent is like ink poured into water, which fills the whole fountain full of blackness.”

— Owen Feltham

10. “To go to law is for two persons to kindle a fire, at their own cost, to warm others and singe themselves to cinders; and because they cannot agree as to what is truth and equity, they will both agree to unplume themselves that others may be decorated with their feathers.”

— Owen Feltham

11. “God has made no one absolute.”

— Owen Feltham

12. “Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and in that man I will show you one who will never be admitted into heaven.”

— Owen Feltham

13. “There is no one subsists by himself alone.”

— Owen Feltham

14. “Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it.”

— Owen Feltham

15. “Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.”

— Owen Feltham

16. “It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.”

— Owen Feltham

17. “Works without faith are like a fish without water, it wants the element it should live in. A building without a basis cannot stand; faith is the foundation, and every good action is as a stone laid.”

— Owen Feltham

18. “Zeal without humanity is like a ship without a rudder, liable to be stranded at any moment.”

— Owen Feltham

19. “Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.”

— Owen Feltham

20. “Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.”

— Owen Feltham

21. “A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.”

— Owen Feltham

22. “All men will be Peters in their bragging tongue, and most men will be Peters in their base denial; but few men will be Peters in their quick repentance.”

— Owen Feltham

23. “There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.”

— Owen Feltham

24. “Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.”

— Owen Feltham

25. “That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs.”

— Owen Feltham

26. “When I but hear her sing, I fare Like one that raised, holds his ear To some bright star in the supremest Round; Through which, besides the light that’s seen There may be heard, from Heaven within, The rests of Anthems, that the Angels sound.”

— Owen Feltham

27. “The irresolute man flecks from one egg to another, so hatches nothing.”

— Owen Feltham

28. “Some are so uncharitable as to think all women bad, and others are so credulous as to believe they are all good. All will grant her corporeal frame more wonderful and more beautiful than man’s. And can we think God would put a worse soul into a better body?”

— Owen Feltham

29. “Time is like a ship which never anchors; while I am on board, I had better do those things that may profit me at my landing, than practice such as shall cause my commitment when I come ashore.”

— Owen Feltham

30. “He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.”

— Owen Feltham

31. “God has made no one absolute. The rich depend on the poor, as well as the poor on the rich. The world is but a magnificent building; all the stones are gradually cemented together. No one subsists by himself.”

— Owen Feltham

32. “Meditation is the soul’s perspective glass.”

— Owen Feltham

33. “Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.”

— Owen Feltham

34. “Gold is the fool’s curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.”

— Owen Feltham

35. “He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.”

— Owen Feltham

36. “When two friends part they should lock up one another’s secrets, and interchange their keys.”

— Owen Feltham

37. “Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.”

— Owen Feltham

38. “Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful; joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.”

— Owen Feltham

39. “Honesty is a warrant of far more safety than fame.”

— Owen Feltham

40. “The noblest part of a friend is an honest boldness in the notifying of errors. He that tells me of a fault, aiming at my good, I must think him wise and faithful – wise in spying that which I see not; faithful in a plain admonishment, not tainted with flattery.”

— Owen Feltham

41. “Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.”

— Owen Feltham

42. “Take heed of a speedy professing friend; love is never lasting which flames before it burns.”

— Owen Feltham

43. “How many would die did not hope sustain them...”

— Owen Feltham

44. “Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.”

— Owen Feltham

45. “Men are like wine, – not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.”

— Owen Feltham

46. “He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man.”

— Owen Feltham

47. “Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.”

— Owen Feltham

48. “It is rare to see a rich man religious; for religion preaches restraint, and riches prompt to unlicensed freedom.”

— Owen Feltham

49. “Meditation is the soul’s perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.”

— Owen Feltham

50. “To trust God when we have securities in our iron chest is easy, but not thankworthy; but to depend on him for what we cannot see, as it is more hard for man to do, so it is more acceptable to God.”

— Owen Feltham