Isaac Watts Men Quotations

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.

Among all the accomplishments of youth there is none preferable to a decent and agreeable behavior among men, a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good-humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of human life.

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.

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.

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

A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does.

The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on everything; and the soul tinctured with any passion diffuses a false color over the appearance of things.

Tis true my form is something odd But blaming me is blaming God Could I create myself anew I would not fail in pleasing you. If I could reach from pole to pole Or grasp the ocean with a span I would be measured by the soul The mind's the standard of the man.

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.

In matters of equity between man and man, our Saviour has taught us to put my neighbor in place of myself, and myself in place of my neighbor.

Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment.

Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.