William Temple was a bishop in the Church of England. He served as Bishop of Manchester, Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by William Temple
A man’s wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy.
—William Temple
Topics: Wisdom
I have long thought, that the different abilities of men, which we call wisdom or prudence for the conduct of public affairs or private life, grow directly out of that little grain of good sense which they bring with them into the world; and that the defect of it in men comes from some want in their conception or birth.
—William Temple
In conversation, humor is more than wit, and easiness more than knowledge. Few desire to learn, or think they need it. — All desire to be pleased, or at least to be easy.
—William Temple
Topics: Conversation
All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half-starved of other countries.
—William Temple
Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business; which are signs of their being weary of themselves.
—William Temple
Topics: Leisure, Wealth, Solitude
The problem of evil… Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it?
—William Temple
Topics: Evil
Authority is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily distrusts the things which he and all men have been always bred up to.
—William Temple
A man that only translates, shall never be a poet: nor a painter, that only copies; nor a swimmer, that swims always with bladders; so people that trust wholly to others’ charity, and without industry of their own, will always be poor.
—William Temple
Topics: Charity, Self-reliance
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
—William Temple
Topics: Life and Living
By luxury we condemn ourselves to greater torments than have yet been invented by anger or revenge, or inflicted by the greatest tyrants upon the orst of men.
—William Temple
Topics: Luxury
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