Top 58 Quotes & Sayings by Roger L'Estrange

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English author Roger L'Estrange.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Sir Roger L'Estrange was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier, and press censor. Throughout his life L'Estrange was frequently mired in controversy and acted as a staunch ideological defender of King Charles II's regime during the Restoration era. His works played a key role in the emergence of a distinct 'Tory' bloc during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81. Perhaps his best known polemical pamphlet was An Account of the Growth of Knavery, which ruthlessly attacked the parliamentary opposition to Charles II and his successor James, Duke of York, placing them as fanatics who misused contemporary popular anti-Catholic sentiment to attack the Restoration court and the existing social order in order to pursue their own political ends. Following the Exclusion Crisis and the failure of the nascent Whig faction to disinherit James, Duke of York in favour of Charles II's illegitimate son James, 1st Duke of Monmouth L'Estrange used his newspaper The Observator to harangue his opponents and act as a voice for a popular provincial Toryism during the 'Tory Reaction' of 1681-85. Despite serving as an MP from 1685-89 his stock fell under James II's reign as his staunch hostility to religious nonconformism conflicted with James' goals of religious tolerance for both Catholics and Nonconformists. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the collapse of the Restoration political order heralded the end of L'Estrange's career in public life, although his greatest translation work, that of Aesop's Fables, saw publication in 1692.

English - Author | December 17, 1616 - December 11, 1704

Source: Wikipedia

Unruly ambition is deaf, not only to the advice of friends, but to the counsels and monitions of reason itself.

Roger L'Estrange

The devil helps his servants for a season; but when they get into a pinch; he leaves them in the lurch.

Roger L'Estrange

Resolve to see the world on the sunny side and you have almost won the battle at the outset.

Roger L'Estrange

Some natures are so sour and ungrateful that they are never to be obliged.

Roger L'Estrange

Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none; their vows and promises are no more than words, of course.

Roger L'Estrange

The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit.

Roger L'Estrange

Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works.

Roger L'Estrange

Wickedness may prosper for a while.

Roger L'Estrange

By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there's no more future left for them.

Roger L'Estrange

What man in his right senses, that has wherewithal to live free, would make himself a slave for superfluities? What does that man want who has enough? Or what is he the better for abundance that can never be satisfied.

Roger L'Estrange

Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind.

Roger L'Estrange

It is a way of calling a man a fool when no attention is given to what he says.

Roger L'Estrange

All duties are matters of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one.

Roger L'Estrange

There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of human reason.

Roger L'Estrange

What signifies the sound of words in prayer without the affection of the heart, and a sedulous application of the proper means that may naturally lead us to such an end?

Roger L'Estrange

He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.

Roger L'Estrange

Ingratitude is abhorred by God and man.

Roger L'Estrange

Some read books only with a view to find fault, while others read only to be taught; the former are like venomous spiders, extracting a poisonous quality, where the latter, like the bees, sip out a sweet and profitable juice.

Roger L'Estrange

Partiality in a parent is unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools.

Roger L'Estrange

Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.

Roger L'Estrange

Wickedness may prosper for awhile, but in the long run, he that sets all the knaves at work will pay them.

Roger L'Estrange

Nothing is so fierce but love will soften; nothing so sharp-sighted in other matters but it will throw a mist before its eyes.

Roger L'Estrange

Imperfections would not be half so much taken notice of, if vanity did not make proclamation of them.

Roger L'Estrange

Of all injustice, that is the greatest which goes under the name of law, and of all sorts of tyranny the forcing of the letter of the law against the equity, is the most insupportable.

Roger L'Estrange

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone what it compares its situation to that can make anyone happy or miserable. Compare it to something better - result envy, frustration and sadness. Compare it to something worse - relief, gratitude and happiness.

Roger L'Estrange

Tis not necessity, but opinion, that makes men miserable; and when we come to be fancy-sick, there's no cure.

Roger L'Estrange

The most insupportable of tyrants exclaim against the exercise of arbitrary power.

Roger L'Estrange

There is not one grain in the universe, either too much or too little, nothing to be added, nothing to be spared; nor so much as any one particle of it, that mankind may not be either the better or the worse for, according as it is applied.

Roger L'Estrange

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

Roger L'Estrange

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable.

Roger L'Estrange

Some people are all quality; you would think they are made up of nothing but title and genealogy. The stamp of dignity defaces in them the very character of humanity and transports them to such a degree of haughtiness that they reckon it below themselves to exercise either good nature or good manners.

Roger L'Estrange

So long as we stand in need of a benefit, there is nothing dearer to us; nor anything cheaper when we have received it.

Roger L'Estrange

Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.

Roger L'Estrange

A body may well lay too little as too much stress upon a dream; but the less he heed them the better.

Roger L'Estrange

There is no creature so contemptible but by resolution may gain his point.

Roger L'Estrange

A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.

Roger L'Estrange

Riches are gotten with pain, kept with care, and lost with grief. The cares of riches lie heavier upon a good man than the inconveniences of an honest poverty.

Roger L'Estrange

Live and let live is the rule of common justice.

Roger L'Estrange

A universal applause is seldom less than two thirds of a scandal

Roger L'Estrange

He that serves God for Money, will serve the Devil for better Wages.

Roger L'Estrange

He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the ink-pot.

Roger L'Estrange

The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.

Roger L'Estrange

If we should cease to be generous and charitable because another is sordid and ungrateful, it would be much in the power of vice to extinguish Christian virtues.

Roger L'Estrange

Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves.

Roger L'Estrange

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.

Roger L'Estrange

Money does all things,--for it gives and it takes away; it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter.

Roger L'Estrange

To be longing for this thing to-day and for that thing to-morrow; to change likings for loathings, and to stand wishing and hankering at a venture--how is it possible for any man to be at rest in this fluctuant, wandering humor and opinion?

Roger L'Estrange

Tutors should behave reverently before their pupils.

Roger L'Estrange

The common people do not judge of vice or virtue by morality or immorality, so much as by the stamp that is set upon it by men of figure.

Roger L'Estrange

There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those that submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will, and another thing to be tied up to do what we must.

Roger L'Estrange

The very soul of the slothful does effectually but lie drowsing in his body, and the whole man is totally given up to his senses.

Roger L'Estrange

It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit.

Roger L'Estrange

Avarice is insatiable, and is always pushing on for more.

Roger L'Estrange

We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.

Roger L'Estrange

The blessings of fortune are the lowest; the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health; but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind.

Roger L'Estrange

There are braying men in the world, as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than away of braying?

Roger L'Estrange

Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.

Roger L'Estrange

Humor is the offspring of man; it comes forth like Minerva, fully armed from the brain.

Roger L'Estrange