British author & Freemason (1726-1779)
If we consider Music merely as an entertainment, doubtless, the author of all good designed the pleasing harmony and melody of sounds (among other purposes) to heighten the innocent pleasures of human life, and to alleviate and dispel its cares. When we are oppressed with sorrow and grief, it can enliven and exhilarate our drooping spirits. When we are elated, and as it were intoxicated with excessive joy, (for joy may be excessive and even dangerous) it can moderate the violence of the passions, bring us down from the giddy height, and reduce us to a state of tranquility: If inflamed with anger, or boiling with rage, it can soften us into pity, or melt us into compassion. In a word, hatred, malice, envy, and all the hideous group of infernal passions, which are at once the torment and disgrace of humanity, flee before this powerful charmer.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
If we would trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes and all princes from slaves: But fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy, in a long story of revolutions.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Among all the characters of mankind, that of the Philosopher is the most perfect. Distinguished from those of the inferior kind, by clearer and more distinct perceptions; by more comprehensive views of both nature and art; by a more ardent love and higher admiration of what is excellent; by a firmer attachment to virtue, and the general good of the world; by a lower regard for all inferior beauties compared with the supreme, consisting in rectitude of conduct and dignitude of behaviour; by a greater moderation in prosperity, and greater patience and courage under the evils of life; the real Philosopher, though not absolutely perfect, sets the grandeur of human genius in the fairest light.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
When the mind is clouded with passions, it is odds but a man misses his way.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
A man ought to blush when he is praised for perfections he does not possess.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Pride is often the chief cause of our reproving others faults, that we may be thereby judged not guilty of the like errors.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Prayer unaccompanied with a fervent love of God, is like a lamp unlighted; the words of the one without love being as unprofitable as the oil and cotton of the other without flame.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
True Repentance is that saving grace wrought in the soul by the spirit of God, whereby a sinner is made to see and be sensible of his sin, is grieved and humbled before God on account of it, not so much for the punishment to which sin has made him liable, as that thereby God is dishonoured and offended, his laws violated, and his own soul polluted and defiled; and this grief arises from love to God, and is accompanied with an hatred of sin, a fixed resolution to forsake it, and expectation of favour and forgiveness through the merits of Christ.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Titles, riches, and fine houses signify no more to the making of one man better than another, than the finer saddle to the making the better horse.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
He that has revenge in his power, and does not use it, is the greater man.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
When violence hurries on too fast, and caution does not keep pace with revenge, people generally do themselves more harm than the enemy.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Pride, by a great mistake, is commonly taken for a greatness of soul, as if the soul was to be ennobled by vice: For that Pride is one of the most enormous of vices, I think no reasonable man can dispute; it is the base offspring of weakness, imperfection and ignorance, since, were we not weak and imperfect creatures, we should not be destitute of knowledge of ourselves; and had we that knowledge, it were impossible we should be proud.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
True humility is the certain mark of a bright reason, and elevated soul, as being the natural consequence of them. When we come to have our minds cleared by reason from those thick mists that our disorderly passions cast about them; when we come to discern more perfectly, and consider more nearly, the immense power and goodness, the infinite glory and duration of God; and, to make a comparison between these perfections of his, and our own frailty and weakness, and the shortness and uncertainty of our beings, we should humble ourselves even unto the dust before him.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Secrecy is the cement of friendship.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The rich man's happiness is but from the teeth outwards, a counterfeit satisfaction, with a worm in his heart.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Keep your soul in exercise, lest her faculties rust for want of motion ... to dwell too long in the employments of the body is both the cause and sign of a dull spirit.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Politeness is ... forgetting ourselves in order to seek what may be agreeable to others.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Humility must be a very glorious thing, since Pride itself puts it on not to be despised. Pride must be of itself something deformed and shameful, since it dares not show itself naked, and is forced to appear in a mask.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
It is certain, sin hath no real pleasures to bestow; they are all embittered, either by adverse strokes of providence from without, or painful and dreadful gripes and stings of conscience within.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Slanderers are a species of creatures, so great a scandal to human nature, as scarce to deserve the name of men. They are, for the generality, a composition of the most detestable vices, price, envy, lying, hatred, uncharitableness, etc... And yet it is a lamentable truth that these wretches swarm in every town, and lurk in every village; and, actuated by these base principles, are ever busied in attacking the characters of mankind; none are too good or too great to escape the level of their envenomed dart; nor does the inefficacy of their malicious intentions in the least deter them from persevering in their villainy.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine