King James I Quotes

The wisest fool in Christendom.

Dr Donne’s verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding.

To make women learned and foxes tame has the same effect – to make them more cunning.

That which we call wit consists much in quickness and tricks, and is so full of lightness that it seldom goes with judgment and solidity; but when they do meet, it is commonly in an honest man.

God gives not kings the stile of Gods in vaine,
For on his throne his sceptre do they sway;
And as their subjects ought them to obey,
So kings should feare and serve their God againe.

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.

It is one of God’s blessings that we cannot foreknow the hour of our death; for a time fixed, even beyond the possibility of living, would trouble us more than doth this uncertainty.

I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will.

I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman.

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God’s Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: good Christians content themselves with His will revealed in His Word.

That which concerns the mystery of the King’s power is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of Princes, and to take away the mystical reverence that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.

If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. … No bishop, no King! I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.

Smoke.. makes a kitchen also oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soiling and infecting them, with an unctuous and oily kinde of Soote as hath been found in some great Tobacco takers, that after their death were opened.