John Tillotson Quotes
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.
The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.
Malice and hatred are very fretting and vexatious, and apt to make our minds sore and uneasy; but he that can moderate these affections will find ease in his mind.
Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.
Wisdom and understanding are synonymous words; they consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense, but one and the same thing variously expressed.
If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven.
Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.
Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatness.
If our souls be immortal, this makes amends for the frailties of life and the sufferings of this state.
Religion in a magistrate strengthens his authority, because it procures veneration, and gains a reputation to it. In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power.
There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them,--by laying them out in charity.
Some things will not bear much zeal; and the more earnest we are about them, the less we recommend ourselves to the approbation of sober and considerate men.
Surely modesty never hurt any cause; and the confidence of man seems to me to be much like the wrath of man.
When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.
Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.
The gospel chargeth us with piety towards God, and justice and charity to men, and temperance and chastity in reference to ourselves.
No man's body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.
It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where Truth is not the bottom, Nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep and betray herself one time or other.
Of some calamity we can have no relief but from God alone; and what would men do, in such a case if it were not for God?
Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy end of life to themselves.
Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making haste towards him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?
Piety and virtue are not only delightful for the present, but they leave peace and contentment behind them.
There are two restraints which God has laid upon human nature, shame and fear; shame is the weaker, and has place only in those in whom there are some reminders of virtue.
Sincerity is like traveling on a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves.
Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.
To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.
Fear is that passion which hath the greatest power over us, and by which God and His laws take the surest hold of us.
A little wit and a great deal of ill-nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance of wit is to commend well.
When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none.
None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.
There is no man that is knowingly wicked but is guilty to himself; and there is no man that carries guilt about him but he receives a sting in his soul.
The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
The true ground of most men's prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.
Every man hath greater assurance that God is good and just than he can have of any subtle speculations about predestination and the decrees of God.
We have no cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; but the Gospel of Christ may justly be ashamed of us.
