John Tillotson Quotes
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There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them,--by laying them out in charity.
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Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps without any design and endeavor on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though the commandments of God be not grievous, yet it is fit to let men know that they are not thus easy.
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Next to the wicked lives of men, nothing is so great a disparagement and weakening to religion as the divisions of Christians.
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They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
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Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.
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When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none.
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The angriest person in a controversy is the one most liable to be in the wrong.
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With what reason canst thou expect that thy children should follow thy good instructions, when thou thyself givest them an ill example? Thou dost but as it were beckon to them with thy head, and shew them the way to heaven by thy good counsel, but thou takest them by the hand and leadest them in the way to hell by thy contrary example.
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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.
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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.
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Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making haste towards him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?
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How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose? And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great volume of the world?
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And as for Pleasure, there is little in this World that is true and sincere, besides the Pleasure of doing our Duty, and of doing good.
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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.
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Are we proud and passionate, malicious and revengeful? Is this to be like-minded with Christ, who was meek and lowly?
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In our pursuit of the things of this world, we usually prevent enjoyment, by expectation; we anticipate our own happiness, and eat out the heart and sweetness of worldly pleasures, by delightful forethoughts of them; so that when we come to possess them, they do not answer the expectation, nor satisfy the desires which were raised about them, and they vanish into nothing.
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To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.
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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.
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Integrity gains strength by use.
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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.
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The crime of a bad example is the same whether men follow it or not, because he that gives bad example to others, does what in him lies to draw them into sin; and if they do not follow it, that is no mitigation of his fault.
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Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience?
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Wealth and riches, that is, an estate above what sufficeth our real occasions and necessities, is in no other sense a 'blessing' than as it is an opportunity put into our hands, by the providence of God, of doing more good.
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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?