John Tillotson Quotes

38 Sourced Quotes

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.

John Tillotson
Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy end of life to themselves.

John Tillotson
Surely modesty never hurt any cause; and the confidence of man seems to me to be much like the wrath of man.

John Tillotson
Every Christian is endued with a power whereby he is enabled to resist temptations.

John Tillotson
Are we proud and passionate, malicious and revengeful? Is this to be like-minded with Christ, who was meek and lowly?

John Tillotson
Wickedness is a kind of voluntary frenzy, and a chosen distraction.

John Tillotson
It is pleasant to be virtuous and good, because that is to excel many others; it is pleasant to grow better, because that is to excel ourselves; it is pleasant to mortify and subdue our lusts, because that is victory; it is pleasant to command our appetites and passions, and to keep them in due order within the bounds of reason and religion, because this is empire.

John Tillotson
We have no cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; but the Gospel of Christ may justly be ashamed of us.

John Tillotson
In matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution; to be undetermined where the case is so plain, and the necessity so urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating, and drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.

John Tillotson
True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it: and next to them, not those many that think they have it, but those few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not.

John Tillotson
The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself of that which is his own; and makes a hard shift, to be as poor and miserable with a great estate, as any man can be without it.

John Tillotson
If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them.

John Tillotson
Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

John Tillotson
The gospel chargeth us with piety towards God, and justice and charity to men, and temperance and chastity in reference to ourselves.

John Tillotson
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.

John Tillotson
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.

John Tillotson
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.

John Tillotson
None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.

John Tillotson
Fear is that passion which hath the greatest power over us, and by which God and His laws take the surest hold of us.

John Tillotson
When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none.

John Tillotson
There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them,--by laying them out in charity.

John Tillotson
For the spiritual efficacy of the Sacrament doth not depend upon the nature of the thing received, supposing we received what our Lord appointed, and receive it with a right preparation and disposition of mind, but upon the supernatural blessing that goes along with it, and makes it effectual to those spiritual ends for which it was appointed.

John Tillotson
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.

John Tillotson
If God were not a necessary Being of Himself, He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men.

John Tillotson
Zeal is only fit for wise men; but it is chiefly in fashion among fools.

John Tillotson
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.

John Tillotson
To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.

John Tillotson
In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power.

John Tillotson
To be happy is not only to be freed from the pains and diseases of the body, but from anxiety and vexation of spirit; not only to enjoy the pleasures of sense, but peace of conscience and tranquillity of mind.

John Tillotson
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?

John Tillotson