When we have practised good actions awhile, they become easy; when they are easy, we take pleasure in them; when they please us, we do them frequently; and then, by frequency of act, they grow into a habit.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Habit
Mere success is one of the worst arguments in the world of a good cause, and the most improper to satisfy conscience: and yet in the issue it is the most successful of all other arguments, and does in a very odd, but effectual, way, satisfy the consciences of a great many men, by showing them their interest.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Success
The best people need afflictions for trial of their virtue. How can we exercise the grace of contentment, if all things succeed well; or that of forgiveness, if we have no enemies?
—John Tillotson
Topics: Trials
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
Topics: Suffering
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Obligation, Words, Silence
Common swearing, if it have any serious meaning at all, argues in man a perpetual distrust of his own reputation, and is an acknowledgment that he thinks his bare word not to be worthy of credit. And it is so far from adorning and filling a man’s discourse, that it makes it look swollen and bloated, and more bold and blustering than becomes persons of genteel and good breeding.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Profanity
The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Deception/Lying, Deception
Philosophy hath given us several plausible rules for attaining peace and tranquillity of mind, but they fall very much short of bringing men to it.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Philosophy
There is no man that is to himself knowingly guilty and that carries guilt about him, but receives a sting into his soul.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Remorse
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.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Sincerity
Abstinence is many times very helpful to the end of religion.
—John Tillotson
There is no sensual pleasure in the world comparable to the delight and satisfaction that a good man takes in doing good.
—John Tillotson
Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making toward him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?
—John Tillotson
Topics: Procrastination
If on one side there are fair proofs, and no pretense of proof on the other, and the difficulties are more pressing on that side which is destitute of proof, I desire to know whether this be not upon the matter as satisfactory to a wise man as a demonstration.
—John Tillotson
Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Sincerity
There is no fool equal to the sinner, who every moment ventures his soul.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Sin
Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy and considerable end of life to themselves.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Religion
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 on the rack, and one trick needs a great many more of the same kind to make it good.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Truth, Lying
To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Forgiveness
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
Topics: Happiness
A little wit and a great deal of ill nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance and value of wit is to commend well.
—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
Topics: God
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Liberty
The idle, who are neither wise for this world nor the next, are emphatically fools.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Idleness
Malice and hatred are very fretting, and make our own minds sore and uneasy.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Hatred
In our pursuit of the things of this world, we usually prevent enjoyment by expectation; we anticipate our 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.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Expectation
The short sayings of wise and good men are of great value, like the dust of gold, or the sparks of diamonds.
—John Tillotson
It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or another.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Hypocrisy
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.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Religion
There is a pleasure in admiration; and this it is which properly causeth admiration, when we discover a great deal in an object which we understand to be excellent; and yet we see more beyond that, which our understandings cannot fully reach and comprehend.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Admiration
Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Zeal, Enthusiasm
The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy, but to have them; he starves himself in the midst of plenty; 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
Shame is a great restraint upon sinners at first; but that soon falls off: and when men have once lost their innocence, their modesty is not like to be long troublesome to them. For impudence comes on with vice, and grows up with it. Lesser vices do not banish all shame and modesty; but great and abominable crimes harden men’s foreheads, and make them shameless. When men have the heart to do a very bad thing, they seldom want the face to bear it out.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Shame
In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is, in reality, so much power.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Reputation
Man courts happiness in a thousand shapes; and the faster he follows it the swifter it flies from him. Almost everything promiseth happiness to us at a distance, but when we come nearer, either we fall short of it, or it falls short of our expectation; and it is hard to say which of these is the greatest disappointment. Our hopes are usually bigger than the enjoyment can satisfy; and an evil long feared, besides that it may never come, is many times more painful and troublesome than the evil itself when it comes.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Happiness
There are two things in which men, in other things wise enough, do usually miscarry; in putting off the making of their wills and their repentance till it be too late.
—John Tillotson
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
Topics: Eating, Drinking, Inaction, Getting Going, Procrastination, Indecision, Carpe-diem
When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast; nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Reputation
He that does not know those things which are of use and necessity for him to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever he may know besides.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Ignorance
There is little pleasure in the world that is true and sincere beside the pleasure of doing our duty and doing good. I am sure no other is comparable to this.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Pleasure, Happiness