Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Enthusiasm, Zeal
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
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
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
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
In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is, in reality, so much power.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Reputation
The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Deception/Lying, Deception
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
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Words, Silence, Obligation
Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making toward him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?
—John Tillotson
Topics: Procrastination
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
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
The idle, who are neither wise for this world nor the next, are emphatically fools.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Idleness
The vicious man lives at random, and acts by chance, for he that walks by no rule can carry on no settled or steady design.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Vice
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
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
A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another man, than this, that when the injury began on his part, the kindness should begin on ours.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Forgiveness
True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it: and next to them, not the many that think they have it, but the few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Wisdom
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
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
Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Ignorance
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
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
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
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
Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience—from a secret dread of the divine displeasure, and of the vengeance of another world?
—John Tillotson
Topics: Wickedness
Profit or pleasure there is none in swearing, nor anything in men’s natural tempers to incite them to it. For though some men pour out oaths so freely, as if they came naturally from them, yet surely no man is born of a swearing constitution.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Profanity
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
There is no fool equal to the sinner, who every moment ventures his soul.
—John Tillotson
Topics: Sin
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