Top 70 John Tillotson Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “He who provides for this life, but takes no care for eternity, is wise for a moment, but a fool forever.”

— John Tillotson

2. “To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.”

— John Tillotson

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

— John Tillotson

4. “Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.”

— John Tillotson

5. “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

6. “Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing.”

— John Tillotson

7. “Integrity gains strength by use.”

— John Tillotson

8. “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.”

— John Tillotson

9. “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

10. “Fill each day with light and heart.”

— John Tillotson

11. “The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.”

— John Tillotson

12. “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.”

— John Tillotson

13. “Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools.”

— John Tillotson

14. “There is little pleasure in the world that is true and sincere beside the pleasure of doing our duty and doing good.”

— John Tillotson

15. “Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.”

— John Tillotson

16. “Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making haste towards him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?”

— John Tillotson

17. “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

18. “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.”

— John Tillotson

19. “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

20. “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

21. “We anticipate our own happiness, and eat out the heart and sweetness of worldly pleasures by delightful forethought of them.”

— John Tillotson

22. “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.”

— John Tillotson

23. “The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.”

— John Tillotson

24. “There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.”

— John Tillotson

25. “The angriest person in a controversy is the one most liable to be in the wrong.”

— John Tillotson

26. “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.”

— John Tillotson

27. “Great is the advantage of patience.”

— John Tillotson

28. “With the history of Moses no book in the world, in point of antiquity, can contend.”

— John Tillotson

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

— John Tillotson

30. “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.”

— John Tillotson

31. “Wickedness is a kind of voluntary frenzy, and a chosen distraction.”

— John Tillotson

32. “Are we proud and passionate, malicious and revengeful? Is this to be like-minded with Christ, who was meek and lowly?”

— John Tillotson

33. “Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.”

— John Tillotson

34. “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.”

— John Tillotson

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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

40. “Next to the wicked lives of men, nothing is so great a disparagement and weakening to religion as the divisions of Christians.”

— John Tillotson

41. “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.”

— John Tillotson

42. “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.”

— John Tillotson

43. “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.”

— John Tillotson

44. “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.”

— John Tillotson

45. “They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.”

— John Tillotson

46. “None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.”

— John Tillotson

47. “In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power.”

— John Tillotson

48. “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.”

— John Tillotson

49. “The true ground of most men’s prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.”

— John Tillotson

50. “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