Quotes from John Tillotson

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

For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.

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.

Fill each day with life and heart. There is no pleasure in the world comparable to the delight and satisfaction that a good person takes in doing good.

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

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

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

To always be 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.

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.

Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience?

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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