Richard Baxter Quotes

Sir, the gentleman soils the spot he stands on.

Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.

Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.

People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.

See, I think if it just became who's sleeping with whom, then there's no reason to prefer one party over the other, 'cause the truth is we're all sinners.

The sins of teachers are the teachers of sin.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.

The better day, the worse deed.

... mainstream churches now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins like pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee pool. The Southern Baptists, because they were fortunate enough to flourish in a region where the false sun of the Enlightenment never shone, succeeded in escaping this grim fate.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

The first sign of corruption in a society ... is that the ends justify the means.

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

In Washington, and wherever two or more politicians may gather, he who does not get caught has ‘character’ and he who gets caught has none..

Righteousness exalts a nation, and sin brings reproach.

Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong. Sin becomes fine. Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.

Personally, I have never considered myself corrupt or seen the need to be so. People are judged as what they are perceived to be.

Modern man has so long preached a doctrine of false tolerance; he has so long believed that right and wrong were only differences in a point of view, that now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.

For some strange reason murder has always seemed more respectable than fornication. Few people are shocked when they hear God described as the God of Battles; but what an outcry there would be if anyone spoke of him as the God of Brothels.

To enjoy a good reputation, give publicly, and steal privately.

Dishonor is like the Aaron's Beard in the hedgerows; it can only poison if it be plucked.

As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.

Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the “tolerance trap” so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God’s law of chastity.

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.