John Tillotson Quotes

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.

It is much more intelligent, more practical, to be good rather than evil.

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

Morality binds and blinds.

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.