Thomas Adams Quotations

So long as casual labor broods in squalid lairs, in sunless streets, and ugly dwellings are its only habitation, we shall continue to turn out nervous manikins instead of enduring men.

I do not think that the effect of good environment, of fine buildings, of pleasant homes, upon the character, temperament, will, disposition, and energy of the people sufficiently dawns upon the average citizen.

You shall easily know a vainglorious man: his own commendation rumbles within him till he hath bulked it out, and the air of it is unsavory

If you do this, we all of us shall be rewarded by the betterment of our towns, the beautification of our streets, the improvement of our suburbs; we shall have made one step forward to still further elevating, improving, and dignifying the life of our citizens.

The ambitious climb high and perilous stairs, and never care how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up their fear of a fall.

He who sends the storm steers the vessel.

Plan the town, if you like; but in doing it do not forget that you have got to spread the people. Make wider roads, but do not narrow the tenements behind. Dignify the city by all means, but not at the expense of the health of the home and the family life and the comfort of the average workman and citizen.

Beauty is like an almanack: if it lasts a year it is well.

His father was no man's friend but his own, and he is no man's for else.

Ahab cast a covetous eye at Naboth's vineyard, David a lustful eye at Bathsheba. The eye is the pulse of the soul; as physicians judge of the heart by the pulse, so we by the eye; a rolling eye, a roving heart. The good eye keeps minute time, and strikes when it should; the lustful, crochet-time, and so puts all out of tune.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: there are three distinct persons: in the Name, not names; there is one essence.

A man may be so bold of his predestination, that he forget his conversation.

Paradise had four rivers that watered the earth.... and howsoever neglected by many, they make glad the city of God. So Bernard sweetly: Eternal life is granted to us in election, promised in our vocation, sealed in our justification, possessed in our glorification. Conclude then, faithfully to thy own soul. I believe, therefore I am justified; I am justified, therefore I am sanctified; I am sanctified, therefore I am called; I am called, therefore I am elected; I am elected, therefore I shall be saved. Oh! settled comfort of joy, which ten thousand devils shall never make void.

The patient man is merry indeed.... The jailers that watch him are but his pages of honour, and his very dungeon but the lower side of the vault of heaven. He kisseth the wheel that must kill him; and thinks the stairs of the scaffold of his martyrdom but so many degrees of his ascent to glory. The tormentors are weary of him. the beholders have pitty on him, all men wonder at him; and while he seems below all men, below himself, he is above nature. He hath so overcome hlmself that nothing can conquer him.

Alas! that the farthest and of all our thoughts should be the thought of our ends.

Blessed be God, I not only begin praying when I kneel down, but I do not leave off praying when I rise up.

Both in thy private sessions, and the universal assizes, thou shalt be sure of the same Judge, the same jury, the same witnesses, the same verdict. How certain thou art to die, thou knowest; how soon to die, thou knowest not. Measure not thy life with the longest; that were to piece it out with flattery. Thou canst name no living man, not the sickest, which thou art sure shall die before thee.

Even the tired horse, when he comes near home, mends pace: be good always, without weariness, but best at last; that the nearer thou comest to the end of thy days, the nearer thou mayest be to the end of thy hopes, the salvation of thy soul.

He that will be knighted must kneel for it, and he that will enter in at the strait gate must crowd for it-a gate made so on purpose, narrow and hard in the entrance, yet, after we have entered, wide and glorious, that after our pain our joy may be the sweeter.

A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty, the trouble of civility, the spoil of wealth, the distraction of reason. He is the brewer's agent, the tavern and alehouse benefactor, the beggar's companion, the constable's trouble, his wife's woe, his children's sorrow, his neighbours scoff, his own shame.

The hypocrite, certainly, is a secret atheist; for if he did believe there was a God, he durst not be so bold as to deceive Him to His face.

Let us not make the poor our friends by our alms, not our enemies by our scorns. We had better have the ears of God full of their prayers, than heaps of money in our own coffers with their curses.

Half our virtue arises from our being out of the way of temptation.

Conscience is God's deputy in the soul.

The devil makes his Christmas-pie of lawyers' tongues and clerks' fingers.

He who reforms himself, has done much toward reforming others; and one reason why the world is not reformed, is, because each would have others make a beginning, and never thinks of himself doing it.

The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.

Prevention is so much better than healing because it saves the labor of being sick.

He who is proud of his knowledge, has gout in the wrong end.

Ever tell me of a humble heart where I see a stubborn knee.

Self-righteousness is the devil's masterpiece to make us think well of ourselves.

Better a holy discord than a profane concord.

Sense of sin may be often great, and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace. A man feels the ache of his finger more sensibly than the health of his whole body; yet he knows that the ache of a finger is nothing so much as the health of the whole body.

If thou wilt fly from God, the devil will lend thee both spurs and a horse.

Will you trust your five senses above the four Gospels?

Woman takes her being from man, man takes his well being from woman.

Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face.

The covetous man is like a camel with a great hunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made Higher and broader, or he will hardly get in.

We know there is a sun in heaven, yet we cannot see what matter it is made of, but perceive it only by the beams, light and heat. Election is a sun, the eyes of eagles cannot see it, yet we may find it in the heat of vocation, in the light of illumination, in the beams of good works.

Sins are so remitted, as if they had never been committed.

There is no coming to heaven with dry eyes.

The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.

Our mind is where our pleasure is, our heart is where our treasure is, our love is where our life is, but all these, our pleasure, treasure, and life, are reposed in Jesus Christ.

Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.

Satan like a fisher, baits his hook according to the appetite of the fish.

He who demands mercy and shows none ruins the bridge over which he himself is to pass.

No man more truly loves God than he that is most fearful to offend Him.

That which a man spits against heaven, shall fall back on his own face.

Grace comes into the soul, as the morning sun into the world; first a dawning, then a light; and at last the sun in his full and excellent brightness.

As God by creation made two of one, so again by marriage He made one of two.