Adams Quotes 08

Hypocrisy

Hypocrites are certain to miscarry at last; so true is that proverb 'Frost and fraud have dirty ends' 153

Laziness

Deny sloth not only continuance, but countenance 155

Judgement
That which a man spits against heaven, shall fall back on his own face. Your indignities done to your spiritual physicians shall sleep in the dust with your ashes, but stand up against your souls in judgment. 161
Alas! That the farther end of all our thoughts should be the thought of our ends 161

Justification and good deeds

Out of the point of justification works cannot be sufficiently commended; into the cause of justification they must not be admitted. 162
How many on account of free tongues have chained feet 168

Life

He that will be old long must be old while he is young. Express the sobriety of age in thy youth, that the remembrance of thy youth may sweeten the bitterness of thy age. A young saint, an old angel. So then let us spend our life in the thriftiness of grace; that when youth hath ended infancy, age ended youth and death ended all, we may be young again in heaven. 169 (expanded)

Patience

Patience to the soul is as bread to the body … we eat bread with all our meats, both for health and relish; bread with flesh, bread with fish, bread with broths and fruits. Such is ptience to every virtue; we must hope with patience, and pray in patience, and love with patience, and whatsoever good thing we do, let it be done in patience. 204

Patience must not be an inch shorter than affliction. 205

Prosperity

Who seeth not that prosperity increaseth iniquity? And where is more want is less wantonness. 228

On Hypocrites

Hypocrites are like pictures of canvas, they show fairest at farthest. A hypocrite's profession is in folio, but his sincerity in decimo-sexto, nothing in the world to speak of. A hypocrite is like the Sicilian Etna, flaming at the mouth when it has snow at the foot: their mouths talk hotly, but their feet walk coldly. The nightingale has a sweet voice, but a lean carcass; a voice and nothing else but a voice: and so have all hypocrites ... Hypocrites labour to seem saints, not to be so; but the holy labour to be saints, more than to seem saints. The kite may fly aloft but her eye and mind is to the earth. She seems to be a gallant bird at her pitch, till she falls down upon a carrion. Oh how the pretentious zealot makes a show to honour Christ with his lofty profession, as if he were altogether a man of heaven: tarry but a little, throw the bait of glory in his way, and he will stoop to a carrion, and be taken with the pride of His own commendation. If you have an angel's tongue and a devil's heart, you are no better than a post in the crossway, that rots itself to direct others; or a torch that, having pleasured others with the light, goes out itself in smoke and stench.