43 Thomas Adams Quotes

He who sends the storm steers the vessel.

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

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

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.

It was well done of Paul to reprove Peter to his face, and it was well done of Peter, to praise Paul in his absence.

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 to us.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ale house benefactor; the beggar's companion; the constable's trouble; his wife's woe; his children's sorrow; his neighbor's scoff; his own shame. In short he is a tub of swill, a spirit of unrest, a thing below a beast, and a monster of a man.

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

The Word of life may be so distorted from the life of the Word till it becomes the food of death.

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

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

Our heavenly King is pleased with all our graces: hot zeal and cool patience pleaseth Him; cheerful thankfulness and weeping repentance pleaseth Him; but none of them are welcome to Him without faith, as nothing can please Him without Christ.

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

In spiritual graces let us study to be great, and not to know it.

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

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.

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

Contention is like fire, for both burn so long as there is any exhaustible matter to contend within. Only herein it transcends fire, for fire begets not matter, but consumes it; debates beget matter, but consume it not.

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.

Pride thrust Nebuchadnezzar out of men's society, Saul out of his kingdom, Adam out of paradise, Haman out of court, and Lucifer out of heaven.

It is the office of faith to believe what we do not see, and it shall be the reward of faith to see what we do believe.

We spend our years with sighing; it is a valley of tears; but death is the funeral of all our sorrows.

The patient man is merry indeed.... The jailers that watch him are but his pages of honor, 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 pity on him, all men wonder at him; and while he seems below all men, below himself, he is above nature. He hath so overcome himself that nothing can conquer him.

True obedience hath no lead at its heels.

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

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.

Let us be sure that our delights exclude not the presence of God: we may please ourselves so long as we do not displease Him.

Good deeds are such things that no man is saved for them, nor without them.

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

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

The devil is no idle spirit, but a vagrant, runagate walker, that never rests in one place. The motive, cause, and main intention of his walking is to ruin man.

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.

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.

Conscience is God's deputy in the soul.

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

It is rashness to search, godliness to believe, safeness to preach, and eternal blessedness to know the Trinity.

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

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.