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.
Thomas AdamsHe 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.
Thomas AdamsAhab 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.
Thomas AdamsThe 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.
Thomas Adams