Quotes from Sam P. Jones, Old Time Methodist
Proverbs 25:11 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.
Proverbs
20:1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is
deceived thereby is not wise.
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On Liquor and Drinking
The biggest fool God's eyes ever looked upon is the woman who stirs the toddy
for her husband.
--
There is nothing in grace that will make you a sober
man with a quart of whisky in your stomach.
--
Let us quit drinking, boys.
A dram-cup in my hand broke my father's heart. Quit drinking, boys.
It'll drive the roses from your wife's cheeks, and they will never come
back again.
--
From a governor down to a dog pelter, I would not vote
for a man that touches, tastes or handles whisky to save my life, and you can
never redeem America with a legislature whose breath is tainted with whisky.
--
I have never seen but one man in America that would stand up and say he
drank whisky and never told his wife a lie about it. Have you got one here
to-day? Is there a man who drinks whisky that never told his wife a lie
about it? If there is, stand up. I want to see you. I expect
some of you would have stood up, but your wives are here and you don't want to
be caught in a lie.
--
Watch the association of your children. Do
not allow your boys to go with young debauchees for the money. Why, some
of these scoundrels can get drunk on Saturday night and then on Sunday evening
go to church with the sweetest girl in the family. We need some old-fashioned
daddies who would meet these young bucks at the door and kick then clean out into
the street. Some girls in a Southern city married a lot of fellows to reform
them. That town soon had a batch of whippoorwill widows.
--
The
liquor traffic has come down to where it is a question of blood and death and
hell. These women are getting tired of seeing their husbands go down to
a drunkards' graves; these mothers are tired of seeing their sons go to a drunkard's
hell.
--
The wedding over, the honeymoon passed, and years of happiness
come. One day the husband began to drink. There is a volume of ten
thousand pages in that very sentence. If woman knew what it meant. If
every man could see into the future. He could read it and would not go on.
--
Temperance is a great regulation force of man's life. No man can
drink whisky and be a Christian. Bob Ingersoll, the worst in the country,
says whisky is God;s worst enemy and the devil's best friend. I never got
so low down as to discuss a man who drinks vile lager beer. There ain't
a four-legged hog in the country that'll drink beer. But lots of two-legged
hogs will. And the ladies are absolutely drinking beer for their health.
Shame on them! The only hope of America is in her sober mothers, for
when they debauch themselves their children will be born full-fledged drunkards.The
spirit of gentleness and the spirit of temperance. Be not only temperate
in regard to liquor, but be a total prohibitionist on that subject.
--
I want to tell you, brethren, that it takes more money to run one old red-nosed
drunkard than it does to run any member of the church in this city.
--
The girl that will marry a boy whose breath smells with whisky is the biggest
fool angels ever looked at.
--
I don't want to be a gentleman if I have
to get drunk. Do you?
--
What do you think of an elder who has to
think of the question about the barrooms before he can answer? When you
ask a preacher he says: "Why, I consult my board, and if they are, why I
are too."
--
How did I become a drunkard? By drinking wine like
some of you do. If any man had tasted what I have and been where I have
been, he'd be recreant if he did not preach as I do. You get some letters
as I do and it would go to your heart. I'm not only not going to drink but
I'll fight it to perdition, and when perdition freezes, then I'll fight it on
the ice. If you can make it any stronger than that, put my name to it.
--
Nobody but an infernal scoundrel will sell whisky, and nobody but an infernal
fool will drink it.
--
Every barroom is a recruiting office for hell.
--
So many men are reckless. An Alpine hunter shoulders his gun and
walks along an eight-inch path, while the dog beside him quivers with fear. Don't
rush into the face of God at judgment unprepared. At best, we have only
threescore years and ten. You, with your constitutional vigor, may go to
seventy and be pouring into you body poison all the time. Strong drink sends
many a man to his grave twenty years before his time. Men are greedy to
be lost, and anxious for damnation.
--
I want to see the day in this country
when no decent woman will put anything on her table that will make a fool of her
husband. The biggest fool woman in this State is the woman who will go to
the closet and get a demijohn and bring it out and fix up a drink for her husband.
You have not sense enough to keep out of the fire; your place is in the
lunatic asylum.
--
I never had much confidence in a man that would do
things in New York that he wouldn't do at home. You have some of that sort
here. A fellow that is sober as a judge at home, when he goes on a fishing
tour can not get along without a jug of whisky; and he drinks it all the way along
and claims to be pious. [Times haven't changed much have they?]
Hebrews
11:25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy
thepleasures of sin for a season; 26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater
riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of
the reward.
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On Society, Dancing, Theater and other Worldly "Pleasures"
Society
Society is a heartless old wretch; and if you don't get out of it you will go to hell with it.
Theater
And there are women in St. Louis that will go and hear things in the theater whose
tendencies are the most vulgar of the vulgar, and she will be tickled all over,
and she will come to the church and she will have her poor nerves all shocked
to pieces at something Sam Jones says, and she will turn up her nose at me, and
I can always tell when the devil has got a mortgage on a woman's nose. It
is always turning up. And he is going to foreclose it some of these days, too,
sister, and he will get the gal when he gets the nose.
--
You take society
about this town. If I had the money that the Christian women, so-called,
pay at the theater during the year, I could run every charitable institution in
this town grandly. That is a fact. You can't walk to church -- it is too far;
but you will walk the next night a third farther to the theater, and your husband
does not really want to go. Let us try and reform ourselves on this line.
--
A man once asked me how long it had been since I had been at a theater.
I told him I had not been at the theater since I had quit being a vagabond.
Dancing
God never gave a woman a child to debauch it by sending it to a dancing-school
kept by a hook-nosed Frenchman.
--
Go into a ballroom with your Christian
light. It will go out. It won't burn there.
--
"Our church don't forbid
dancing," exclaims one. Which is your church? All of the grand churches
of the land are outspoken against it. If any church sanctioned dancing I
would not stay in the little thing long enough to get my hat -- I would run out
bareheaded.
Gambling
I know of one church where twenty were praying for the millennium and two hundred
were praying for the boody prize in a progressive euchre. Such Christians
as that would not be in heaven six months before they would be gambling for each
other's crown.
--
Don't allow your boys to learn gambling at home, and
then you, in hypocritical old age, go around bewailing their fate.
--
A woman in Chicago told me her husband worked hard all day, and she played
cards with him every night to amuse him. I told her to ship him to an asylum,
for there they play cards for amusement. A game of cards is the game of
stravelings, mentally and spiritually. Sisters, you who have such husbands,
I tell you what to do: Buy him a tin horse and a tin horn. Make him
straddle the tin horse and blow the horn for him. Sister, don't let the
children laugh at him. Tell the children that their little pap has worked
hard all day, and wants to be amused. Sister, sister, get him a tin horse.
