Aging & Wisdom Quote by John Tillotson

Deceit, in Tillotson's telling, isn’t a skill you sharpen; it’s a tool that dulls in your hand. The line plays like a moral law disguised as practical advice: even if you don’t care about sin, you should care about outcomes. That pivot matters. A 17th-century Anglican theologian speaking to a society rattled by civil war, regicide, restoration, and religious factionalism knew how closely politics and piety were braided. Public life was a constant audition for credibility. In that environment, cunning isn’t just wrong; it’s inefficient.

The quote’s quiet force is its reversal of the usual temptation. We assume manipulation compounds: lie once, lie better. Tillotson argues the opposite. Deceit decays because it relies on asymmetry - the deceiver hoards information while others stay credulous. But the moment deceit becomes a habit, it also becomes a pattern, and patterns are legible. The user starts performing their own disguise, telegraphing it through overcontrol, evasive speech, the need to manage every variable. Cunning turns brittle, because it can’t tolerate scrutiny or time.

Subtext: truth is socially infrastructural. Trust is a form of currency; counterfeit it too often and the market adjusts. Tillotson, preaching to consciences, also preaches to reputations: the liar eventually lives inside a smaller world, one where relationships, institutions, even language itself stop cooperating. The “art” collapses under its own maintenance costs.