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CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell Quotes
(1814-1880), American Unitarian clergyman
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of tribulation.
How often a new affection makes a new man. The sordid becomes liberal; the cowering, heroic; the frivolous girl, the steadfast martyr of patience and ministration, transfigured by deathless love.
It is a great thing, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips, to feel that it is not fate or necessity, but divine love working upon us for good ends.
An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven.
It is exceedingly deleterious to withdraw the sanction of religion from amusement. If we feel that it is all injurious we should strip the earth of its flowers and blot out its pleasant sunshine.
The angels may have wider spheres of action and nobler forms of duty than ourselves, but truth and right to them and to us are one and the same thing.
Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in the purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.
Do not judge from mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.—The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool.
There is no tariff so injurious as that with which sectarian bigotry guards its commodities.—It dwarfs the soul by shutting out truths from other continents of thought, and checks the circulation of its own.
At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.
The child's grief throbs against its little heart as heavily as the man's sorrow; and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum, as the other in striking the springs of enterprise, or soaring on the wings of fame.
A man can no more be a Christian without facing evil and conquering it, than he can be a soldier without going to battle, facing the cannon's mouth, and encountering the enemy in the field.
The city is an epitome of the social world.—All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues.—It contains the products of every moral zone and is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a moral and spiritual sense.
The conservative may clamor against reform, but he might as well clamor against the centrifugal force.—He sighs for "the good old times."—He might as well wish the oak back into the acorn.
Christ saw much in this world to weep over, and much to pray over; but he saw nothing in it to look upon with contempt.
At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice.—Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion.
There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.
The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties.—Hope is bom in the long night of watching and tears.—Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality.
Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link, into the great chain of order.
There is no mean work, save that which is sordidly selfish; no irreligious work, save that which is morally wrong; in every sphere of life the post of honor is the post of duty.
Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him—if he is a walking university.
Not in the achievement, but in the endurance of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur, and its alliance with the infinite God.
All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable till we refer to the fatherhood of God.—It hangs a huge blot in the universe till the orb of divine love rises behind it.—In that we detect its meaning.—It appears to us but a finite shadow, as it passes across the disk of infinite light.
In the history of man it has been very generally the case, that when evils have grown insufferable they have touched the point of cure.
When private virtue is hazarded on the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre.
It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising.—"Get a reputation, and then go to bed," is the absurdest of all maxims.—"Keep up a reputation or go to bed," would be nearer the truth.
The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
The mere leader of fashion has no genuine claim to supremacy; at least, no abiding assurance of it. He has embroidered his title upon his waistcoat, and carries his worth in his watch chain; and if he is allowed any real precedence for this, it is almost a moral swindle—a way of obtaining goods under false pretences.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery—into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.
The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.
Gayety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair.
It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.—To be good is the great thing.
Home is the seminary of all other institutions.
There is no happiness in life, and there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit.—There is such a thing as an honest pride and self-respect.—Though we may be servants of all, we should be servile to none.
Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet.
We live too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion in mind and heart, if not to our passions and appetites.
Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world.
Often the elements that move and mold society, are the results of the sister's counsel, and the mother's prayer.
We have not the innocence of Eden; but by God's help and Christ's example we may have the victory of Gethsemane.
There never was a man all intellect; but just in proportion as men become so they become like lofty mountains, all ice and snow the higher they rise above the warm heart of the earth.
The creed of the true saint is to make the most of life, and to make the best of it.
Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.
O, how much those men are to be valued who, in the spirit with which the widow gave up her two mites, have given up themselves! How their names sparkle! How rich their very ashes are! How they will count up in Heaven!
Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,—not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat.
Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.
Morality is the vestibule of religion.
There is no mockery like the mockery of that spirit which looks around in the world and believes that all is emptiness.
No language can express the power and beauty and heroism and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over the wastes of worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star in heaven.
Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning.
Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to, and answered by the living soul of man.
All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
Neutral men are the devil's allies.
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.
Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.—The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite.—Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.
A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish, and overlooked by the aspiring.
There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul,—to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.
A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heartfelt truth.—The true poet is very near the oracle.
The public sense is in advance of private practice.
A great many men—some comparatively small men now—if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.
The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.
Pride is the master sin of the devil.
Profaneness is a brutal vice.—He who indulges in it is no gentleman.—I care not what his stamp may be in society, or what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts.—Despite all his refinement, the light and habitual taking of God's name in vain, betrays a coarse and brutal will.
The individual and the race are always moving; and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heavens ttore immediately over us.
Scepticism has never founded empires, established principles, or changed the world's heart.—The great doers in history have always been men of faith.
Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy.—Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony.—The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
No more important duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theatre of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.
The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven.
A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.
Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.
It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of, for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in the field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.
The temptation is not here, where you are reading about it or praying about it. It is down in your shop, among bales and boxes, ten-penny nails, and sandpaper.
The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnaces of tribulation.
Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconsciously to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless it does—what, alas! it too often does—unless it hardens you, and makes you sour and narrow and sceptical.
This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases a man.
The most fearful characteristic of vice is its irresistible fascination—the ease with which it sweeps away resolution, and wins a man to forget his momentary outlook, and his throb of penitence, in the embrace of indulgence.
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