Edwin Hubbell Chapin Quotes
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Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit.
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The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.
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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.
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We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites.
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Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.
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There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong!
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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!
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The city an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but a spiritual sense.
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The devil has been painted swarthy, cloven-footed, horned, and hideous. Do we expect to see him in that shape? O, surely it would be better for us, if he did come in that shape! The trouble is the devil never does come in that shape. He comes by chance, with unregistered signals, and in all sorts of counterfeit presentiments.
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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.
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Let every man be free to act from his own conscience; but let him remember that other people have consciences too; and let not his liberty be so expansive that in its indulgence it jars and crashes against the liberty of others.
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Conscience is its own readiest accuser.
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In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.
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The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.
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Truth is the root, but human sympathy is the flower of practical life.
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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.
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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.
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The individual and the race are always moving, and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heaven more immediately over us.
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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 this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.
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A day! It has risen upon us from the great deep of eternity, girt round with wonder; emerging from the womb of darkness; a new creation of life and light spoken into being by the word of God.
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Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.
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A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.
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Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
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Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.