Edwin Hubbell Chapin Quotes
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Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity.
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Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to and answered by the living soul of man.
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There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.
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Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
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Influence is exerted by every human being from the hour of birth to that of death.
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Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening.
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Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman, I care not what his stamp may be in society; I care not what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts.
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If angels stoop from visions of more than earthly beauty to spells of less than earthly worth, they are but fallen angels, mingling divine utterances with the babblings of madness, and the madness is not the divineness.
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A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount.
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All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable until we refer to the paternity of God. It hangs a huge blot in the universe until the orb of divine love rises behind it. In that apposition we detect its meaning. It appears to us but a finite shadow as it passes across the disk of infinite light.
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Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.
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Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.
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A life is black, whiten it as you will.
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Skepticism has never founded empires, established principals, or changed the world's heart. The great doers in history have always been people of faith.
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However logical our induction, the end of the thread is fastened upon the assurance of faith.
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Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.
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There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.
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For soon, very soon do men forget Their friends upon whom Death's seal is set.
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If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns.
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The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement.... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys.... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find.
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Life, whether in this world or any other, is the sum of our attainment, our experience, our character. The conditions are secondary. In what other world shall we be more surely than we are here?
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How often a new affection makes a new man! The sordid, cowering soul turns heroic. The frivolous girl becomes the steadfast martyr of patience and ministration, transfigured by deathless love. The career of bounding impulses turns into an anthem of sacred deeds.
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A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.
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We may learn by practice such things upon earth as shall be of use to us in heaven. Piety, unostentatious piety, is never out of place.