Edwin Hubbell Chapin Quotes
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For soon, very soon do men forget Their friends upon whom Death's seal is set.
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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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Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition.
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This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.
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Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity.
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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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Do not judge men by 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.
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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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If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame.
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If one's conscience be dead as a stone, it is as heavy too.
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No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.
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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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Influence is exerted by every human being from the hour of birth to that of death.
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Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.
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Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
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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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Morality is but the vestibule of religion.
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There is a sweet anguish springing up in our bosoms when a child's face brightens under the shadow of the waiting angel. There is an autumnal fitness when age gives up the ghost; and when the saint dies there is a tearful victory.
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Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer.
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Death makes a beautiful appeal to charity. When we look upon the dead form, so composed and still, the kindness and the love that are in us all come forth.
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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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No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.
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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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Neutral men are the devil's allies.