Skip links

Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Edwin Hubbell Chapin (American Preacher, Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by Edwin Hubbell Chapin (American Preacher, Poet)

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) was an American preacher and the editor of The Christian Leader. A Universalist minister, author, and social reformer, he was also a poet, responsible for the poem “Burial at Sea,” which is the origin of a famous folk song, “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.”

Born in Union Village, New York, Chapin attended a seminary at Bennington, Vermont, and became a pastor in 1838. After ten years of serving congregations in Virginia and Massachusetts, he settled in New York City as pastor of the Church of the Divine Paternity, serving there for thirty years. The church was renamed the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, and Chapin’s oratory attracted crowds of almost 2,000 each Sunday.

Chapin’s works included the collections of sermons The Crown of Thorns: A Token for the Sorrowing (1847,) Duties of Young Women (1849,) Living Words (1860,) and God’s Requirements and Other Sermons (1881.)

Chapin was the author of the poem “Ocean Burial” or “Burial at Sea,” which was set to music by composer George N. Allen. This popular song became a sailor’s song and developed into another song, “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.”

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There is no happiness in life, and there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Home

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Individuality

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Mercy

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Neutral men are the devil’s allies.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Morality is the vestibule of religion.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Morality

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Bravery, Courage

Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to, and answered by the living soul of man.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Nature

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Cities

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Swearing, Vulgarity, Profanity

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Evils

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Life, Ideas

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases a man.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Vice

Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Modesty

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Nature

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Christian

Home is the seminary of all other institutions.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Home

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Vice

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Cowardice, Brave

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth—the true poet is very near the oracle.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Poets, Poetry

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Science

Skepticism has never founded empires, established principles, or changed the world’s heart.—The great doers in history have always been men of faith.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Doubt, Skepticism

The essence of justice is mercy.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Justice

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward things we are. To be good is the great thing.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Age, Aging

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in the purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Forgiveness

There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Deceit

Wondering Whom to Read Next?