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

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

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Sorrow

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Fashion

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Endurance

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: Vulgarity, Swearing

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Blessings, Patience

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

Impatience dries the blood sooner than age or sorrow.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconsciously to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Trials

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

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

There is no mockery like the mockery of that spirit which looks around in the world and believes that all is emptiness.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Peace

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

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!
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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

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

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties, Sorrow, Suffering

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

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Children

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: Aging, Age

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

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.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Fame

Wondering Whom to Read Next?