Gamaliel Bailey (1807–59) was an American physician and journalist. He left his vocation as a physician to become an abolitionist journalist and a leader of the abolition movement before the American Civil War.
Born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, Bailey graduated from the Jefferson Medical College-Philadelphia. He taught physiology at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio; there, attending the Lane Debates on Slavery stirred him to become an ardent abolitionist. He left his career to become an abolitionist, journalist, editor, and publisher, working primarily in Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C.
Bailey edited The National Era, established by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Its circulation and political and moral influence attracted such contributors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Theodore Parker. Bailey published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a serial in 1851–52 in The National Era.
South Carolina State University’s Stanley Harrold wrote Gamaliel Bailey and Antislavery Union (1986.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Gamaliel Bailey
Keep thy spirit pure from worldly taint by the repellent strength of virtue.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Virtue
Every believer is God’s miracle.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Miracles
It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another, without helping himself.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Service, Happiness, Kindness, Helpfulness, Love, Helping, Purpose, Try, Life, General, Goodwill, Sin, Generosity, Help
Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest we must sow the seed.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Industry
Poets are all who love and feel great truths, and tell them.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Poetry
Thou wind! which art the unseen similitude of God the Spirit, his most sweet and mightiest sign.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Men might be better if we deemed better of them.—The worst way to improve the world is to condemn it.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Dew-drops—nature’s tears, which she sheds on her own breast for the fair which die.—The sun insists on gladness; but at night, when he is gone, poor nature loves to weep.
—Gamaliel Bailey
The death-bed of a clay, how beautiful!
—Gamaliel Bailey
Both man and womankind belie their nature when they are not kind.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Kindness, Sex
Grief hallows hearts even while it ages heads.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Grief
What are ye orbs? The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Stars
What men call accident is the doing of God’s providence.
—Gamaliel Bailey
There is nothing on earth worth being known but God and our own souls.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: God
The sun-god’s crest upon his azure shield, the heavens.
—Gamaliel Bailey
The best enjoyment is half disappointment to what we intend or would have in this world.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Disappointment
Earth’s liquid jewelry, wrought of the air.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Any heart turned Godward, feels more joy in one short hour of prayer, than e’er was raised by all the feasts on earth since its foundation.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Prayer
It is sad to think how few our pleasures really are, and for which we risk eternal good.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Pleasure
The firefly only shines when on the wing; so it is with the mind; when we rest we darken.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Action, Mind
Amid life’s quests, there seems but worthy one: to do men good.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Goodness
They who forgive most, shall be most forgiven.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Let each man think himself an act of God; his mind a thought, his life a breath of God.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Man
Kindness is wisdom; there is none in life but needs it, and may learn.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Kindness
As nightingales feed on glow worms, so poets live upon the living light of nature and beauty.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Poetry
Poetry is itself a thing of God.—He made his prophets poets; and the more we feel of poesie do we become like God in love and power.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Poetry
The name of Christ—the one great word—well worth all languages in earth or heaven.
—Gamaliel Bailey
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Envy
Walk boldly and wisely in the light thou hast; there is a hand above will help thee on.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Light
Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.
—Gamaliel Bailey
Topics: Riches
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Frederick Douglass American Abolitionist
Rutherford B. Hayes American President
Horace Greeley American Elected Rep
L. Frank Baum American Writer
Victoria Woodhull American Social Reformer
George W. Bush American Head of State
Thomas J. Watson, Sr. American Business Executive
Tallulah Bankhead American Actress
Norman Vincent Peale American Clergyman, Self-Help Author
Tom Landry American Sportsperson