Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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

Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Sympathy

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

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

The temptation is not here, where you are reading about it or praying about it. It is down in your shop, among bales and boxes, ten-penny nails, and sandpaper.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Temptation

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

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

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

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
Topics: Evils

Gayety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair.
—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
Topics: Evils

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

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

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

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

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.—The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite.—Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Pride, One liners, Vanity, Hypocrisy

The creed of the true saint is to make the most of life, and to make the best of it.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Happiness, Life

The individual and the race are always moving; and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heavens ttore immediately over us.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Progress

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

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

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Helping, Action, Eternity

The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Sin

It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of, for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in the field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Temptation

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: Courage, Bravery

The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Fanaticism

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

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 no mean work, save that which is sordidly selfish; no irreligious work, save that which is morally wrong; in every sphere of life the post of honor is the post of duty.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Duty

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him—if he is a walking university.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Education, Graduation

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So it is with people who sometimes cover up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and so quench transcendent glories with a little shining dust.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Vision, Prophecy

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Prayer

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