The deepest life of nature is silent and obscure; so often the elements that move and mould society are the results of the sister’s counsel and the mother’s prayer.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Silence, Influence
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
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 have not the innocence of Eden; but by God’s help and Christ’s example we may have the victory of Gethsemane.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Innocence
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Helping, Action, Eternity
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
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
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: Ideas, Life
There is such a thing as honest pride and self-respect.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Self-Discovery
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
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, Hypocrisy, Vanity
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
Morality is the vestibule of religion.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Morality
The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties.—Hope is bom in the long night of watching and tears.—Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Difficulty, Difficulties
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
Home is the seminary of all other institutions.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Home
A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Patience, Blessings
Neutral men are the devil’s allies.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Trouble, Adversity
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
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth—the true poet is very near the oracle.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Poets, Poetry
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 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
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
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
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
All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Nature
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
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
Topics: Affection
The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Topics: Fanaticism
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Hosea Ballou American Theologian
- Albert Benjamin Simpson Canadian Protestant Preacher
- Charles Spurgeon English Baptist Preacher
- Robert Fulghum American Unitarian Universalist Author
- David Starr Jordan American Zoologist
- P. T. Barnum American Businessperson
- Horace Greeley American Journalist
- A. W. Tozer American Christian Pastor
- Ted Sorensen American Lawyer, Speechwriter
- Francis of Assisi Italian Monk
Leave a Reply