Conscience is not given to a man to instruct him in the right, but to prompt him to choose the right instead of the wrong when he is instructed as to what is right. It tells a man that he ought to do right, but does not tell him what is right. And if a man has made up his mind that a certain wrong course is the right one, the more he follows his conscience the more hopeless he is as a wrongdoer. One is pretty far gone is an evil way when he serves the devil conscientiously.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Conscience
There are ever two ways of striving to fill one’s place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one’s self useful; the other, by striving to render one’s self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
The average person cannot over-read without peril of mental plethora, any more than he can overfeed with impunity. Literary dissipation is as weakening in its effects as dissipation of any other kind.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Reading
Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Conscience tells us that we ought to do right, but it does not tell us what right is—that we are taught by God’s word.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Conscience
It takes practice to use one’s eyes, even when God has opened them. And there are some believers who never get beyond confounding a doctrinal statement of a truth with a living exemplification of that truth.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
All that any one of us has to do in this world is his simple duty. And an archangel could not do more than that to advantage.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Duty
A loving trust in the Author of the Bible is the best preparation for a wise and profitable study of the Bible itself.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Bible
Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
In the time of Jesus, the mount of transfiguration was on the way to the cross.—In our day the cross is on the way to the mount of transfiguration.—If you would be on the mountain, you must consent to pass over the road to it.
—Henry Clay Trumbull
Topics: Trials
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Roger Babson American Economist
- Noah Webster American Lexicographer
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- John Neal American Author, Critic
- Walt Disney American Entrepreneur
- Marilynne Robinson Novelist, Essayist
- Harriet Beecher Stowe American Abolitionist
- Calvin Coolidge American Head of State
- Robert Andrews Millikan American Physicist
- Frances Willard American Temperance Campaigner
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