The greatest truths are the simplest.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Communication
As unkindness has no remedy at law, let its avoidance be with you a point of honor.
—Hosea Ballou
God’s glowing covenant.
—Hosea Ballou
If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in heaven.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Gratitude
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Nature
There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith . .. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Belief, Faith
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Assumptions, Theory
Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature’s God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Obedience
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt
Obedience sums up our entire duty.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Obedience
Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings, Moderation
A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Habits, Habit
It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Vice, Associates
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Truth
Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt, Trust
Energy, even like the Biblical grain of mustard-seed, will move mountains.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Enthusiasm, Energy
Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Tears, Crying, Rain
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Enthusiasm, Charity, Zeal
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Hypocrisy, One liners
There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie.—Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense.
—Hosea Ballou
The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Praise
Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character.—Let parents always bear this in mind.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Example, Education
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood, and nearly as blameable.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Exaggeration
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Happiness
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
—Hosea Ballou
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Idleness
Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt
It is my humble prayer that I may be of some use in my day and generation.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Usefullness
The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Oppression, Freedom
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Sickness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Edwin Hubbell Chapin American Preacher, Poet
Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
Robert Fulghum American Unitarian Universalist Author
William Laurence Sullivan American Unitarian Clergyman
Phillips Brooks American Episcopal Clergyman
Maltbie Davenport Babcock American Clergyman
Theodore L. Cuyler American Presbyterian Clergyman
Thomas Merton American Trappist Monk
Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
Frederick Buechner American Writer, Theologian