Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Genius, Nature
Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion; while nothing is so foolish and baseless.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Pride
Character must stand behind and back up everything—the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None of them is worth a straw without it.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Character
Ideals are the world’s masters.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Idealism, Ideals
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Romance, Marriage
Work and wait—“work and wait” is what God says to us in creation.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Patience
The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Soul
There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Patience
The choicest thing this world has for a man is affection.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Love
The idle man stands outside of God’s plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Idleness
It is by work that man carves his way to that measure of power which will fit him for his destiny.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Work
Scholarship except by accident is never the measure of a person’s power.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Prayer, Birds, Effort, Ambition, God, Self-reliance
For years I have attended the ministrations of the house of God on the Sabbath, and though my pursuits are literary, I tell you I have received through all these years, more intellectual nourishment and stimulus from the pulpit, than from all other sources combined.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Preaching
The person who does not know how to live while they are making a living is a poorer person after their wealth is won than when they started.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Life and Living
Artists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Art
In that worthiest of all struggles, the struggle for self-mastery and goodness, we are far less patient with ourselves than God is with us.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Laws are the very bulwarks of liberty; they define every man’s rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Law
God pity the man of seience who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity he does.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Science
There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Idleness
Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion; while nothing is so foolish and baseless.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Opinion, Discipline, Pride, Wisdom
Open your hands, ye whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers.
Give and spend,
and be sure that God will send;
for only in giving and spending
do you fulfill the object of His sending.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Shopping
No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Nations
For the great hereafter I trust in the infinite love of God as expressed in the life and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Immortality
Labor—the expenditure of vital effort in some form, is the measure, nay, it is the maker of values.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Labor
It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he makes of what he knows; not a question of what he has acquired, and how he has been trained, but of what he is, and what he can do.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Man
Calmness is the cradle of power.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Power
The theological systems of men and schools are always determined by the character of their ideal of Christ, the great central fact of the Christian system.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Of all the advantages which come to any young man, I believe it to be demonstrably true that poverty is the greatest.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Poverty, Difficulties, Adversity
The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the mood’s of people, and his tact in dealing with them.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland
Topics: Tact
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
- Marge Piercy American Poet
- Robert Penn Warren American Novelist, Poet
- Mary Webb British Novelist
- Jean Cocteau French Poet, Artist
- Tobias Smollett Scottish Poet
- Berthold Auerbach German Novelist
- Roger McDonald Australian Novelist
- Remy de Gourmont French Poet, Writer
- John Masefield English Poet
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