If riches are, as Bacon says, the baggage (” impedimenta “) of virtue, impeding its onward progress—poverty is famine in its commissary department, starving it into weakness for the great conflict of life.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Poverty
Fiction is not falsehood, as some seem to think;—It is rather the fanciful and dramatic grouping of real traits around imaginary scenes or characters.—It may give false views of men or things, or it may, in the hands of a master, more truthfully portray life than sober history itself.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Fiction
Duty performed is a moral tonic; if neglected, the tone and strength of both mind and heart are weakened, and the spiritual health undermined.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Duty
He that is patient will persevere; and he that perseveres will often have occasion for, as well as trial of patience.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Patience
Hell is truth seen too late—duty-neglected in its season.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Hell
The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulations of others.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Education, Discipline
Of nineteen out of twenty things in children, take no special notice; but if, as to the twentieth, you give a direction or command, see that you are obeyed.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Children
Firmness is adherence to truth and duty is generally most decided when most intelligent and conscientious, and is sometimes mistaken for obstinacy by those who do not comprehend its nature and motive.
—Tryon Edwards
There are many times and circumstances in life when “Our strength is, to sit still.”
—Tryon Edwards
If we are but fixed and resolute—benton high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us “like the fabled spectreships, which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.”
—Tryon Edwards
Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Exaggeration, Honesty, Words, Candor
Fables, like parables, are more ancient than formal arguments and are often the most effective means of presenting and impressing both truth and duty.
—Tryon Edwards
Let your sermon grow out of your text, and aim only to develop and impress its thought.—Of a discourse that did not do this it was once wittily said, “If the text had the small-pox, the sermon would never catch it.”
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Preaching
Ridicule may be the evidence of wit or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Criticism
The end of our prayers is often gained by an answer very different from what we expect. “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” was the question of Paul; and a large part of the answer was, “I will show him how great things he must suffer.”
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Prayer
The first impulse of conscience is apt to be right; the first impulse of appetite or passion is generally wrong.—We should be faithful to the former, but suspicious of the latter.
—Tryon Edwards
He who can suppress a moment’s anger may prevent a day of sorrow.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Anger
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Doubt
Some men are born old, and some men never seem so. If we keep well and cheerful, we are always young and at last die in youth even when in years would count as old.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Old Age, Aging, Age
Do all that you can to stand, and then fear lest you may fall, and by the grace of God you are safe.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Temptation
If we make God’s will our law, then God’s promise shall be our support and comfort, and we shall find every burden light, and every duty a joy.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Will
The insane, for the most part, reason correctly, but from false principles, while they do not perceive that their premises are incorrect.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Madness
The religions we count false, may, for a time, have had their use; being, in their origin, faint, though misunderstood echoes of an early divine revelation, and also as Emerson says. “affirmations of the conscience, correcting the evil customs of their times.”
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Religion
Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from Heaven, at our very doors.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Happiness
Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path, and none can say where the descent will end.—“He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.”
—Tryon Edwards
Constancy to truth and principle may sometimes lead to what the world calls inconstancy in conduct.
—Tryon Edwards
We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Conscience
Looks are more expressive and reliable than words; they have a language which all understand, and language itself is to be interpreted by the look as well as tone with which it is uttered.
—Tryon Edwards
Do not despise the opinion of the world; you might as well say you do not care for the light of the sun, because you can use a candle.
—Tryon Edwards
Topics: Opinion
Our censure of our fellowmen, which we are prone to think a proof of our superior wisdom, is too often only the evidence of the conceit that would magnify self, or of the malignity or envy that would detract from others.
—Tryon Edwards
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Reinhold Niebuhr American Theologian
- Archibald Alexander Hodge American Presbyterian Theologian
- Anthony de Mello Indian-born American Theologian
- Paul Tillich German-American Theologian
- Samuel Rutherford Scottish Theologian
- George Matheson Scottish Theologian
- Conyers Middleton English Clergyman
- Karl Barth Swiss Protestant Theologian
- Johann Jacob Zimmermann German Nonconformist Theologian
- Henry Liddon English Theologian
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