Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Edward Everett Hale

Nineteen centuries would have been worth very little if we had not made some advance in welcoming the stranger, in feeding the hungry, in clothing the naked, and in caring for the prisoner.

Let a man live with God, not afraid to talk with him. Let him study God's plans and methods, as one of Michelangelo's pupils might study his.

Wrong fails because it is wrong. The wrongs, the untruths, are inconsistent with each other. They clash against each other and confute each other. They neutralize each other and are lost.

The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.

Life seeks life and loves life. The opening of a catkin of a willow, in the flight of the butterfly, in the chirping of a tree-toad or the sweep of an eagle - my life loves to see how others live, exults in their joy, and so far is partner in their great concern.

War - hard apprenticeship of freedom.

Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.

How indifferent are men to this carpenter or that fisherman, who has no word to speak of adventure or of wealth, but has only the word of God to proclaim, and has no credentials but that he comes in the name of the Lord.

You need the living, loving heart of living, loving men and women to quicken other hearts, which can live too and love too, and, in their turn, will quicken others which are dying now.

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

You may take this as a general and central principle in criticism: that all science, literature or song, which recognizes conscious life as the ruling principle of the universe, is Christian.

To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand.

'Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.

It sometimes seems easier to trace the great general laws of God's government in the passage of events far from us than in those close around us. We see the shape of those far-off constellations, but we cannot group or set in order that to which our own sun belongs.

Do well what you do. And do it conscious that you ought to be leaders among men.

Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their ground. They pretend to nothing that they are not.

Do not blow your own trumpets nor, which is the same thing, ask other people to blow them. No trumpeter ever rose to be a general.

The great event of history is in the great miracle of Life: when, to a paralyzed world, Jesus Christ said, 'Take up your bed and walk,' and at his voice, that world obeyed. The victory of life over death!

In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

Thrones, dominations, principalities know now with a terrible certainty that mere force of arms has no power which compares with that living word of the crucified Nazarene, that bears with it Eternal Life, and directs the duty of a world of men whom he can lead, but who bend no knee to power.

If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.

It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

The Resurrection miracle is nothing to you and me if it is only an event of eighteen centuries bygone. Unless we can live the immortal life - unless we can receive God to his own home in these hearts of ours - the texts are nothing to us unless these daily lives illustrate them.

Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.

You and I must not complain if our plans break down if we have done our part. That probably means that the plans of One who knows more than we do have succeeded.

Take time enough for your meals, and eat them in company whenever you can. There is no need for hurry in life—least of all when we are eating.

I can't do everything, but that won't stop me from doing the little I can do.

I know I am only one, but I am one, and just because I'm one should not stop me from

I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.

You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was "the scourge of God."

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace.

For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled, Where God might write anew the story of the World.

He loved his country as no other man has loved her, but no man deserved less at her hands.

Can it be possible that all human sympathies can thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all human joys increase, if we live with all our might with the thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing kindly to all other people, to be sure? Can it be possible that our passion for large cities, and large parties, and large theatres, and large churches, develops no faith nor hope nor love which would not find aliment and exercise in a little "world of our own"?

[I]t is easy to regard the mind and the body as two slaves trained to obey the imperial soul.... [I]n this trinity of soul, mind, and body, it is sometimes hard to tell which of the three is at work; and the personality of each of the three parties interferes a good deal with that of each of the others. But if you who read will remember that you are an infinite child of God, and can partake of his nature, and that you have given to you the management and direction of your mind and your body, you will be saved many failures.

Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakspearo, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having. this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God.

Friendship is one of the greatest luxuries of life.

The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.

Behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the country herself, your country, and . . . you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother.

[S]leep, and enough of it, is the prime necessity. Enough exercise, and good food and enough, are other necessities. But sleep—good sleep, and enough of it—this is a necessity without which you cannot have the exercise of use, nor the food.