Top 219 Quotes & Sayings by Edwin Hubbel Chapin

No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.

This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases man.

Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair.

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

Neutral men are the devil's allies.

Skepticism has never founded empires, established principals, or changed the world's heart. The great doers in history have always been people of faith.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.

An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven.

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.

The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

The essence of justice is mercy.

A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.

The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool.

Each thing lives according to its kind; the heart by love, the intellect by truth, the higher nature of man by intimate communion with God.

The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf. The vapor climbs the sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful commerce of nature. And all because of dissimilarity--because no one thing is sufficient in itself, but calls for the assistance of something else, and repays by a contribution in turn.

No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love.

In this world the inclination to do things is of more importance than the mere power.

If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame.

Do not judge from mere appearances.

A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.

The way to overcome evil is to love something that is good.

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars ... It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat.

If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns.

The mere leader of fashion has no genuine claim to supremacy; at least, no abiding assurance of it. He has embroidered his title upon his waistcoat, and carries his worth in his watch chain; and, if he is allowed any real precedence for this it is almost a moral swindle,--a way of obtaining goods under false pretences.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.

Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

In some way the secret vice exhales its poison; and the evil passion, however cunningly masked, stains through to the surface.

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

A life is black, whiten it as you will.

The soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.

Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.

Not only is music a beautiful and sublime science, the study of which ennobles and purifies the mind of its votary, but how many and excellent are its ministries to others!

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.

The unmerciful man is most certainly an unblessed man. His sympathies are all dried up; he is afflicted with a chronic jaundice, and lives timidly and darkly in a little, narrow rat-hole of distrust.

Seeking Heaven through righteousness is not seeking righteousness, but something else;--it is not loving goodness for goodness' sake, but for its rewards.

Impatience never commanded success.

The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrong-doing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bits in its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury.

Tomorrow may never come to us. We do not live in tomorrow. We cannot find it in any of our title-deeds. The man who owns whole blocks of real estate, and great ships on the sea, does not own a single minute of tomorrow. Tomorrow! It is a mysterious possibility, not yet born. It lies under the seal of midnight-behind the veil of glittering constellations.

There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.

Books! The chosen depositories of the thoughts, the opinions, and the aspirations of mighty intellects; like wondrous mirrors that have caught and fixed bright images of souls that have passed away; like magic lyres, whose masters have bequeathed them to the world, and which yet, of themselves, ring with unforgotten music, while the hands that touched their chords have crumbled into dust. Books! they are the embodiments and manifestations of departed minds--the living organs through which those who are dead yet speak to us.

Whatever may be our condition in life, it is better to lay hold of its advantages than to count its evils.

Let every man be free to act from his own conscience; but let him remember that other people have consciences too; and let not his liberty be so expansive that in its indulgence it jars and crashes against the liberty of others.

A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount.

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star.

No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them.

The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement.... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys.... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find.