Top 461 Quotes & Sayings by Elbert Hubbard - Page 7

When you once attribute effects to the will of a personal God, you have let in a lot of little gods and evils - then sprites, fairies, dryads, naiads, witches, ghosts and goblins, for your imagination is reeling, riotous, drunk, afloat on the flotsam of superstition. What you know then doesn't count. You just believe, and the more your believe the more do you plume yourself that fear and faith are superior to science and seeing.

No great spiritual event befalls those who do not summon it.

Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.

God looked upon His work and saw that it was good. That is where the clergy take issue with him.

Allow motion to equal emotion.

The great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. The things that have really made me miss my train have always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in the least afraid.

A form of self-delusion.

Habit: The great economizer of energy.

No book is of much importance; the vital thing is, What do you yourself think?

The only man who makes money following the races is one who does it with a broom and shovel.

Strength and strength's will are the supreme ethic. All else are dreams from hospital beds, the sly, crawling goodness of sneaking souls.

When you grow suspicious of a person and begin a system of espionage upon him, your punishment will be that you will find your suspicions true.

Opportunities for education should be within the reach of every individual, not for the lucky few.

Your enemy is one who misunderstands you; why should you not rise above the fog and see his error and respect him for the good qualities you find in him?

The finest flowers are those transplanted, for transplanting means difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put forth to find adjustment does the plant progress.

The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear.

A college degree does not lessen the length of your ears; it only conceals it.

The stupidity of one brain multiplied by twelve.

It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebra which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do a thing.

The trouble with many married people is that they are trying to get more out of marriage than there is in it.

Righteous indignation: your own wrath as opposed to the shocking bad temper of others

Action is thought tempered by illusion.

Insomnia never comes to a man who has to get up exactly at six o'clock. Insomnia troubles only those who can sleep any time.

I believe in the Motherhood of God.

Some one has said that we are moving so fast that when plans are being made to perform some great feat, these plans are broken into by a youth who enters and says, “I have done it."

The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.

Freedom is the supreme good; freedom from self imposed limitation.

You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence.

Library: A place where the dead lie.

I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish.

Time is an illusion-to orators.

If we cannot be powerful and happy and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.

Men whose lives are doubtful want a strong government and a hot religion

A little more patience, a little more charity for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down to the past, and a silent ignoring of pretended authority; brave looking forward to the future with more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for a great burst of light and life.

Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.

A book on cheap paper does not convince. It is not prized, it is like a wheezy doctor with pigtail tobacco breath, who needs a manicure.

The new definition of a heathen is a man who has never played baseball.

The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.

Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.

Habit is a form of exercise.

Destruction, violence, ravages, murder, are perpetrated by statute law.

In God's great vaudeville, Mother is the headliner.

The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible.

Gossip is only the lack of a worthy memory.

What boy well raised can compare with your street gamin who has the knowledge and the shrewdness of a grown-up broker.

The only way to retain love is to give it away.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. You can lead a boy to college but you cannot make him think.

Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

Lawyers are the jackals of commerce.

Whom the Gods love die young no matter how long they live.

Life is a voyage, and we are all sailing under sealed orders. We plan, plot, scheme and arrange, and some fine day Fate steps in and our dreams are tossed into the yeasty deep. We grin and bear it--anyway we bear it: it is the only thing to do.

The home is a tryst-the place where we retire and shut the world out.

Every spirit makes its house, but as afterwards the house confines the spirit, you had better build well.

I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say, I desire to be Radiant -- to Radiate Life!

It does not make much difference what a person studies-all knowledge is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will be learned.

There is a wild, splendid, intoxicating joy that follows work well done.

Of all blessings, no gift equals the gentle, trusting love and companionship of a good woman.

Those who do unlawful acts are no more sinners in the eyes of God than we who think them.

It is a curious fact that of all the illusions that beset mankind none is quite so curious as that tendency to suppose that we are mentally and morally superior to those who differ from us in opinion.

Men who sit back and pride themselves on their culture haven't any to speak of.