Top 132 Quotes & Sayings by Hosea Ballou

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American priest Hosea Ballou.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Hosea Ballou

Hosea Ballou D.D. was an American Universalist clergyman and theological writer.

Error is always more busy than truth.
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue. — © Hosea Ballou
Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.
Hatred is self-punishment.
Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.
Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains. — © Hosea Ballou
Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.
Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.
Never be so brief as to become obscure.
Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.
There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals.
Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.
The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
The heavens and the earth, the woods and the wayside, teem with instruction and knowledge to the curious and thoughtful.
You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker.
There is nothing that needs to be said in an unkind manner.
No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.
True repentance always involves reform.
The eye is the inlet to the soul, and it is well to beware of him whose visual organs avoid your honest regard.
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
All our possessions are as nothing compared to health, strength, and a clear conscience.
It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.
Envy may justly be called "the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;" it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, a fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul.
Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.
It is what we give up, not what we lay up, that adds to our lasting store.
How quickly a truly benevolent act is repaid by the consciousness of having done it! — © Hosea Ballou
How quickly a truly benevolent act is repaid by the consciousness of having done it!
Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.
A good smile is the sunshine of wisdom.
Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.
The law of heaven is love.
Faith, in order to be genuine and of any real value, must be the offspring of that divine love which Jesus manifested when He prayed for His enemies on the cross.
The cloudy weather melts at length into beauty, and the brightest smiles of the heart are born of its tears.
It is my humble prayer that I may be of some use in my day and generation.
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the heart of man knoweth none more fragrant. — © Hosea Ballou
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the heart of man knoweth none more fragrant.
It is the goodly outside that sin puts on which tempteth to destruction. It has been said that sin is like the bee, with honey in its mouth, but a sting in its tail.
There is no doubt that religious fanatics have done more to prejudice the cause they affect to advocate than have its opponents.
Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty. The sun has no need to boast of his brightness, nor the moon of her effulgence.
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another's place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.
If we are at peace with God and our own conscience, what enemy among men need we fear?
The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought.
Too many people embrace religion from the same motives that they take a companion in wedlock, not from true love of the person, but because of a large dowry.
If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world?
The goodness of God to mankind is no less evinced in the chastisement with which He corrects His children than in the smiles of His providence; for the Lord will not cast off forever, but though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good. Let us endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.
To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.
Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.
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