Edwin Hubbel Chapin Quotes & Sayings

We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The deepest life of nature is silent and obscure; so often the elements that move and mould society are the results of the sister's counsel and the mother's prayer. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Whatever you truly conceive of in the mind, is possible. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The devil has been painted swarthy, cloven-footed, horned, and hideous. Do we expect to see him in that shape? O, surely it would be better for us, if he did come in that shape! The trouble is the devil never does come in that shape. He comes by chance, with unregistered signals, and in all sorts of counterfeit presentiments. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Life is a crucible. We are thrown into it and tried. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The true Church is not an institution to be kept apart from the world because the world "is common and unclean," but a vital heart of truth and love, beating with the life of Jesus, and sending abroad its sanctifying pulsations until nothing shall be common and unclean. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I know a good many people, I think, who are bigots, and who know they are bigots, and are sorry for it, but they dare not be anything else. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them
as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself
into the grave, and is forgotten. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Into what boundless life, does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being
positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

How much in this world is charged to chance or fortune, or veiled under a more devout name, and accorded to Providence; while, when we come to look honestly into affairs, we find it to be a debt of our own accumulation, and one which we must inevitably pay. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

The excellence and inspiration of truth is in the pursuit, not in the mere having of it. The pursuit of all truth is a kind of gymnastics; a man swings from one truth with higher strength to gain another. The continual glory is the possibility opening before us. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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! — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I will tell you where there is power: where the dew lies upon the hills, and the rain has moistened the roots of the various plant; where the sunshine pours steadily; where the brook runs babbling along, there is a beneficent power. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So it is with people who sometimes cover the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and so quench transcendent glories with a little shining dust. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is those who make the least display of their sorrow who mourn the deepest. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
a Columbus of the skies. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Swift calls discretion low prudence; it is high prudence, and one of the most important elements entering into either social or political life. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. "Get a reputation, and then go to bed," is the absurdest of all maxims. "Keep up a reputation or go to bed, "would be nearer the truth. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The city an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but a spiritual sense. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or calorie, or lightening. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

God's beneficence streams out from the morning sun, and his love looks down upon us from the starry eyes of midnight. It is his solicitude that wraps us in the air, and the pressure of his hand, so to speak, that keeps our pulses beating. O! it is a great thing to realize that the Divine Power is always working; that nature, in every valve and every artery, is full of the presence of God. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases man. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The highest genius never flowers in satire, but culminates in sympathy with that which is best in human nature, and appeals to it. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose the feathery foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their grandfathers. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

How often a new affection makes a new man! The sordid, cowering soul turns heroic. The frivolous girl becomes the steadfast martyr of patience and ministration, transfigured by deathless love. The career of bounding impulses turns into an anthem of sacred deeds. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

We have not the innocence of Eden; but by God's help and Christ's example we may have the victory of Gethsemane. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

The way to overcome evil is to love something that is good. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Home is the seminary of all other institutions. There are the roots of all public prosperity, the foundations of the State, the germs of the church. There is all that in the child makes the future man; all that in the man makes the good citizen. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Death makes a beautiful appeal to charity. When we look upon the dead form, so composed and still, the kindness and the love that are in us all come forth. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A man's love for his native land lies deeper than any logical expression, among those pulses of the heart which vibrate to the sanctities of home, and to the thoughts which leap up from his father's graves. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The temptation is not here, where you are reading about it or praying about it. It is down in your shop, among bales and boxes, ten-penny nails, and sand-paper. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Conscience is its own readiest accuser. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Do not judge from mere appearances ... — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy. Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the Throne. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Most men are less afraid of ghosts than of facts. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The essence of justice is mercy. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Why, man of idleness, labor has rocked you in the cradle, and nourished your pampered life; without it, the woven silk and the wool upon your bank would be in the shepherd's fold. For the meanest thing that ministers to human want, save the air of heaven, man is indebted to toil; and even the air, in God's wise ordination, is breathed with labor. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The worst effect of sin is within and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Many a man who might walk over burning ploughshares into heaven stumbles from the path because there is gravel in his shoes. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A great many men
some comparatively small men now
if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily procession of love and duty. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Some souls are ennobled and elevated by seeming misfortunes, which then become blessings in disguise. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is as bad to clip conscience as to clip coin; it is as bad to give a counterfeit statement as a counterfeit bill. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to and answered by the living soul of man. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The more we sympathize with excellence, the more we go out of self, the more we love, the broader and deeper is our personality. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Morality is but the vestibule of religion. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Earth has scarcely an acre that does not remind us of actions that have long preceded our own, and its clustering tombstones loom up like reefs of the eternal shore, to show us where so many human barks have struck and gone down. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Influence is exerted by every human being from the hour of birth to that of death. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

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

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is because we underrate thought, because we do not see what a great element it is in religious life, that there is so little of practical and consistent religion among us. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Nature satisfies my thirst; it feeds my hunger; it finds me clothing; it affords me shelter; it wraps me around when I sleep with beneficent and watchful care; and it takes me at last to its great bosom, where my ashes mingle with their kindred dust. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There is no happiness in life, there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The minister should preach as if he felt that although the congregation own the church, and have bought the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is worth no more than any other man's, but it is all he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a salary. The terms are by no means equal. If a parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go elsewhere and get another pew, but the preacher cannot get another soul. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness. It is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for all human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The gospel has but a forced alliance with war. Its doctrine of human brotherhood would ring strangely between the opposed ranks. The bellowing speech of cartoon and the baptism of blood mock its liturgies and sacraments. Its gentle beatitudes would hardly serve as mottoes for defiant banners, nor its list of graces as names for ships-of-the-line. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Physically, man is but an atom in space, and a pulsation in time. Spiritually, the entire outward universe receives significance from him, and the scope of his existence stretches beyond the stars. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

However logical our induction, the end of the thread is fastened upon the assurance of faith. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin