J.G. Holland Quotes & Sayings

So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it. — J.G. Holland

He that cannot paint must grind the colors. — J.G. Holland

To labor rightly and earnestly is to walk in the golden track that leads to God. It is to adopt the regimen of manhood and womanhood. It is to come into sympathy with the great struggle of humanity toward perfection. It is to adopt the fellowship of all the great and good the world has ever known. — J.G. Holland

Play may not have so high a place in the divine economy, but is has as legitimate a place as prayer. — J.G. Holland

No genuine observer can decide otherwise than that the homes of a nation are the bulwarks of personal and national safety and thrift. — J.G. Holland

Every man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer. — J.G. Holland

It is by work that man carves his way to that measure of power which will fit him for his destiny. — J.G. Holland

A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man and men are the particles of which it is composed. — J.G. Holland

In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by well meaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect. — J.G. Holland

There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting. — J.G. Holland

Humanity is constitutionally lazy. — J.G. Holland

The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character. — J.G. Holland

Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition. — J.G. Holland

There is no truth which personal vice will not distort. — J.G. Holland

Everything good in a man thrives best when properly recognized. — J.G. Holland

Calmness is the cradle of power. — J.G. Holland

Laws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man's rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men. — J.G. Holland

In the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be. — J.G. Holland

Cost is the father and compensation the mother of progress. — J.G. Holland

A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion. — J.G. Holland

All that has been done to weaken the foundation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation, and at the cost of human happiness. — J.G. Holland

If you want learning, you must work for it. — J.G. Holland

The theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system. — J.G. Holland

A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction. — J.G. Holland

Posts of honor are evermore posts of danger and of care. — J.G. Holland

Of all the advantages which come to any young man ... poverty is the greatest. — J.G. Holland

Fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth; and there is little truth we get so true as that which we find in fiction. — J.G. Holland

Life always take on the character of its motive. — J.G. Holland

A fortune won in a day is lost in a day; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted, seems to acquire from the hand that won it the property of endurance. — J.G. Holland

God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does. — J.G. Holland

Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you
the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not. — J.G. Holland

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart. — J.G. Holland

Labor is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers under the direction and control of the will. — J.G. Holland

A man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best rewards and life's best defences. — J.G. Holland

It is better to be a self-made man,
filled up according to God's original pattern,
than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern. — J.G. Holland

There is no well-doing, no Godlike doing, that is not patient doing. — J.G. Holland

God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man's hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission. — J.G. Holland

The secret of man's success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them. — J.G. Holland

No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life. — J.G. Holland

The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses. — J.G. Holland

A woman in love is a very poor judge of character. — J.G. Holland

A man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table. — J.G. Holland

Childhood may do without a grand purpose, but manhood cannot. — J.G. Holland

There are no twin souls in God's universe. — J.G. Holland

There is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance. — J.G. Holland

We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation
have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it. — J.G. Holland

Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them. — J.G. Holland

Scholarship, save by accident, is never the measure of a man's power. — J.G. Holland

That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slow, endures. — J.G. Holland

A man does not necessarily sin who does that which our reason and our conscience condemn. — J.G. Holland

Every man who can be a first-rate something
as every man can be who is a man at all
has no right to be a fifth-rate something; for a fifth-rate something is not better than a first-rate nothing. — J.G. Holland

The cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments. — J.G. Holland

Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul. — J.G. Holland

If have got my spindle and my distaff ready
my pen and mind
never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax. — J.G. Holland

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man. — J.G. Holland

If we will measure other people's corn in our own bushel, let us first take it to the Divine standard, and have it sealed. — J.G. Holland

What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint? — J.G. Holland

Ah! soul of mine! Ah! soul of mine! Thy sluggish senses are but bars That stand between thee and the stars, And shut thee from the world divine. — J.G. Holland

The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution. — J.G. Holland

The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there. — J.G. Holland

Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride? — J.G. Holland

I know of but one garment which the fashionable social life of this country borrows of Christianity; it is that ample garment of charity which covers a multitude of sins
particularly fashionable sins. — J.G. Holland

The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life. — J.G. Holland

There are crowds who trample a flower into the dust without thinking once that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God under their heel. — J.G. Holland

Geology gives us a key to the patience of God. — J.G. Holland

I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God
Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view. — J.G. Holland

A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic is to life. — J.G. Holland

The secret of being loved is in being lovely; and the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish. — J.G. Holland

God give us men! A time like this demands. Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not die. — J.G. Holland

A man in whom religion is an inspiration, who has surrendered his being to its power, who drinks it, breathes it, bathes in it, cannot speak otherwise than religiously. — J.G. Holland

I softly sink into the bath of sleep: With eyelids shut, I see around me close The mottled, violet vapors of the deep, That wraps me in repose. — J.G. Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may. — J.G. Holland

The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life - the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age. — J.G. Holland

We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires. — J.G. Holland

Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff and has found his own spindle. — J.G. Holland

Work was made for man, and not man for work. Work is man's servant, both in its results to the worker and the world. Man is not work's servant, save as an almost universal perversion has made him such. — J.G. Holland

Every man's powers have relation to some kind of work; and whenever he finds that kind of work which he can do best
that to which his powers are best adapted
he finds that which will give him the best development, and that by which he can best build up, or make, his manhood. — J.G. Holland

No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty
a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants. — J.G. Holland

The moment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost, and men, left free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each other's rights, and invade the field of each other's liberty. — J.G. Holland

It is only rogues who feel the restraints of law. — J.G. Holland

God give us men. The time demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hands. — J.G. Holland

Assertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction
this is the New Testament method, and the true one. — J.G. Holland

I have learned that to do one's next duty is to take a step toward all that is worth possessing. — J.G. Holland

A noble deed is a step towards heaven. — J.G. Holland

This world of sense, built by the imagination
how fair and foul it is! Like a fairy island in the sea of life, it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green, known of the world not by communion of knowledge, but by personal, secret discovery! — J.G. Holland

My God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep, That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain, And drowns within its waters still and deep My sorrow and my pain. I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond That binds my spirit to its daily load, And give it angel wings, to fly beyond Its slumber-bound abode. — J.G. Holland

All who become men of power reach their estate by the same self-mastery, the same self-adjustment to circumstances, the same voluntary exercise and discipline of their faculties, and the same working of their life up to and into their high ideals of life. — J.G. Holland

Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries. — J.G. Holland

If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected. — J.G. Holland

Patience, persistence, and power to do are only acquired by work. — J.G. Holland

It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows. — J.G. Holland

A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman's eyes; for God himself sits behind them. — J.G. Holland

The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer. — J.G. Holland

Wants keep pace with wealth always. — J.G. Holland

Work for immortality if you will: then wait for it. — J.G. Holland

Man's record upon this wild world is the record of work, and of work alone. — J.G. Holland

The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence. — J.G. Holland

What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx! — J.G. Holland

We work and that is godlike. — J.G. Holland

The man who loves home best, and loves it most unselfishly, loves his country best. — J.G. Holland