Chapin Quotes & Sayings

My musical heroes are people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote and sang real songs for real people; for everyone, old, young, and in between. — Tom Chapin

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

And while blood's the only language that your deaf old ears can hear And still you will not answer with that message coming clear Does it mean there's no more ripples in your tired old glory stream And the buzzards own the carcass of your dream? — Harry Chapin

I finally like myself, at last I like myself. — Harry Chapin

There's a vacancy, won't you come to me And fill my empty spaces I'm a motel man in a promised land That's filled with empty faces So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams, It's a place for you to be There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy — Harry 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

Oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words, And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then, How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again. — Harry 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

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

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I know some artists who come out of country music and the three sessions a day work ethic where you walk in, and you're told you play this note, this note, and this note, and you don't vary it. I know that works great for some people. It wouldn't work for me. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Be involved with the people with the live hearts, the live eyes, who are committed to something. — Harry Chapin

I feel like they're different creatures, live and in the studio, but that's what makes it so interesting to me. If they didn't have any different shadings or colors, you might as well be a hologram or something. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

You see, she was gonna be an actress and I was gonna learn to fly. She took off to find the footlights, and I took off for the sky. And here, she's acting happy, inside her handsome home. And me, I'm flying in my taxi, taking tips, and getting stoned. I go flying so high, when I'm stoned. — Harry Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

If we say that no one's out there And we say we're goin' nowhere And we avoid the question Is this all that it means? — Harry Chapin

To know is to care, to care is to act, to act is to make a difference. — Harry Chapin

I feel like politics have always informed what I do. If you know anything about my music, you know I've never been shy about stating how I vote. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

It's a marvelous feeling when someone says 'I want to do this song of yours' because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I went to college and I never allowed myself to think for an instant that I would have this chance to do this. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Everything changes in every genre, whether it's pop, rock or country. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Character has more effect than anything else. Let a number of loud-talking men take up a particular question, and one man of character, of known integrity and beauty of soul, will outweigh them all in his influence. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul. — 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

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

I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell. — Harry Chapin

As it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two to make a disease, the microbe and its host. — Charles V. Chapin

Genius is the accumulated wealth of our humanity
its most intense development concentrated at one point, and then with clearer expression and with mysterious power shot back to us across the galvanic lines of thought and feeling. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Groundhog Day is a lot like a rock concert but the people are better behaved and there's a groundhog involved, — Tom Chapin

It is not enjoined upon us to forget, but we are told to forgive, our enemies. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping," he said, quietly this time. "He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name. — Laura Anderson Kurk

This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There is no tariff so injurious as that with which sectarian bigotry guards its commodities. It dwarfs the soul by shutting out truths from other continents of thought, and checks the circulation of its own. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open impulsively beneath the summer rain. And true religion is a spontaneous thing,
as natural as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice. — 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

I like to feel that every day or most days, I do a little bit of writing. I am a creature of habit in terms of the way I live. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Seems like I've been here before, can't remember when I get this funny feeling, we'll be together again; No straight lines make up my life, all my roads have bends; No clearcut beginnings; so far, no dead ends. — Tom Chapin

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

Emmy Lou Harris introduced me to the work of the Vietnam Veterans of America foundation and the Campaign for a Land Mine Free World. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

The city reveals the moral ends of being, and sets the awful problem of life. The country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with religious suggestion. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is exceedingly deleterious to withdraw the sanction of religion from amusement. If we feel that it is all injurious we should strip the earth of its flowers and blot out its pleasant sunshine. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I've never ... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I don't really remember my folks singing to us, but they read to us. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I don't remember a voice
On a dark, lonesome road
When I started this journey so long ago
I was only just trying to outrun the noise
There was never a question of having a choice — Mary Chapin Carpenter

There's two lanes running down this road which ever side your on, accounts for where you want to go or what you're running from. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

When you're going nowhere, anywhere's a better place to be. — Harry Chapin

God trades our ashes for beauty, and our pain for joy. — T.K. 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

Impatience never commanded success. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The sound has grown and sweetened over the years as well, and you can hear it on many of my recordings and, most likely, will see and hear me playing it if you come to a live show. — Tom Chapin

It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Chapin was secured in the backseat - the motor-pool cars had rings bolted to the floor for just that reason - and he sat in his durance vile mumbling, ranting, threatening, and overusing the same naughty word. — Jeff Lindsay

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

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

And the look on her face as she opened the door Was like an old joke told by a friend. It'd taken ten more years but she'd found her smile And I watched the corners start to bend. — Harry Chapin

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery-into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights, friends who make you sing, and stars to help you find your place, music, hope, and amazing grace. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable until we refer to the paternity of God. It hangs a huge blot in the universe until the orb of divine love rises behind it. In that apposition we detect its meaning. It appears to us but a finite shadow as it passes across the disk of infinite light. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I'll go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

We all have two lives. The one we are given and the one we create. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, For we believed in things, and so we'd sing. — Harry Chapin

Pure felicity is reserved for the heavenly life; it grows not in an earthly soil. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I think that every new record is a chance to ... I think what it is for me is my heart and soul at that moment in time ... I've always felt that just being able to make a record is a privilege. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Even yet Christ Jesus has to lie out in waste places very often, because there is no room for him in the inn
no room for him in our hearts, because of our worldliness. There is no room for him even in our politics and religion. There is no room in the inn, and we put him in the manger, and he lies outside our faith, coldly and dimly conceived by us. — 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

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

The essence of justice is mercy. — 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

Flowers are red, and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen. — Harry Chapin

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Humanity is so constituted that the basest criminal represents you and me, as well as the most glorious saint that walks on high. We are reflected in all other men; all other men are embodied in us. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

She knows more of love than the poets can say, and her eyes offer something that won't go away. — Harry Chapin

Setting is preliminary to brighter rising; decay is a process of advancement; death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Liberty is an old fact; it has had its heroes and its martyrs in almost every age. As I look back through the vista of centuries, I can see no end of the ranks of those who have toiled and suffered in its cause, and who wear upon their breasts its stars of the legion of honor. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I think on a stage in front of thousands of people is a wildly invigorating and amazing experience, and it requires a certain skill set; then being in the studio, and being curled up in the fetal position under the piano, that requires another skill set. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

There is such a thing as honest pride and self-respect. — 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

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. — 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

Some people habitually wear sadness, like a garment, and think it a becoming grace. God loves a cheerful worshipper. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

You see, dream-lover of a lady, what shakes me to the core Is the thought as you caress me, you've done this all before I think about the future with me out and others in Will I, too, have disappeared like I've never ever been? — Harry 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

I woke to find every window open I woke to find the heavy door ajar And I walked outside and stood upon the hilltop And gazed once more on a bright morning star I walked outside and every bird was singing As I found again my bright morning star — Mary Chapin Carpenter