Edwin Chapin Quotes & Sayings

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

The church-bells of innumerable sects are all chime-bells to-day, ringing in sweet accordance throughout many lands, and awaking a great joy in the heart of our common humanity. — 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

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 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

What a proof of the Divine tenderness is there in the human heart itself, which is the organ and receptacle oft so many sympathies! When we consider how exquisite are those conditions by which it is even made capable of so much suffering
the capabilities of a child's heart, of a mother's heart,
what must be the nature of Him who fashioned its depths, and strung its chords. — 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

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

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

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

The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished and glorified through the furnaces of tribulation. — 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

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

As for environments, the kingliest being ever born in the flesh lay in a manger. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

For soon, very soon do men forget Their friends upon whom Death's seal is set. — 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

The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrong-doing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bits in its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Goodness is richer than greatness. It consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Christ saw much in this world to weep over, and much to pray over; but He saw nothing in it to look upon with contempt. — 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

When I contrast the loving Jesus, comprehending all things in his ample and tender charity, with those who profess to bear his name, marking their zeal by what they do not love, it seems to me as though men, like the witches of old, had read the Bible backward, and had taken incantations out of it for evil, rather than inspiration for good. — 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

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

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

Man gains wider dominion by his intellect than by his right arm. The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages. — 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

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

The conservative may clamor against reform, but he might as well clamor against the centrifugal force. He sighs for the "good old times,"
he might as well wish the oak back into the acorn. — 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

Certainly, truth should be strenuous and bold; but the strongest things are not always the noisiest, as any one may see who compares scolding with logic. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A day! It has risen upon us from the great deep of eternity, girt round with wonder; emerging from the womb of darkness; a new creation of life and light spoken into being by the word of God. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads. — 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

It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

We may learn by practice such things upon earth as shall be of use to us in heaven. Piety, unostentatious piety, is never out of place. — 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 not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Truth is the root, but human sympathy is the flower of practical life. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant. — 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

There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! — 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

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

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

The essence of justice is mercy. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impatience never commanded success. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry. — 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

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