Hamilton Mabie Quotes & Sayings

A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Real freedom comes from the mastery, through knowledge, of historic conditions and race character, which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Fair queen, at home there is none like thee,
But over the mountains is Snow-white free,
With seven little dwarfs, who are strange to see;
A thousand times fairer than thou is she.

Queen, thou art not the fairest now;
Snow-white over the mountain's brow
A thousand times fairer is than thou.

Queen, thou art the fairest here,
But not when Snow-white is near;
Over the mountains still is she,
Fairer a thousand times than thee. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Genius can do much, but even genius falls short of the actuality of a single human life. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Genius is intensity of life; an overflowing vitality which floods and fertilizes a continent or a hemisphere of being; which makes a nature many-sided and whole, while most men remain partial and fragmentary. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

It is better to go down on the great seas which human hearts were made to sail than to rot at the wharves in ignoble anchorage. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

A cottage will hold as much happiness as would stock a palace. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The test of friendship is its fidelity when every charm of fortune and environment has been spent away, and the bare, undraped character alone remains; if love still holds steadfast, and the joy of companionship survives in such an hour, the fellowship becomes a beautiful prophecy of immortality. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Then the maiden climbed into a tree, and, seating herself in the branches, began to knit. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

I do not believe that the deeper problems of living can ever be answered by the process of thought. I believe that life itself teaches us either patience with regard to them, or reveals to us possible solutions when our hearts are pressed close against duties and sorrows and experiences of all kinds. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The mother loves her child most divinely, not when she surrounds him with comfort and anticipates his wants but when she resolutely holds him to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than his best. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

of the race, untrammelled by the necessity of rigid adherence to the fact. The myths record the earliest attempt at an explanation of the world and its life; the fairy tale records the free and joyful — Hamilton Wright Mabie

To have a quiet mind is to possess one's mind wholly; to have a calm spirit is to possess one's self. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The germs of all truth lie in the soul, and when the ripe moment comes, the truth within answers to the fact without as the flower responds to the sun, giving it form for heat and color for light. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

He strains his conversation through a cigar. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen as she was. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

There is no kind obondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

I should like it to be as fair as snow, as rosy as the red blood, and with hair and eyes as black as ebony. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Nothing is lost upon a man who is bent upon growth; nothing wasted on one who is always preparing for - life by keeping eyes, mind and heart open to nature, men, books, experience - and what he gathers serves him at unexpected moments in unforeseen ways. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

I will fly away to them, to the royal birds, and they will beat me, because I, that am so ugly, dare to come near them. But it is all the same. Better to be killed by them than to be pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the girl who takes care of the poultry yard, and to suffer hunger in winter!" And it flew out into the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans; these looked at it, and came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. "Kill me!" said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer a clumsy dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, but a - swan! — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The book of the moment often has immense vogue, while the book of the age, which comes in its company from the press, lies unnoticed; but the great book has its revenge. It lives to see its contemporary pushed up shelf by shelf until it finds its final resting-place in the garret or the auction room. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. - Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846 - 1916), American essayist — Susan Wiggs

Man is incomprehensible without Nature and Nature is incomprehensible apart from man. For the delicate loveliness of the flower is as much in the human eye as in its own fragile petals and in the splendor of the heavens as much in the imagination that kindles at the touch of their glory as in the shining of countless worlds. — Hamilton Wright Mabie