Edwin Hubbel Chapin quotes:

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

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

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.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

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

At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.

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.

No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.

Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.

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.

Neutral men are the devil's allies.

Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

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

Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Do not judge from mere appearances...

It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.

Impatience never commanded success.

Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns.

The sluices of the grog-shop are fed from the wine-glasses in the parlor, and there is a lineal descent from the gentleman who hiccoughs at his elegant dinner-table to the sot who makes a bed of the gutter.

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.

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

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

Impatience dries the blood sooner than age or sorrow.

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

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.

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.

The individual and the race are always moving, and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heaven more immediately over us.

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

Death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

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.

O, how much those men are to be valued who, in the spirit with which the widow gave up her two mites, have given up themselves! How their names sparkle! How rich their very ashes are! How they will count up in heaven!

No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love.

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.

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.

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.

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

Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.

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

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman, I care not what his stamp may be in society; I care not what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts.

Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later.

Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?

Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair.

Neutral men are the devil's allies

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical

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.

Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconscious to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman.

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

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

Tomorrow may never come to us. We do not live in tomorrow. We cannot find it in any of our title-deeds. The man who owns whole blocks of real estate, and great ships on the sea, does not own a single minute of tomorrow. Tomorrow! It is a mysterious possibility, not yet born. It lies under the seal of midnight-behind the veil of glittering constellations.

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.

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.

If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame.

The way to overcome evil is to love something that is good.

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.

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.

No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.

This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.

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

God is the explanation of all things.

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

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.

Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity.

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

The essence of justice is mercy.

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!

Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.

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.

A life is black, whiten it as you will.

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.

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.

Mercy. That is the gospel. The whole of it in one word.

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.

We only attain the true idea of marriage when we consider it as a spiritual union--a union of immortal affections, of undying faculties, of an imperishable destiny.

The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties.

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

God's work is freedom. Freedom is dear to his heart. He wishes to make man's will free, and at the same time wishes it to be pure, majestic, and holy.

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.

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. The vapor climbs the sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful commerce of nature. And all because of dissimilarity--because no one thing is sufficient in itself, but calls for the assistance of something else, and repays by a contribution in turn.

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.

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.

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

No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.

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.

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.

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

There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul--to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.

It is those who make the least display of their sorrow who mourn the deepest.

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

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.

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.

There is a sweet anguish springing up in our bosoms when a child's face brightens under the shadow of the waiting angel. There is an autumnal fitness when age gives up the ghost; and when the saint dies there is a tearful victory.

Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.