Henry Clay Trumbull quotes:

There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.

In the time of Jesus the mount of transfiguration was on the way to the cross. In our day the cross is on the way to the mount of transfiguration. If you would be on the mountain. you must consent to pass over the road to it.

Friendship by its very nature consists in loving, rather than in being loved.

Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.

In all holiest and most unselfish love, friendship is the purest element of the affection. No love in any relation of life can be at its best if the element of friendship be lacking. And no love can transcend, in its possibilities of noble and ennobling exaltation, a love that is pure friendship.

A love of reading is an acquired taste, not an instinctive preference. The habit of reading is formed in childhood; and a child's taste in reading is formed in the right direction or in the wrong one while he is under the influence of his parents; and they are directly responsible for the shaping and cultivating of that taste.

A loving trust in the Author of the Bible is the best preparation for a wise study of the Bible.

All that any of us has to do in this world is his simple duty

There is no human love like a mother's love. There is no human tenderness like a mother's tenderness......In all ages everywhere, the true children of a true mother 'rise up and call her blessed'; for they realize, sooner or later, that God gives no richer blessing to man than is found in a mother's love.

An over-readiness to criticise or to depreciate a minister of Christ is proof of a lack of devotion to Christ.

Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.

Conscience tells us that we ought to do right, but it does not tell us what right is - that we are taught by God's word.

Hardly anything can be more important in the mental training of a child than the bringing him to do it in its proper time, whether he enjoys it or not. The measure of a child's ability to do this becomes, in the long run, the measure of his practical efficiency in whatever sphere of life he labors.

If a man is unable to find the way to Jesus, he ought to be led. It is good work this bringing the blind to Him who alone can give them sight.

It has been said that the essence of teaching is causing another to know. It may similarly be said that the essence of training is causing another to do. Teaching gives knowledge. Training gives skill. Teaching fills the mind. Training shapes the habits. Teaching brings to the child that which he did not have before. Training enables a child to make use of that which is already his possession.

It is not an easy thing for a parent of today to bear always in mind that every child of his is as truly an individual as he was when he was a child.

It takes practice to use one's eyes, even when God has opened them. And there are some believers who never get beyond confounding a doctrinal statement of a truth with a living exemplification of that truth.

Jesus has never slept for an hour while one of His disciples watched and prayed in agony.

Just as sure as the days go by, Jesus will come to us, looking for fruit; and He will come in personal hunger, needing and longing for the fruit which we might have ready for Him.

No parent ought to punish a child except with a view to the child's good. And in order to do good to a child through his punishment, a parent must religiously refrain from punishing him while angry.

The moment you accept God's ordering, that moment your work ceases to be a task, and becomes your calling; you pass from bondage to freedom, from the shadow-land of life into life itself.

There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.

Value friendship for what there is in it, not for what can be gotten out of it.

He who knows how to teach a child is not competent for the oversight of a child's education unless he also knows how to train a child.