Lyman Abbott Quotes

Patience is passion tamed.

Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry.

I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.

In New York - whose subway trains in particular have been "tattooed" with an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame - not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice - but as yet unstained.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

The artist does not really create; he discovers.

It is a shame for a man to be a millionaire in possessions if he is not also a millionaire in beneficence.

We often pray for purity, unselfishness, for the highest qualities of character, and forget that these things cannot be given, but must be earned.

I cannot harness a horse. I am afraid of a cow.

Religion is not a conclusion of the reason.

The highest qualities of character...must be earned.

It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity.

All Christian worship is a witness of the resurrection of Him who liveth for ever and ever. Because He lives, "now abideth faith, hope, charity."

Commerce is a form of warfare.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

Every soul is a battlefield.

Study how to do the most good and let the pay take care of itself.

Man puts manacles on his fellow-man; God never.

Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite.

I believe that God is the Great Companion, that we are not left orphans, that we may have comradeship with him.

A miracle constantly repeated becomes a process of nature.

If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.

It is only by human experiences that we can interpret the Divine.

Behind all forms of beauty there is an infinite unity, and this unity, this intrinsic and eternal beauty, the artist is seeking to discern and to make others discern.

The brotherhood of man is an integral part of Christianity no less than the Fatherhood of God; and to deny the one is no less infidel than to deny the other.

A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.

If there is to be no satisfaction in pleasure, none in wisdom, none in ambition, none in the golden mean, what then? Ah, where then? In duty. In doing right because it is right.

You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.

Service makes men competent.

God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not.

Do not think that you can fight corruption without while you let corruption fester within.

If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.

Courage is caution overcome.

The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.

No man can be patient who has not strong passions, for patience is passion tamed.

Every man's life is, consciously or unconsciously, a quest for the infinite and the eternal reality.

He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.

I think of death as a glad awakening from this troubled sleep which we call life; as an emancipation from a world, which, beautiful though it may be, is still a land of captivity.