Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814 – 1880)
Universalist minister who became famed as an orator in the 1840s.
Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.
The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool.
Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in His universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
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.
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.
No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.
Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.
The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.
Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair.
There is no happiness in life, there is no misery like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
Pride is the master sin of the devil.
An aged Christian with the snow of time on his head may remind us that those points of earth are whitest that are nearest heaven.
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.
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.
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.
Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disk of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.
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.
Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire; and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gate of heaven.