J. G. Holland Quotes - Page 5

Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.

The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

He that cannot paint must grind the colors.

It is by work that man carves his way to that measure of power which will fit him for his destiny.

We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation--have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.

Communion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.

My God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep, That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain, And drowns within its waters still and deep My sorrow and my pain. I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond That binds my spirit to its daily load, And give it angel wings, to fly beyond Its slumber-bound abode.

I softly sink into the bath of sleep: With eyelids shut, I see around me close The mottled, violet vapors of the deep, That wraps me in repose.

There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.

I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to which God appoints all those whom he has favored with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful in the world. He never institutes a channel for the passage of His bounties that those bounties do not enrich and beautify.

What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?

A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.

So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it.

The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence.

Ah! soul of mine! Ah! soul of mine! Thy sluggish senses are but bars That stand between thee and the stars, And shut thee from the world divine.

Ideals are the world's masters.

This world of sense, built by the imagination--how fair and foul it is! Like a fairy island in the sea of life, it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green, known of the world not by communion of knowledge, but by personal, secret discovery!

A man does not necessarily sin who does that which our reason and our conscience condemn.

The fact is that sin is the most unmanly thing in God's world. You never were made for sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedience.

All who become men of power reach their estate by the same self-mastery, the same self-adjustment to circumstances, the same voluntary exercise and discipline of their faculties, and the same working of their life up to and into their high ideals of life.

The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character.

The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution.

In the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.

A man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best rewards and life's best defences.

I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view.