Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (December 29, 1814 – December 26, 1880) was a Universalist minister who became famed as an orator in the 1840s.

Quotes

Living Words (1869)

• 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.
  • P. 125.

• A great many men — some comparatively small men now — if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.
  • P. 165.

• 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.
  • P. 231.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
  • P. 6.

• 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.
  • P. 20.

• 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.
  • P. 66.

• 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.
  • P. 160.

• Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.
  • P. 251.

• Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.
  • P. 286.

• There is no happiness in life, there is no misery like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
  • P. 323.

• 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.
  • P. 439.

• Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.
  • P. 450.

• Pride is the master sin of the devil.
  • P. 484.

• 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.
  • P. 531.

• 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.
  • P. 567.

• Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconscious to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.
  • P. 584.