Hosea Ballou
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.Collection: Education
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.Collection: Business
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.Collection: Beauty
Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.Collection: Happiness
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.Collection: Truth
Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.Collection: Nature
Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.Collection: Inspirational
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.Collection: Medical
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.Collection: Courage
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.Collection: Happiness
Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.Collection: Age
Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
Never be so brief as to become obscure.
Error is always more busy than truth.
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.
Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
Hatred is self-punishment.
There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals.
Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.
Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty. The sun has no need to boast of his brightness, nor the moon of her effulgence.Collection: Honesty
All our possessions are as nothing compared to health, strength, and a clear conscience.Collection: Possession
Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.Collection: Kindness
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.Collection: Hypocrisy
There is nothing that needs to be said in an unkind manner.Collection: Kindness
A good smile is the sunshine of wisdom.Collection: Smile
Rage is mental imbecility.Collection: Rage
It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.Collection: Vices
If we are at peace with God and our own conscience, what enemy among men need we fear?Collection: Men
The eye is the inlet to the soul, and it is well to beware of him whose visual organs avoid your honest regard.Collection: Eye
To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.Collection: Law
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another's place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.Collection: Sympathy
Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.Collection: Latter
It is my humble prayer that I may be of some use in my day and generation.Collection: Prayer
You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker.Collection: Judging
Too many people embrace religion from the same motives that they take a companion in wedlock, not from true love of the person, but because of a large dowry.Collection: People
Faith, in order to be genuine and of any real value, must be the offspring of that divine love which Jesus manifested when He prayed for His enemies on the cross.Collection: Faith
The severest punishment suffered by a sensitive mind, for injury inflicted upon another, is the consciousness of having done it.Collection: Punishment
With regard to manner, be careful to speak in a soft, tender, kind and loving way. Even when you have occasion to rebuke, be careful to do it with manifest kindness. The effect will be incalculably better.Collection: Kindness
As the sun's rays will irradiate even the murky pool, and make its stagnant waters to shine like silver, so doth God's goodness and tender mercy, towards the greatest sinner, and the blackest heart, make his own image visible there!Collection: Heart
Some clergymen make a motto, instead of a theme, of their texts.Collection: Motto
Few things in this world more trouble people than poverty, or the fear of poverty; and, indeed, it is a sore affliction; but, like all other ills that flesh is heir to, it has its antidote, its reliable remedy. The judicious application of industry, prudence and temperance is a certain cure.Collection: People
Servility is disgusting to a truly noble character, and engenders only contempt.Collection: Character
Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred it the coward's revenge for being intimidated.Collection: Revenge