Hosea Ballou Quotes

There is no better rule to try a doctrine by than the question, Is it merciful, or is it unmerciful? If its character is that of mercy, it has the image of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Our blessings are the least heeded, because the most common events of life.

Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.

Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.

It is vain to trust in wrong; it is like erecting a building upon a frail foundation, and which will directly be sure to topple over.

The law of heaven is love.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Moderation is the key of lasting enjoyment.

Liberality should be tempered with judgment, not with profuseness.

The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration.

A good smile is the sunshine of wisdom.

Theory, from whatever source, is not perfect until it is reduced to practice.

Between the humble and contrite heart and the majesty of Heaven there are no barriers; the only password is prayer.

Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.

O sin, how you paint your face! how you flatter us poor mortals on to death! You never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make fair promises, but you never fulfil one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lip!

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.

A chaste and lucid style is indicative of the same personal traits in the author.

Error is always more busy than truth.

It is what we give up, not what we lay up, that adds to our lasting store.

There is no doubt that religious fanatics have done more to prejudice the cause they affect to advocate than have its opponents.

Servility is disgusting to a truly noble character, and engenders only contempt.

If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in heaven.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Obedience and resignation are our personal offerings upon the altar of duty.

True repentance always involves reform.

Prosperity seems to be scarcely safe, unless it be mixed with a little adversity.

Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature's God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

Self-respect is the best of all.

The eye is the inlet to the soul, and it is well to beware of him whose visual organs avoid your honest regard.

Duty itself is supreme delight when love is the inducement and labor. By such a principle the ignorant are enlightened, the hard-hearted softened, the disobedient reformed, and the faithful encouraged.

I have somewhere read that conscience not only sits as witness and judge within our bosoms, but also forms the prison of punishment.

As "unkindness has no remedy at law," let its avoidance be with you a point of honor.

The goodness of God to mankind is no less evinced in the chastisement with which He corrects His children than in the smiles of His providence; for the Lord will not cast off forever, but though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.

Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.

Remember, when incited to slander, that it is only he among you who is without sin that may cast the first stone.

There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals.

There is no such thing as "best" in the world of individuals.

We must not only read the Scriptures, but we must make their rules of life our own.

Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.

The cloudy weather melts at length into beauty, and the brightest smiles of the heart are born of its tears.

Most people who commit a sin count on some personal benefit to be derived therefrom, but profanity has not even this excuse.

Prosperity is very liable to bring pride among the other goods with which it endows an individual; it is then that prosperity costs too dear.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Some clergymen make a motto, instead of a theme, of their texts.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

A wise Providence consoles our present afflictions by joys borrowed from the future.

That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.

You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker.

Doubt that creed which you cannot reduce to practice.

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.

Prosperity often presages adversity.

Of all the ingenious mistakes into which erring man has fallen, perhaps none have been so pernicious in their consequences, or have brought so many evils into the world, as the popular opinion that the way of the transgressor is pleasant and easy.

How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty.

True charity is spontaneous and finds its own occasion; it is never the offspring of importunity, nor of emulation.

How quickly a truly benevolent act is repaid by the consciousness of having done it!

None but the guilty know the withering pains of repentance.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

Lenity has almost always wisdom and justice on its side.

Embark on no enterprise which you cannot submit to the test of prayer.

If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world?

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.

Death comes to us, under many conditions, with all the welcome serenity of sleep.

It is a glorious occupation, vivifying and self-sustaining in its nature, to struggle with ignorance, and discover to the inquiring minds of the masses the clear cerulean blue of heavenly truth.

No outward change need trouble him who is inwardly serene.

It is very questionable, in my mind, how far we have the right to judge one of another, since there is born within every man the germs of both virtue and vice. The development of one or the other is contingent upon circumstances.

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.

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.

It is the nature of intellect to strive to improve in intellectual power.

There is nothing that needs to be said in an unkind manner.

The heavens and the earth, the woods and the wayside, teem with instruction and knowledge to the curious and thoughtful.

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.

Humanity , in the aggregate, is progressing, and philanthropy looks forward hopefully.

That kind of discipline whose pungent severity is in the manifestations of paternal love, compassion, and tenderness is the most sure of its object.

There is one court whose findings are incontrovertible, and whose sessions are held in the chambers of our own breast.