Henry van Dyke - Life Quotes

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To be glad of life because it gives you to chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars- to be satisfied with your possessions but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them- to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice- to be governed by you admirations rather than by your disgusts- to covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners- to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; to spend as much time as you can in God's out-of doors- these are the little guideposts on the footpaths to peace.

Henry van Dyke
If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence.
To break the endless song. If life were always merry,
Our souls would seek relief,
And rest from weary laughter
In the quiet arms of grief.

Henry van Dyke
I have no joy in strife,
Peace is my great desire;
Yet God forbid I lose my life
Through fear to face the fire. A peaceful man must fight
For that which peace demands,—
Freedom and faith, honor and right,
Defend with heart and hands.

Henry van Dyke
There is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life and live it as bravely and faithfully and cheerfully as we can.

Henry van Dyke
The simple life which blandly ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous.

Henry van Dyke
This is the soldier brave enough to tell
The glory-dazzled world that "war is hell":
Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,
And rides through hell to save his country's life.

Henry van Dyke
If Might made Right, life were a wild-beasts' cage;
If Right made Might, this were the golden age;
But now, until we win the long campaign,
Right must gain Might to conquer and to reign.

Henry van Dyke
There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light,
And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.
There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest,
But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.

Henry van Dyke
Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."... And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

Henry van Dyke
Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

Henry van Dyke
The strength of your life is measured by the strength of your will.

Henry van Dyke
A flawless cup: how delicate and fine The flowing curve of every jewelled line! Look, turn it up or down, 'tis perfect still-- But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine.

Henry van Dyke
Subjection to fear is weakness, bondage, feverish unrest. To be afraid is to have no soul that we can call our own; it is to be at the beck and call of alien powers, to be chained and driven and tormented; it is to lose the life itself in the anxious care to keep it.

Henry van Dyke
Life is an arrow, therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- Then draw it to the head and let it go!

Henry van Dyke
The more keenly we are awake to the perils of life, the higher and grander is the possibility of being truly brave.

Henry van Dyke