Josiah Gilbert Holland Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

It is intended that we shall accomplish all, through law, that we can accomplish for ourselves. God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by well meaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
My idea of the Christian religion is, that it is an inspiration and its vital consequences--an inspiration and a life--God's life breathed into a man and breathed through a man--the highest inspiration and the highest life of every soul which it inhabits; and, furthermore, that the soul which it inhabits can have no high issue which is not essentially religious.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
A man in whom religion is an inspiration, who has surrendered his being to its power, who drinks it, breathes it, bathes in it, cannot speak otherwise than religiously.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
The sweetest type of heaven is home - nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; an life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Nature is the master of talent; genius is the master of nature.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman's eyes; for God himself sits behind them.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
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.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Artists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
God give us men! A time like this demands. Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not die.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
No genuine observer can decide otherwise than that the homes of a nation are the bulwarks of personal and national safety and thrift.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Every man who becomes heartily and understandingly a channel of the Divine beneficence, is enriched through every league of his life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodious gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by the melodious waves of the recipient stream.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff and has found his own spindle.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
A man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table.

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

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Everything good in a man thrives best when properly recognized.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
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.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
The man who loves home best, and loves it most unselfishly, loves his country best.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends — all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father who would call us homeward towards Himself — all these are the ground and justification for a Christian discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing but the infernal.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man and men are the particles of which it is composed.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Genius originates ideas and invents forms; talent adopts ideas and imitates forms. Talent is instructed; genius is inspired.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
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?

Josiah Gilbert Holland