Josiah Gilbert Holland Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

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
God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Of colonial New England:
There was adultery in high places and adultery in low.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Communion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Style that is not the outgrowth of a man's individuality, is, of course, without significance or value in the expression of his thoughts. It is never thoroughly formed until character is formed, and until the expression of thought has become habitual.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.

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
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
Open your hands, ye Whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfill the object of His sending.

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

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to which God appoints all those whom he has favored with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful in the world. He never institutes a channel for the passage of His bounties that those bounties do not enrich and beautify.

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
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
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
Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
The faculties of our souls differ as widely as the features of our faces and the forms of our frames.

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
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
Ah! soul of mine! Ah! soul of mine! Thy sluggish senses are but bars That stand between thee and the stars, And shut thee from the world divine.

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
Childhood may do without a grand purpose, but manhood cannot.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul.

Josiah Gilbert Holland
Whatever of true glory has been won by any nation of the earth; whatever great advance his been made by any nation in that which constitutes a high Christian civilization, has been always at the cost of sacrifice; has cost the price marked upon it in God's inventory of national good.

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