Lyman Abbott Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or to vice.

Lyman Abbott
The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

Lyman Abbott
Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent God.

Lyman Abbott
If you want an infallible book go not to the Bible but to Euclid.

Lyman Abbott
I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.

Lyman Abbott
God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not.

Lyman Abbott
A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.

Lyman Abbott
It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

Lyman Abbott
Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite.

Lyman Abbott
Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.

Lyman Abbott
If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.

Lyman Abbott
The brotherhood of man is an integral part of Christianity no less than the Fatherhood of God; and to deny the one is no less infidel than to deny the other.

Lyman Abbott
He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.

Lyman Abbott
If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.

Lyman Abbott
A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.

Lyman Abbott
It is only by human experiences that we can interpret the Divine.

Lyman Abbott
Do not think that you can fight corruption without while you let corruption fester within.

Lyman Abbott
You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.

Lyman Abbott
No man can be patient who has not strong passions, for patience is passion tamed.

Lyman Abbott
Never say you are too old. You do not say it now, perhaps; but by and by, when the hair grows gray and the eyes grow dim and the young despair comes to curse the old age, you will say, "It is too late for me." Never too late! Never too old! How old are you--thirty, fifty, eighty? What is that in immortality? We are but children.

Lyman Abbott
There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.

Lyman Abbott
Behind all forms of beauty there is an infinite unity, and this unity, this intrinsic and eternal beauty, the artist is seeking to discern and to make others discern.

Lyman Abbott
It is a shame for a man to be a millionaire in possessions if he is not also a millionaire in beneficence.

Lyman Abbott