Edward Everett Hale

Nineteen centuries would have been worth very little if we had not made some advance in welcoming the stranger, in feeding the hungry, in clothing the naked, and in caring for the prisoner.

Wrong fails because it is wrong. The wrongs, the untruths, are inconsistent with each other. They clash against each other and confute each other. They neutralize each other and are lost.

Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their ground. They pretend to nothing that they are not.

Let a man live with God, not afraid to talk with him. Let him study God's plans and methods, as one of Michelangelo's pupils might study his.

Thrones, dominations, principalities know now with a terrible certainty that mere force of arms has no power which compares with that living word of the crucified Nazarene, that bears with it Eternal Life, and directs the duty of a world of men whom he can lead, but who bend no knee to power.

You may take this as a general and central principle in criticism: that all science, literature or song, which recognizes conscious life as the ruling principle of the universe, is Christian.

How indifferent are men to this carpenter or that fisherman, who has no word to speak of adventure or of wealth, but has only the word of God to proclaim, and has no credentials but that he comes in the name of the Lord.

Do well what you do. And do it conscious that you ought to be leaders among men.

To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand.

The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.

War - hard apprenticeship of freedom.

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

You need the living, loving heart of living, loving men and women to quicken other hearts, which can live too and love too, and, in their turn, will quicken others which are dying now.

It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.

The great event of history is in the great miracle of Life: when, to a paralyzed world, Jesus Christ said, 'Take up your bed and walk,' and at his voice, that world obeyed. The victory of life over death!

Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.

The Resurrection miracle is nothing to you and me if it is only an event of eighteen centuries bygone. Unless we can live the immortal life - unless we can receive God to his own home in these hearts of ours - the texts are nothing to us unless these daily lives illustrate them.

Do not blow your own trumpets nor, which is the same thing, ask other people to blow them. No trumpeter ever rose to be a general.

If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.

'Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.

In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Life seeks life and loves life. The opening of a catkin of a willow, in the flight of the butterfly, in the chirping of a tree-toad or the sweep of an eagle - my life loves to see how others live, exults in their joy, and so far is partner in their great concern.