Hamilton Wright Mabie Quotes (5 Quotes)

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.

Real freedom comes from the mastery, through knowledge, of historic conditions and race character, which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress.

There is no kind of bondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations.

Our wills are not ours to be crushed and broken they are ours to be trained and strengthened. Our affections are not ours to be blighted and crucified they are ours to be deepened and purified. The rich opportunities of life are not held out to us only to be snatched away by an invisible hand patiently waiting for the hour when the cup is sweetest they are given to us that we may grow, alike through their rise or their withdrawal. They are real, they are sweet, and they are worthy of our longing for them we gain nothing by calling them dross, or the world an illusion, or ourselves the victims of deception, or by exalting renunciation as the highest virtue. When these opportunities are denied us, it is a real, not an imaginary, loss which we sustain and our part is not that of bare renunciation, of simple surrender our part is to recognize the loss, to bear the pain, and to find a deeper and richer life in doing the will of God.

Man is incomprehensible without Nature and Nature is incomprehensible apart from man. For the delicate loveliness of the flower is as much in the human eye as in its own fragile petals and in the splendor of the heavens as much in the imagination that kindles at the touch of their glory as in the shining of countless worlds.