Hosea Ballou Quotes (38 Quotes)

Error is always more busy than truth.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.

It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.

It is what we give up, not what we lay up, that adds to our lasting store.

Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

There is no such things as "best" in the world of individuals.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Moderation is the key of lasting enjoyment.

Sin puts on that which tempteth to destruction. It has been said that sin is like the bee, with honey in its mouth, but a sting in its tail.

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration.

Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.

Idleness is emptiness the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.

Mystery and innocence are not akin.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Between the humble and contrite heart and the majesty of heaven there are no barriers the only password is prayer.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.