Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinIs there anything so wretched as to look at a man of fine abilities doing nothing?
Edwin Hubbel ChapinBooks! The chosen depositories of the thoughts, the opinions, and the aspirations of mighty intellects; like wondrous mirrors that have caught and fixed bright images of souls that have passed away; like magic lyres, whose masters have bequeathed them to the world, and which yet, of themselves, ring with unforgotten music, while the hands that touched their chords have crumbled into dust. Books! they are the embodiments and manifestations of departed minds--the living organs through which those who are dead yet speak to us.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinCan you conceive of anything that so represents the glory, and truth, and marvelousness of God's nature as the idea of peace?
Edwin Hubbel ChapinA thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily procession of love and duty.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinMan is concentric: you have to take fold after fold off of him before you get to the centre of his personality. You must get below his animal nature, habits, customs, affections, daily life, and sometimes go away down into the heart of the man, before you know what is really in him. But when you get into the last core of these concentric rings of personality you find a sense of the infinite-a consciousness of immortality linked to something higher and better.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin