Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinGenius is the accumulated wealth of our humanity--its most intense development concentrated at one point, and then with clearer expression and with mysterious power shot back to us across the galvanic lines of thought and feeling.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinThe child's grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man's sorrow, and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum as the other in striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinA life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinThere is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose the feathery foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their grandfathers.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin