Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul.
J. G. HollandThe most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.
J. G. HollandAlmost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.
J. G. HollandAh! soul of mine! Ah! soul of mine! Thy sluggish senses are but bars That stand between thee and the stars, And shut thee from the world divine.
J. G. HollandThe most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
J. G. HollandIt is better to be a self-made man,--filled up according to God's original pattern,--than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.
J. G. HollandThe faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution.
J. G. HollandThis world of sense, built by the imagination--how fair and foul it is! Like a fairy island in the sea of life, it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green, known of the world not by communion of knowledge, but by personal, secret discovery!
J. G. HollandThere are crowds who trample a flower into the dust without thinking once that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God under their heel.
J. G. HollandWhat do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?
J. G. HollandLabor is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers under the direction and control of the will.
J. G. HollandGod gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.
J. G. HollandMany men and women spend their lives in unsuccessful attempts to spin the flax God sends them upon a wheel they can never use.
J. G. HollandThe faculties of our souls differ as widely as the features of our faces and the forms of our frames.
J. G. HollandDoubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.
J. G. HollandA man in whom religion is an inspiration, who has surrendered his being to its power, who drinks it, breathes it, bathes in it, cannot speak otherwise than religiously.
J. G. HollandPlay may not have so high a place in the divine economy, but is has as legitimate a place as prayer.
J. G. HollandThe sweetest type of heaven is home - nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; an life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us.
J. G. HollandWhatever of true glory has been won by any nation of the earth; whatever great advance his been made by any nation in that which constitutes a high Christian civilization, has been always at the cost of sacrifice; has cost the price marked upon it in God's inventory of national good.
J. G. HollandLife is before you,- not earthly life alone, but life- a thread running interminably through the warp of eternity.
J. G. HollandAnd when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.
J. G. HollandThe idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.
J. G. HollandThe secret of man's success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.
J. G. HollandGossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.
J. G. HollandA man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table.
J. G. HollandCommunion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.
J. G. HollandThere is no point where art so nearly touches nature as when it appears in the form of words.
J. G. HollandIn the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.
J. G. HollandEvery man's powers have relation to some kind of work; and whenever he finds that kind of work which he can do best--that to which his powers are best adapted--he finds that which will give him the best development, and that by which he can best build up, or make, his manhood.
J. G. HollandMy idea of the Christian religion is, that it is an inspiration and its vital consequences--an inspiration and a life--God's life breathed into a man and breathed through a man--the highest inspiration and the highest life of every soul which it inhabits; and, furthermore, that the soul which it inhabits can have no high issue which is not essentially religious.
J. G. Holland