Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?
J. G. HollandThe moment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost, and men, left free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each other's rights, and invade the field of each other's liberty.
J. G. HollandNothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion. While nothing is so foolish and baseless.
J. G. HollandA man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best rewards and life's best defences.
J. G. HollandI stand by my kind; and I thank God for the temptations that have brought me into sympathy with them, as I do for the love that urges me to efforts for their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, of His disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety.
J. G. HollandWork was made for man, and not man for work. Work is man's servant, both in its results to the worker and the world. Man is not work's servant, save as an almost universal perversion has made him such.
J. G. HollandFashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.
J. G. HollandThe cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments.
J. G. HollandIt is by work that man carves his way to that measure of power which will fit him for his destiny.
J. G. HollandI have learned that to do one's next duty is to take a step toward all that is worth possessing.
J. G. HollandI count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view.
J. G. HollandA life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.
J. G. HollandI account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to which God appoints all those whom he has favored with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful in the world. He never institutes a channel for the passage of His bounties that those bounties do not enrich and beautify.
J. G. HollandI know of but one garment which the fashionable social life of this country borrows of Christianity; it is that ample garment of charity which covers a multitude of sins--particularly fashionable sins.
J. G. HollandPreceptive wisdom that has not been vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life.
J. G. HollandGod be thanked that there are some in the world to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling.
J. G. HollandGod gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man's hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission.
J. G. HollandThe love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life - the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
J. G. HollandPlay is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.
J. G. HollandLaws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man's rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men.
J. G. HollandThe theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system.
J. G. HollandArtists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.
J. G. HollandNo man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.
J. G. HollandThere is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance.
J. G. HollandThere is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.
J. G. HollandSo I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it.
J. G. HollandThere is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.
J. G. HollandAll who become men of power reach their estate by the same self-mastery, the same self-adjustment to circumstances, the same voluntary exercise and discipline of their faculties, and the same working of their life up to and into their high ideals of life.
J. G. HollandFiction is most powerful when it contains most truth; and there is little truth we get so true as that which we find in fiction.
J. G. Holland