To labor rightly and earnestly is to walk in the golden track that leads to God. It is to adopt the regimen of manhood and womanhood. It is to come into sympathy with the great struggle of humanity toward perfection. It is to adopt the fellowship of all the great and good the world has ever known.
J. G. HollandIn my judgment, a great mistake has been made by well meaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect.
J. G. HollandAssertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction--this is the New Testament method, and the true one.
J. G. HollandA man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion.
J. G. HollandGod pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.
J. G. HollandThe fact is that sin is the most unmanly thing in God's world. You never were made for sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedience.
J. G. HollandPoet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you -- the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not.
J. G. HollandIf we will measure other people's corn in our own bushel, let us first take it to the Divine standard, and have it sealed.
J. G. HollandA man does not necessarily sin who does that which our reason and our conscience condemn.
J. G. HollandThe pleasant converse of the fireside, the simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as I bend over my school-tasks, the kiss as I lie down to rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every sorrow, and sweetens every little success--all these return to me amid the responsibilities which press upon me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and, straying, had lost my way.
J. G. HollandI softly sink into the bath of sleep: With eyelids shut, I see around me close The mottled, violet vapors of the deep, That wraps me in repose.
J. G. HollandMy God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep, That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain, And drowns within its waters still and deep My sorrow and my pain. I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond That binds my spirit to its daily load, And give it angel wings, to fly beyond Its slumber-bound abode.
J. G. HollandEvery man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer.
J. G. HollandThe secret of being loved is in being lovely; and the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish.
J. G. HollandAll that has been done to weaken the foundation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation, and at the cost of human happiness.
J. G. HollandHow long must the church live before it will learn that strength is won by action, and success by work, and that all this immeasurable feeding without action and work is a positive damage to it--that it is the procurer of spiritual obesity, gout, and debility.
J. G. HollandI look into your great brown eyes, where love and loyal homage shine, and wonder where the difference lies between your soul and mine!.
J. G. HollandThe person who does not know how to live while they are making a living is a poorer person after their wealth is won than when they started.
J. G. HollandMusic was a thing of the soul — a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea — a strange bird singing the songs of another shore.
J. G. HollandA nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man and men are the particles of which it is composed.
J. G. HollandA young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman's eyes; for God himself sits behind them.
J. G. HollandWe often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation--have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.
J. G. HollandHeaven is not reached at a single bound. But we build the ladder by which we rise. From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round.
J. G. HollandGod give us men. The time demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hands.
J. G. HollandIf there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected.
J. G. Hollandif have got my spindle and my distaff ready--my pen and mind--never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax.
J. G. HollandWe live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.
J. G. HollandA fortune won in a day is lost in a day; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted, seems to acquire from the hand that won it the property of endurance.
J. G. Holland