James Martineau Quotes

All beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence, ere it issues out in might.

Religion is the belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind.

Grief is only the memory of widowed affection. The more intense the delight in the presence of the object, the more poignant must be the impression of the absence.

The pinafore of the child will be more than a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the priest.

The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers.

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.

If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

We should count time by heart-throbs.

Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his 'living God'.

It was in His parting sorrow--that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.

The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.

Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.

The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.

All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great and good, are, in like manner, never lost.

This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

The health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals.

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.

The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.

There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.

High hearts are never long without hearing some new call, some distant clarion of God, even in their dreams; and soon they are observed to break up the camp of ease, and start on some fresh march of faithful service.

Heaven and God are best discerned through tears; scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.

We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.

A mighty wind of resolution sets in strong upon him and freshens the whole atmosphere of his soul, sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty, till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude of souls akin to God, he is but a wave of his unbounded deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret place of the Almighty.

However constant the visitations of sickness and bereavement, the fall of the year is most thickly strewn with the fall of human life. Everywhere the spirit of some sad power seems to direct the time; it hides from us the blue heavens, it makes the green wave turbid; it walks through the fields, and lays the damp ungathered harvest low; it cries out in the night wind and the shrill hail; it steals the summer bloom from the infant cheek; it makes old age shiver to the heart; it goes to the churchyard, and chooses many a grave.

When speech is given to a soul holy and true, time, and its dome of ages, becomes as a mighty whispering-gallery, round which the imprisoned utterance runs, and reverberates forever.