Lyman Abbott Quotes

All Christian worship is a witness of the resurrection of Him who liveth for ever and ever. Because He lives, "now abideth faith, hope, charity."

I think of death as a glad awakening from this troubled sleep which we call life; as an emancipation from a world, which, beautiful though it may be, is still a land of captivity.

The brotherhood of man is an integral part of Christianity no less than the Fatherhood of God; and to deny the one is no less infidel than to deny the other.

It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity.

Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry.

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice - but as yet unstained.

Service makes men competent.

Study how to do the most good and let the pay take care of itself.

I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.

We often pray for purity, unselfishness, for the highest qualities of character, and forget that these things cannot be given, but must be earned.

In New York - whose subway trains in particular have been "tattooed" with an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame - not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.

The highest qualities of character...must be earned.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

Religion is not a conclusion of the reason.

I cannot harness a horse. I am afraid of a cow.

Postmodernism represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

Every great sin ought to rouse a great anger. Mob law is better than no law at all. A community which rises in its wrath to punish with misdirected anger a great wrong is in a healthier moral condition than a community which looks upon its perpetration with apathy and unconcern.

Patience is passion tamed.

We Gentiles owe our life to Israel. It is Israel who has brought us the message that God is one, and that God is a just and righteous God, and demands righteousness of his children, and demands nothing else. It is Israel who has brought us the message that God is our Father. It is Israel who, in bringing us the divine law, has laid the foundation of liberty.