Tryon Edwards Quotes

Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it.

Anecdotes are sometimes the best vehicles of truth, and if striking and appropriate are often more impressive and powerful than argument.

Let your holidays be associated with great public events, and they may be the life of patriotism as well as a source of relaxation and personal employment.

Unbelief, in distinction from disbelief, is a confession of ignorance where honest inquiry might easily find the truth. - "Agnostic" is but the Greek for "ignoramus."

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction.

Sincerity is not test of truth-no evidence of correctness of conduct. You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result.

If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.

Words are both better and worse than thoughts, they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin.

Most controversies would soon be ended, if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions.

One of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: do your work well and then be ready to depart when God shall call.

Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny.

Whatever our place allotted to us by Providence that for us is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us, not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it.

Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.

Appreciation, whether of nature, or books, or art, or men, depends very much on temperament. What is beauty or genius or greatness to one, is far from being so to another.

To rejoice in another's prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own

Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil.

Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.

To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.

There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. The more we are obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish.

The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves - our weaknesses, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?

True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.

We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.

Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws - a thing which can never be demonstrated.

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.

True art is reverent imitation of God.

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.