E. H. Chapin Quotes

Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man in the moon.

But you can travel on for ten thousand miles, and still stay where you are.

I like to feel that every day or most days, I do a little bit of writing. I am a creature of habit in terms of the way I live.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

Whatever may be our condition in life, it is better to lay hold of its advantages than to count its evils.

Each thing lives according to its kind; the heart by love, the intellect by truth, the higher nature of man by intimate communion with God.

Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.

Truth is the root, but human sympathy is the flower of practical life.

Some souls are ennobled and elevated by seeming misfortunes, which then become blessings in disguise.

I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.

I love to write songs and sing them, and I didn't really know much more than that. Somehow it's gotten to the point where a friend can say, "It's very you," and that made me feel good.

Groundhog Day is a lot like a rock concert but the people are better behaved and there's a groundhog involved.

A life is black, whiten it as you will.

Seeking Heaven through righteousness is not seeking righteousness, but something else;--it is not loving goodness for goodness' sake, but for its rewards.

There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul--to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.

Mercy. That is the gospel. The whole of it in one word.

For soon, very soon do men forget Their friends upon whom Death's seal is set.

Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.

Physically, man is but an atom in space, and a pulsation in time. Spiritually, the entire outward universe receives significance from him, and the scope of his existence stretches beyond the stars.

Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.

Some people habitually wear sadness, like a garment, and think it a becoming grace. God loves a cheerful worshipper.

Life, whether in this world or any other, is the sum of our attainment, our experience, our character. The conditions are secondary. In what other world shall we be more surely than we are here?

It is because we underrate thought, because we do not see what a great element it is in religious life, that there is so little of practical and consistent religion among us.

Humanity is so constituted that the basest criminal represents you and me, as well as the most glorious saint that walks on high. We are reflected in all other men; all other men are embodied in us.

Down below all the crust of human conceptions, of human ideas, Christ sank an artesian well into a source of happiness so pure and blessed that even yet the world does not believe in it.

A day! It has risen upon us from the great deep of eternity, girt round with wonder; emerging from the womb of darkness; a new creation of life and light spoken into being by the word of God.

Many a man who might walk over burning ploughshares into heaven stumbles from the path because there is gravel in his shoes.

If one's conscience be dead as a stone, it is as heavy too.

Most men are less afraid of ghosts than of facts.

Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.

We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt.

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.

Life is a crucible. We are thrown into it and tried.

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.

It is exceedingly deleterious to withdraw the sanction of religion from amusement. If we feel that it is all injurious we should strip the earth of its flowers and blot out its pleasant sunshine.

Home is the seminary of all other institutions.

There is no happiness in life, there is no misery like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.

I should not like to preach to a congregation who all believed as I believe. I would as lief preach to a basket of eggs in their smooth compactness and oval formality.

A man can no more be a Christian without facing evil and conquering it than he can be a soldier without going to battle, facing the cannon's mouth, and encountering the enemy in the field.

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.

Can you conceive of anything that so represents the glory, and truth, and marvelousness of God's nature as the idea of peace?

We only attain the true idea of marriage when we consider it as a spiritual union--a union of immortal affections, of undying faculties, of an imperishable destiny.

The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties.

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.

Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit.

Munificent nature follows the methods of the divine and true, and rounds all things to her perfect law. While nations are convulsed with blood and violence, how quietly the grass grows.

God's work is freedom. Freedom is dear to his heart. He wishes to make man's will free, and at the same time wishes it to be pure, majestic, and holy.