J. G. Holland Quotes

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

God be thanked that there are some in the world to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling.

A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic is to life.

Joys divided are increased.

A woman in love is a very poor judge of character.

Calmness is the cradle of power.

What is the little one thinking about? Very wonderful things, no doubt; Unwritten history! Unfathomed mystery! Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks, As if his head were as full of kinks And curious riddles as any sphinx!

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.

Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.

A 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.

If 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.

The secret of being loved is in being lovely; and the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish.

God give us men. The time demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hands.

The temple of art is built in words.

Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff and has found his own spindle.

Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.

Music 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.

Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul.

Artists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.

There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.

The 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.

The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer.

The secret of man's success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.

Geology gives us a key to the patience of God.

Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.

The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.

Poet, 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.

A 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.

Labor is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers under the direction and control of the will.

There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man.

The choicest thing this world has for a man is affection.

That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slow, endures.

And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.

Humanity is constitutionally lazy.

Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion. While nothing is so foolish and baseless.

Scholarship, save by accident, is never the measure of a man's power.

The 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.

There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.

Work and wait, work and wait is what God says to us in creation.

All things unrevealed belong to the kingdom of mystery.

It is better to be a self-made man,--filled up according to God's original pattern,--than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.

Wants keep pace with wealth always.

No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.

Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.

I look into your great brown eyes, where love and loyal homage shine, and wonder where the difference lies between your soul and mine!.

I have learned that to do one's next duty is to take a step toward all that is worth possessing.

A noble deed is a step towards heaven.