Lyman Abbott Quotes

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

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

Patience is passion tamed.

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

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.

— Lyman Abbott

“Religion is not a conclusion of the reason.”

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

It is a shame for a man to be a millionaire in possessions if he is not also a millionaire in beneficence.

— Lyman Abbott

It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

— Lyman Abbott

“Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite.”

— Lyman Abbott

“God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Man puts manacles on his fellow-man; God never.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Behind all forms of beauty there is an infinite unity, and this unity, this intrinsic and eternal beauty, the artist is seeking to discern and to make others discern.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Every soul is a battlefield.”

— Lyman Abbott

“I believe that God is the Great Companion, that we are not left orphans, that we may have comradeship with him.”

— Lyman Abbott

“It is only by human experiences that we can interpret the Divine.”

— Lyman Abbott

“If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Never lie to a child about doctors or medicine or anything else; but if you feel, as some people seem to feel, that life without lying is an impossibility, at least don't lie about the amount of pain likely to result from a surgical procedure, or about the taste of some medicine. If you know that something to be done will hurt, say so; if a mixture to be swallowed is unpleasant, say so. If you deceive a child once in such matters, do not imagine that it will trust you again. You do not deserve trust, and you will not get it.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Every man's life is, consciously or unconsciously, a quest for the infinite and the eternal reality.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Service makes men competent.”

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

“Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.”

— Lyman Abbott

“The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.”

— Lyman Abbott

A miracle constantly repeated becomes a process of nature.

— Lyman Abbott

“If the impure and the unjust, the drunkard and the licentious, are loathsome to us, what must be the infinite loathing of an infinitely pure Spirit for those who are worldly and selfish, licentious and cruel, ambitious and animal! But with this great loathing is a great pity. And the pity conquers the loathing, appeases it, satisfies it, is reconciled with it, only as it redeems the sinner from his loathsomeness, lifts him up from his degradation, brings him to truth and purity, to love and righteousness; for only thus is he or can he be brought to God.”

— Lyman Abbott

“A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.”

— Lyman Abbott

“How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Commerce is a form of warfare.”

— Lyman Abbott

“I firmly believe that the method which sets theological theories against scientifically ascertained facts, is fatal to the current theology and injurious to the spirit of religion; and that the method which frankly recognizes the facts of life, and appreciates the spirit of the scientists whose patient and assiduous endeavor has brought those facts to light, will commend the spirit of religion to the new generation, and will benefit
not impair
theology as a science, by compelling its reconstruction.”

— Lyman Abbott

“No man can be patient who has not strong passions, for patience is passion tamed.”

— Lyman Abbott

“If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.”

— Lyman Abbott

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

— Lyman Abbott

“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.”

— Lyman Abbott

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.

— Lyman Abbott

“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 It is Israel that 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. It is Israel who had the first free institutions the world ever saw. When our own unchristian prejudices flame out against the Jewish people, let us remember that all that we have and all that we are we owe, under God, to what Judaism has given us.”

— Lyman Abbott

“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.”

— Lyman Abbott

“The artist does not really create; he discovers.”

— Lyman Abbott

Do not think that you can fight corruption without while you let corruption fester within.

— Lyman Abbott

“A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.”

— Lyman Abbott

“You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.”

— Lyman Abbott

“Never say you are too old. You do not say it now, perhaps; but by and by, when the hair grows gray and the eyes grow dim and the young despair comes to curse the old age, you will say, "It is too late for me." Never too late! Never too old! How old are you
thirty, fifty, eighty? What is that in immortality? We are but children.”

— Lyman Abbott

He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.

— Lyman Abbott

“Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent God.”

— Lyman Abbott

“This is what evolution means
ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater
progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.”

— Lyman Abbott

If there is to be no satisfaction in pleasure, none in wisdom, none in ambition, none in the golden mean, what then? Ah, where then? In duty. In doing right because it is right.

— Lyman Abbott

“Courage is caution overcome.”

— Lyman Abbott

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."

— Lyman Abbott