Hosea Ballou
» Brevity » “Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.”
» Burdens » “Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.”
» Doubt » “Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.”
» Exaggeration » “Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.”
» Example » “Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.”
» Freedom » “The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.”
» Habit » “A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.”
» Happiness » “Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.”
» Hatred » “Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred it the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.”
» Nature » “Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.”
» Praise » “The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration.”
» Preachers and Preaching » “Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.”
» Suspicion » “Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.”
» Tears » “Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.”
» Theory » “Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.”
» Truth » “Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.”
» Zeal » “Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.”
