Hosea Ballou (April 30, 1771 – June 7, 1852) was an American Universalist clergyman and theological writer. He has been called one of the fathers of American Universalism. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A mother's love, in a degree, sanctifies the most worthless offspring.
Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
Experience is retrospect knowledge.
Folly is like the growth of weeds, always luxurious and spontaneous; wisdom, like flowers, requires cultivation.
Hatred is self-punishment.
Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty.
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.
No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.
Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.
Prosperity is very liable to bring pride among the other goods with which it endows an individual; it is then that prosperity costs too dear.
Prosperity often presages adversity.
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.
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 of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.
The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought.
The severest punishment suffered by a sensitive mind, for injury inflicted upon another, is the consciousness of having done it.
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
There is no such thing as 'best' in the world of individuals.
There is nothing that needs to be said in an unkind manner.
To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.
Unless we find repose within ourselves, it is vain to seek it elsewhere.
Categories: Hosea Ballou, Quotes of the day
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