Edward Everett Hale Quotes

Do you pray for the Senators, Dr. Hale?" someone asked the chaplain. "No, I look at the Senators and pray for the country.

Look up and not down; look out and not in; look forward and not back, and lend a hand.

I am only one, butt still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

We went on in our quiet way. Life was purer and simpler and less annoyed to us, because constantly, now, we met with near and dear friends whom we had not known a day before, who looked up and not down, looked out and not in, looked forward and not backward, and were ready to lend a hand. Life seemed simpler to them, and it is my belief that to all of us, in proportion as we bothered less about cultivating ourselves, and were willing to spend and be spent for that without us, above us, and before us, life became infinite and this world became heaven.

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to ev'ry creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakspearo, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having. this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God.

Can it be possible that all human sympathies can thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all human joys increase, if we live with all our might with the thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing kindly to all other people, to be sure? Can it be possible that our passion for large cities, and large parties, and large theatres, and large churches, develops no faith nor hope nor love which would not find aliment and exercise in a little "world of our own"?

Together — one of the most inspiring words in the English language. Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces

"And I once heard Mr. William Hunt, who is one of the first artists, say to a class of teachers, "I shall not try to adapt myself to your various lines of teaching. I will tell you the best things I know, and you may make the adaptations.

That day the whole world held festival. All schools were dismissed, — all banks and workshops and factories closed, — all "unnecessary labor suspended," as the great salutes and the great chimes came booming out, which announced the agreement of a world of self-forgetting men. That day, do I say? Every day from that day was festival, — century after century. So soon as the world once learned the infinite blessing of Active Love, and stayed it by Faith, and enjoyed it in Hope, there was no danger that the world should unlearn that lesson. That lesson — if this vision of a possibility prove true — comes to the world by no change of law; by no new revelation, nor other gospel than the world has now. It comes simply as man after man and woman after woman lead such unselfish lives, as all of us see sometimes, as all would be glad to live...

Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.

When I am dead, no pageant train Shall waste their sorrows at my bier, Nor worthless pomp of homage vain Stain it with hypocritic tear.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

in old times inventors were not always treated very kindly. If people thought they were sorcerers, or in league with the Devil, they did not care much for the invention.