Elbert Green Hubbard Quotes

American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher

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Elbert Green Hubbard (19 June 1856 – 7 May 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, businessman, anarchist and libertarian socialist philosopher. He was an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement, founding the Roycroft enterprises. He and his wife Alice Moore Hubbard died in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

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Alternative Names: Elbert Hubbard • Ali Baba • Fra Elbertus

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Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.

Making men live in three worlds at once — past, present and future has been the chief harm organized religion has done.

Life without absorbing occupation is hell — joy consists in forgetting life.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible—and the man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also. Discipleship is a degenerating process to all parties concerned. People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them.

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.

Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books.

When you see a tomcat with his whiskers full of feathers, do not say "Canary!" — he'll take offense.

Men who marry for gratification, propagation or the matter of buttons or socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealments, and double, deep-dyed prevarication.

I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.

The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear.

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

Do not go out of your way to do good whenever it comes your way. Men who make a business of doing good to others are apt to hate others in the same occupation. Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate — you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion.

To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise — and no faculty grows save as it is exercised.

The great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. The things that have really made me miss my train have always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in the least afraid.