Tryon Edwards Quotes

Have something to say ; say it ; and stop when you’ve done.

Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family ; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your own mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children a thousand lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your household.

Fables, like parables, are more ancient than formal arguments and are often the most effective means of presenting and impressing both truth and duty.

True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit ; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another – too often ending in the loss of both.

Contemplation is to knowledge, what digestion is to food – the way to get life out of it.

Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result.

The great end of education is, to discipline rather than to furnish the mind ; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

The first evil choice or act is linked to the second ; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny. – As Lessing says, 'Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.'

It has been said that science is opposed to, and in conflict with revelation. But the history of the former shows that the greater its progress, and the more accurate its investigations and results, the more plainly it is seen not only not to clash with the latter, but in all things to confirm it. The very sciences from which objections have been brought against religion have, by their own progress, removed those objections, and in the end furnished full confirmation of the inspired Word of God.”

Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws – a thing which can never be demonstrated.

The leaves in autumn do not change color from the blighting touch of frost, but from the process of natural decay. They fall when the fruit is ripened, and their work is done. And their splendid coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man. And one of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches is this : Do your work well, and then be ready to depart when God shall call.

Abuse of any one generally shows that he has marked traits of character. The stupid and indifferent are passed by in silence.