Edward Everett Hale Quotations

The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.

To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand.

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. And by the grace of God, I will.

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

If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

'Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.

In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.

Some people bear three kinds of trouble -- the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

I know I am only one, but I am one, and just because I'm one should not stop me from

[S]leep, and enough of it, is the prime necessity. Enough exercise, and good food and enough, are other necessities. But sleep—good sleep, and enough of it—this is a necessity without which you cannot have the exercise of use, nor the food.

I can't do everything, but that won't stop me from doing the little I can do.

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the Gospel to every creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakespeare, 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.

You and I must not complain if our plans break down if we have done our part. That probably means that the plans of One who knows more than we do have succeeded.

Friendship is one of the greatest luxuries of life.

Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

War - hard apprenticeship of freedom.

No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace.

Take time enough for your meals, and eat them in company whenever you can. There is no need for hurry in life—least of all when we are eating.

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"?

[I]t is easy to regard the mind and the body as two slaves trained to obey the imperial soul.... [I]n this trinity of soul, mind, and body, it is sometimes hard to tell which of the three is at work; and the personality of each of the three parties interferes a good deal with that of each of the others. But if you who read will remember that you are an infinite child of God, and can partake of his nature, and that you have given to you the management and direction of your mind and your body, you will be saved many failures.

Behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the country herself, your country, and . . . you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother.

He loved his country as no other man has loved her, but no man deserved less at her hands.

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.

For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled, Where God might write anew the story of the World.