Hosea Ballou

“There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals.”

“Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.”

“Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.”

“Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.”

“The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.”

“Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.”

“Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.”

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.”

“Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.”

“Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.”

“Hatred is self-punishment.”

“Never be so brief as to become obscure.”

“Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.”

“Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.”

“Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.”

“Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.”

“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.”

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.”

“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.”

“Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.”