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The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
God give us men. The time demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hands.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Wanted"
A fortune won in a day is lost in a day; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted, seems to acquire from the hand that won it the property of endurance.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
- I count this thing to be grandly true:
- That a noble deed is a step toward God--
- Lifting the soul from the common clod
- To a purer air and a broader view.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Gradatim"
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Lessons in Life
I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to which God appoints all those whom he has favored with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful in the world. He never institutes a channel for the passage of His bounties that those bounties do not enrich and beautify.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
- My God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep,
- That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain,
- And drowns within its waters still and deep
- My sorrow and my pain.
- I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond
- That binds my spirit to its daily load,
- And give it angel wings, to fly beyond
- Its slumber-bound abode.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Sleeping and Dreaming"
The mind grows by what it feeds on.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Lessons in Life
Some people wonder how God can bear as He does with human frailty and wickedness. In effect, they ask why He does not sweep the whole race out of existence, and start again. As if the Being who had patiently wrought and waited for myriads of ages to prepare for man had not patience to allow him to work out his destiny! Ah, short-sighted mortals! Has not God an eternity to accomplish His ends in? Is He, before the eyes of a universe, to relinquish an experiment, and pronounce that to be a failure on which He has expended such infinite pains and patience? Not He; and the man must be idiotic who cannot draw from this patience food for hope, even when mercy seems exhausted.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
Work was made for man, and not man for work. Work is man's servant, both in its results to the worker and the world. Man is not work's servant, save as an almost universal perversion has made him such.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Work and Play," Complete Works
Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you -- the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
- I softly sink into the bath of sleep:
- With eyelids shut, I see around me close
- The mottled, violet vapors of the deep,
- That wraps me in repose.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Sleeping and Dreaming"
Labor in all its variety, corporeal and mental, is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers, under the direction and control of will.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
Thus have men become the creatures of their work, and thus has work become to them, in many respects, a curse. When work enslaves a group of faculties, and employs and develops that group to the neglect or the death of all others, then does it surpass and abuse its office. This it is that makes one-sided men, partial men, fractional men. This it is that puts the menial stamp upon men, that brands them with the name of their tyrant-master. This it is which spoils manhood, and debases its subjects to the level of their calling. This it is which too often transforms men into lawyers and financiers and ministers and merchants and farmers and hod-carriers -- beings who can do one thing, and nothing else.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Work and Play," Complete Works
There is no royal road to anything, one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly, endures.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
- Ah! soul of mine! Ah! soul of mine!
- Thy sluggish senses are but bars
- That stand between thee and the stars,
- And shut thee from the world divine.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Intimations"
No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
Every man who becomes heartily and understandingly a channel of the Divine beneficence, is enriched through every league of his life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodious gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by the melodious waves of the recipient stream.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-Foil
- Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
- But we build the ladder by which we rise
- From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
- And we mount to its summit round by round.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, "Gradatim"
The man who loves and seeks the excitement of temptation, shows that he is restrained from sin by fear, and not by principle--that while his life is on the side of virtue, his affections lean to vice.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs
If I refuse to trust the word of an honest man, I may reasonably expect that with me, at least, he will break faith at the earliest opportunity.
J. G. HOLLAND, Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs
The wheels of progress do not stop. The world advances toward and into a better life, and will advance until, leaving the hard, clumsy and jarring pavements of the marts of selfishness behind it, it will strike off joyously into the broad avenue of the millennium.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs
Every man who can be a first-rate something -- as every man can be who is a man at all -- has no right to be a fifth-rate something; for a fifth-rate something is not better than a first-rate nothing.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND, Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects
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