If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in Heaven?
– Hosea Ballou
Children | Gratitude | Parents
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
– Hosea Ballou
Reasoning | Beauty
Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty.
– Hosea Ballou
Courage | Honesty
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
– Hosea Ballou
Lying
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.
– Hosea Ballou
Lying
There is no such thing as “best” in the world of individuals.
– Hosea Ballou
Character
Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.
– Hosea Ballou
Happiness | Joy
Preaching is too much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
– Hosea Ballou
Preaching | Examples
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
– Hosea Ballou
Lying
They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
– Hosea Ballou
Anger
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.
– Hosea Ballou
Character
There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice pretense.
– Hosea Ballou
Lying
Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.
– Hosea Ballou
Perseverance
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.
– Hosea Ballou
Government
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
– Hosea Ballou
Reasoning
As unkindness has no remedy at law, let its avoidance be with you a point of honor.
– Hosea Ballou
Kindness
Error is always more busy than truth.
– Hosea Ballou
Truth
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
– Hosea Ballou
Books
Hatred is self-punishment.
– Hosea Ballou
Hatred
Never be so brief as to become obscure.
– Hosea Ballou
Inspiration
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
– Hosea Ballou
Life | Youth | Age
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
– Hosea Ballou
Happiness
Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
– Hosea Ballou
Truth
There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
– Hosea Ballou
Religion
Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.
– Hosea Ballou
Virtue
Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.
– Hosea Ballou
Happiness
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.
– Hosea Ballou
Health
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
– Hosea Ballou
TruthDoubt
Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.
– Hosea Ballou
Good and Evil
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man’s pride in his work.
– Hosea Ballou
Achievement | Business | Work
Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.
– Hosea Ballou
Religion
Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.
– Hosea Ballou
Mothers | Education
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
– Hosea Ballou
Charity | Zeal
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
– Hosea Ballou
Health | Illness