Quotes from Hosea Ballou

But as even the internal evidences of scripture would be insufficient to support their authority without the concurrence of external evidence, so would the external be found wanting without the internal. But these together are abundantly sufficient to establish the credibility of this gospel, which is, like every thing else of the work and wisdom of God, the wonder and admiration of the believing soul.

A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.

There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Unless we find repose within ourselves, it is vain to seek it elsewhere.

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

Tradition makes the most horrible things acceptable to the mind which becomes blind to their deformity, and even the most detestable things, desirable, by a certain feigned sanctity which it attaches to them. But the charm once broken, the rational mind becomes transformed into another image, totally different, and entirely repugnant to the things which it before venerated as divine.

Too many people embrace religion from the same motives that they take a companion in wedlock, not from true love of the person, but because of a large dowry.

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

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

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

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

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

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

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.

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

Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.

Doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way.

Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred it the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty. The sun has no need to boast of his brightness, nor the moon of her effulgence.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

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

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