Quotes by Henry Giles

  ​ The Psalms are an everlasting manual to the soul; the book of its immortal wishes, its troubles, its aspirations, and its hopes; sung in every tongue, and in every age; destined to endure while the universe of God has light, harmony, or grandeur, while man has religion or sensibility, while language has sublimity or sweetness.

— Henry Giles

Enough of good there is in the lowest estate to sweeten life; enough of evil in the highest to check presumption; enough there is of both in all estates, to bind us in compassionate brotherhood, to teach us impressively that we are of one dying and one immortal family.

— Henry Giles

The materials of the first temple were made ready in solitude. Those of the last also must be shaped in retirement; in the silence of the heart; in the quietness of home; in the practice of unostentatious duty.

— Henry Giles

  ​ Why should not our solemn duties, and our hastening end, render us so united, that personal contention would be impossible, in a general sympathy quickened by the breath of a forbearing and pitying charity?

— Henry Giles

The path which leads to the mount of ascension does not lie among flowers; and he who travels it must climb the cold hillside, he must have his feet cut by the pointed rocks, he must faint in the dark valley, he must not seldom have his rest at midnight on the desert sand.

— Henry Giles

Bearing bravely the evils that beset us, doing cheerfully the duties that are near, trusting in God, guided by Christ, fear shall not confound us in the way, and death shall find us ready.

— Henry Giles

We are not to wait to be in preparing to be. We are not to wait to do in preparing to do, but to find in being and doing preparation for higher being and doing.

— Henry Giles

It awes by the majesty of its truths, it agitates by the force of its compunctions, it penetrates the heart by the tenderness of its appeals, and it casts over the abyss of thought, the shadow of its eternal grandeur.

— Henry Giles

The spirit of contempt is the true spirit of Antichrist; for no other is more directly opposed to Christ.

— Henry Giles

We cannot rekindle the morning beams of childhood; we cannot recall the noontide glory of youth; we cannot bring back the perfect day of maturity; we cannot fix the evening rays of age in the shadowy horizon; but we can cherish that goodness which is the sweetness of childhood, the joy of youth, the strength of maturity, the honor of old age, and the bliss of saints.

— Henry Giles

Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.

— Henry Giles

  ​ Man must work. That is certain as the sun. But he may work grudgingly, or he may work gratefully; he may work as a man, or he may work as a machine. He cannot always choose his work, but he can do it in a generous temper, and with an up-looking heart. There is no work so rude, that he may not exalt it; there is no work so impassive, that he may not breathe a soul into it; there is no work so dull, that he may not enliven it.

— Henry Giles

No man is base who does a true work; for true action is the highest being. No man is miserable that does a true work; for right action is the highest happiness. No man is isolated that does a true work; for useful action is the highest harmony—it is the highest harmony with nature and with souls—it is living association with men and it is practical fellowship with God.

— Henry Giles

Brethren, we can rule our tempers, and we ought. Open the gospel, that most profound philosophy of the human soul, and yet most simple and practical directory of human duty; study it, fill your whole nature with its inspiration; set Christ before you; look upon His calm forehead and unstormed breast; think how He endured all contradiction of sinners, and endured them to the cross; and on the cross learn of Him then, for He was meek and lowly of heart.

— Henry Giles

Not until right is founded upon reverence, will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love, will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles, will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal.

— Henry Giles

O, we all long for the day, the blessed day, when freedom shall at least be co-extensive with Christendom; when a slave political or domestic, shall not tread on an atom upon which the cross of Calvary has cast its shadow; when the baptism of the crucified shall be on every brow, the seal of a heavenly sonship; when the fire of a new Pentecost shall melt asunder, by its divine heat of charity, the bond which wrong or prejudice has fastened; when, to touch any spot over the wide sweep of God's Christianized earth, any spot which the gospel of the Saviour has ever visited, which the name of the Saviour has ever sanctified, shall be, in itself, the spell of a complete deliverance, the magic of a perfect franchise.

— Henry Giles

And thus does life go on, until death accomplishes the catastrophe in silence, takes the worn frame within his hand, and, as if it were a dried-up scroll, crumbles it in his grasp to ashes. The monuments of kingdoms, too, shall disappear. Still the globe shall move; still the stars shall burn; still the sun shall paint its colors on the day, and its colors on the year. What, then, is the individual, or what even is the race in the sublime recurrings of Time? Years, centuries, cycles, are nothing to these. The sun that measures out the ages of our planet is not a second-hand on the great dial of the universe.

— Henry Giles