Quotes by Henry Van Dyke

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

The Sun-Dial at Wells CollegeThe shadow by my finger castDivides the future from the past:Before it, sleeps the unborn hourIn darkness, and beyond thy power:Behind its unreturning line,The vanished hour, no longer thine:One hour alone is in thy hands,--The NOW on which the shadow stands.

He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.

Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wisemen ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mothers voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lighted the reading of its well-worn pages. It has woven itself into our deepest affections, and colored our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers in our ear long after the sermons which they have adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like birds flying from far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-forgotten path. They grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, Good-by, we shall meet again; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light.

But this I know. Those who seek Him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed.

Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;While he who walks in love may wander far,Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children; to remember the weaknesses and lonliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and to ask yourself if you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thougts and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open? Are you willing to do these things for a day? Then you are ready to keep Christmas!

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.

Time is too slow for those who wait too swift for those who fear too long for those who grieve too short for those who rejoice but for those who love time is eternity.

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars to be satisfied with your possessions but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness and to fear nothing except cowardice to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts to covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners to think seldom of your enemies often of your friends and every day of Christ and to spend as much time as you can with body and with spirit in Gods out-of-doors- these are little guideposts on the footpath to peace.

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

Too slow for those who wait Too swift for those who fear Too long for those who grieve Too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love time is not.

Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.

Heaven is blessed with perfect rest but the blessing of earth is toil.

Oh, London is a mans town, theres power in the air;And Paris is a womans town, with flowers in her hair;And its sweet to dream in Venice, and its great to study Rome;But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

Love is the best thing in the world, and the thing that lives the longest.

What we do belongs to what we are and what we are is what becomes of us.

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.