Henry van Dyke
American clergyman, author and poet, 1852-1933
9 quotes.
Quotes by Henry van Dyke
- Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.
- Courage is a virtue that the young cannot spare; to lose it is to grow old before the time; it is better to make a thousand mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than to refuse the battle.
- Deliberation is necessary, unless we wish to play a fool's part. No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life, with its eyes shut, is a kind of wild insanity. A drifting life, with its eyes open, is a kind of mild idiocy.
- From which we may learn that true courage is not incompatible with nervousness, and that heroism does not mean the absence of fear, but the conquest of it.
- Genius is talent set on fire by courage.
- It is cheerfulness, the temper which makes the best of things and squeezes the little drops of honey even out of thistle-blossoms.
- Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them.
- Some succeed because they are destined to, but most succeed because they are determined to.
- The bars of life at which we fret, That seem to prison and control, Are but the doors of daring, set Ajar before the soul.