Top 120 J.G. Holland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Calmness is the cradle of power.”

— J.G. Holland

Featured in: Serenity Quotes

2. “Geology gives us a key to the patience of God.”

— J.G. Holland

3. “God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.”

— J.G. Holland

4. “The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple’s uses.”

— J.G. Holland

5. “The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.”

— J.G. Holland

6. “God give us men! A time like this demands. Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not die.”

— J.G. Holland

Featured in: Strong Quotes

7. “The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart.”

— J.G. Holland

8. “God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.”

— J.G. Holland

9. “There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.”

— J.G. Holland

10. “Heaven is not reached at a single bound. But we build the ladder by which we rise. From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round.”

— J.G. Holland

11. “A mind grows by what it feeds on.”

— J.G. Holland

12. “The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.”

— J.G. Holland

13. “God give us men. The time demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hands.”

— J.G. Holland

Featured in: Strong Quotes

14. “Ideals are the world’s masters.”

— J.G. Holland

15. “The temple of art is built in words.”

— J.G. Holland

16. “Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility.”

— J.G. Holland

17. “Patience, persistence, and power to do are only acquired by work.”

— J.G. Holland

18. “Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.”

— J.G. Holland

19. “We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.”

— J.G. Holland

20. “It is better to be a self-made man, – filled up according to God’s original pattern, – than to be half a man, made after some other man’s pattern.”

— J.G. Holland

21. “Life always take on the character of its motive.”

— J.G. Holland

22. “Every man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer.”

— J.G. Holland

23. “A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic is to life.”

— J.G. Holland

24. “It is only rogues who feel the restraints of law.”

— J.G. Holland

25. “The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life – the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.”

— J.G. Holland

26. “The theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system.”

— J.G. Holland

27. “If you want learning, you must work for it.”

— J.G. Holland

28. “Work was made for man, and not man for work. Work is man’s servant, both in its results to the worker and the world. Man is not work’s servant, save as an almost universal perversion has made him such.”

— J.G. Holland

29. “It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.”

— J.G. Holland

30. “A woman in love is a very poor judge of character.”

— J.G. Holland

31. “Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff and has found his own spindle.”

— J.G. Holland

32. “The moment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost, and men, left free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each other’s rights, and invade the field of each other’s liberty.”

— J.G. Holland

33. “That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slow, endures.”

— J.G. Holland

34. “If we will measure other people’s corn in our own bushel, let us first take it to the Divine standard, and have it sealed.”

— J.G. Holland

35. “The cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments.”

— J.G. Holland

36. “Laws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man’s rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men.”

— J.G. Holland

37. “Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.”

— J.G. Holland

38. “Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.”

— J.G. Holland

39. “The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence.”

— J.G. Holland

40. “Who never walks save where he sees men’s tracks makes no discoveries.”

— J.G. Holland

41. “Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.”

— J.G. Holland

42. “In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by well meaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect.”

— J.G. Holland

43. “No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life.”

— J.G. Holland

44. “The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer.”

— J.G. Holland

45. “The secret of being loved is in being lovely; and the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish.”

— J.G. Holland

46. “Music is a thing of the soul-a roselipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea-a strange bird singing the songs of another shore.”

— J.G. Holland

47. “God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man’s hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission.”

— J.G. Holland

48. “The idle man stands outside of God’s plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.”

— J.G. Holland

49. “A noble deed is a step towards heaven.”

— J.G. Holland

50. “A man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life’s best rewards and life’s best defences.”

— J.G. Holland