Top 80 Tryon Edwards Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny.”

— Tryon Edwards

2. “Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.”

— Tryon Edwards

3. “Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.”

— Tryon Edwards

4. “Thoroughly to teach another is the best way to learn for yourself.”

— Tryon Edwards

5. “Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.”

— Tryon Edwards

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6. “Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.”

— Tryon Edwards

7. “If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.”

— Tryon Edwards

8. “He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.”

— Tryon Edwards

9. “Words are both better and worse than thoughts, they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin.”

— Tryon Edwards

10. “High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.”

— Tryon Edwards

11. “There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. The more we are obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish.”

— Tryon Edwards

12. “Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past – the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.”

— Tryon Edwards

13. “Have a time and place for everything, and do everything in its time and place, and you will not only accomplish more, but have far more leisure than those who are always hurrying.”

— Tryon Edwards

14. “True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.”

— Tryon Edwards

15. “Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. True prayer always receives what it asks, or something better.”

— Tryon Edwards

16. “The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others.”

— Tryon Edwards

17. “Conscience is merely our own judgment of the right or wrong of our actions, and so can never be a safe guide unless enlightened by the word of God.”

— Tryon Edwards

18. “Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.”

— Tryon Edwards

19. “A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it.”

— Tryon Edwards

20. “The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.”

— Tryon Edwards

21. “Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic.”

— Tryon Edwards

22. “The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves – our weakness, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.”

— Tryon Edwards

23. “Sincerity is not test of truth-no evidence of correctness of conduct. You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?”

— Tryon Edwards

24. “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.”

— Tryon Edwards

25. “Appreciation, whether of nature, or books, or art, or men, depends very much on temperament. What is beauty or genius or greatness to one, is far from being so to another.”

— Tryon Edwards

26. “Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food – the way to get life out of it.”

— Tryon Edwards

27. “He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.”

— Tryon Edwards

28. “Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!”

— Tryon Edwards

29. “Seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with the sunshine.”

— Tryon Edwards

30. “Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.”

— Tryon Edwards

31. “True religion extends alike to the intellect and the heart. Intellect is in vain if it lead not to emotion, and emotion is vain if not enlightened by intellect; and both are vain if not guided by truth and leading to duty.”

— Tryon Edwards

32. “To possess money is very well; it may be a valuable servant; to be possessed by it is to be possessed by the devil, and one of the meanest and worst kind of devils.”

— Tryon Edwards

33. “Common sense is, of all kinds, the most uncommon. It implies good judgment, sound discretion, and true and practical wisdom applied to common life.”

— Tryon Edwards

34. “All things are ordered by God, but His providence takes in our free agency, as well as His own sovereignty.”

— Tryon Edwards

35. “We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.”

— Tryon Edwards

36. “We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.”

— Tryon Edwards

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37. “The most we can get out of life is its discipline for ourselves, and its usefulness for others.”

— Tryon Edwards

38. “To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.”

— Tryon Edwards

39. “To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.”

— Tryon Edwards

40. “Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another – too often ending in the loss of both.”

— Tryon Edwards

41. “Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction.”

— Tryon Edwards

42. “To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin.”

— Tryon Edwards

43. “Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.”

— Tryon Edwards

44. “Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.”

— Tryon Edwards

45. “The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.”

— Tryon Edwards

46. “To rule one’s anger is well; to prevent it is still better.”

— Tryon Edwards

47. “Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.”

— Tryon Edwards

48. “Indolence is the dry rot of even a good mind and a good character; the practical uselessness of both. It is the waste of what might be a happy and useful life.”

— Tryon Edwards

49. “Unbelief, in distinction from disbelief, is a confession of ignorance where honest inquiry might easily find the truth. – “Agnostic” is but the Greek for “ignoramus.””

— Tryon Edwards

50. “Let your holidays be associated with great public events, and they may be the life of patriotism as well as a source of relaxation and personal employment.”

— Tryon Edwards