Lew Wallace > Quotes

“Knowledge leaves no room for chances.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by human wisdom, but by Faith, Love, and Good Works.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“A word as to the pleasure there is in the thought of a Soul in each of us. In the first place, it robs death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“And who in this age can carry the faith of men to such a point but God himself? To redeem the race— I do not mean to destroy it— to redeem the race, he must make himself once more manifest; he must come in person.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“The four sprang forward affrighted. No hand had ever been laid upon them except in love; they had been nurtured ever so tenderly; and as they grew, their confidence in man became a lesson to men beautiful to see. What should such dainty natures do under such indignity but leap as from death? Forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car. Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy eccentric lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“A man can carry his mind with him as he carries his watch; but like the watch, to keep it going he must keep it wound up. Of”
― Lew Wallace, How I Came to Write Ben-Hur

“A man drowning may be saved; not so a man in love.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: And Other Historical Novels About Early Christians

“The old religion had nearly ceased to be a faith; at most it was a mere habit of thought and expression”
― Lew Wallace, Ben Hur

“Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“ab”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“At the same time we are helped to the knowledge that love is there yet, for the two are in each other's arms. Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is God.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“What I have to tell, my brethren, is so strange that I hardly know where to begin or what I may with propriety speak. I do not yet understand myself. The most I am sure of is that I am doing a Master's will, and that the service is a constant ecstasy. When I think of the purpose I am sent to fulfil, there is in me a joy so inexpressible that I know the will is God's.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Religion is merely the law which binds man to his Creator: in purity it has but these elements--God, the Soul, and their Mutual Recognition; out of which, when put in practise, spring Worship, Love, and Reward”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Alas, alas! What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“For that there is no logic in love, nor the least mathematical element, it is simply natural that she shall fashion the result who has the welding of the influence.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“The fiend whose task it is to torture us with fears and bitter thoughts seldom does his work by halves.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“- Δεν θα πάρεις και χουρμάδες;
- Όχι. Δεν είμαι Άραβας.
- Ούτε σύκα;
- Αυτό θα μ' έκανε Εβραίο. Όχι, τίποτα εκτός από σταφύλια. Ποτέ νερά δεν έσμιξαν τόσο γλυκά, όσο το αίμα του Έλληνα με τον χυμό των σταφυλιών.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ

“an enigma to all who do not or cannot understand that every man is two in one—a deathless Soul and a mortal Body.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Every age has its plenty of sorrows; Heaven help where there are no pleasures!”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“They rested and talked; and their talk was all about their flocks, a dull theme to the world, yet a theme which was all the world to them.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.” He”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“A MAN WHOM THE WORLD COULD NOT DO WITHOUT. Of this declaration, apparently so simple, a shrewd mind inspired by faith will make much--and in welcome. Before his time, and since, there have been men indispensable to particular people and periods; but his indispensability was to the whole race, and for all time--a respect in which it is unique, solitary, divine. To”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“How often their thoughts passed each other in the endless search, his coming, theirs going!”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Then, one can wait death with so much more faith out under the open sky.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“The law of the place was Love, but Love without law.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur

“I believed in prayer; and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren, I went out of the beaten ways, I went where man had not been, where only God was.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Let us, in the meantime, live in the pleasure of the promise.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God; the purest wisdom is knowledge of God;”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“From her love, O, reader!--her mother-love, which, if thou wilt observe well, hath this unlikeness to any other love: tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice. Not for restoration to health and fortune, not for any blessing of life, not for life itself,”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ