1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Hubbard Quotes
page 3

Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Presently Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Among his many publications were the fourteen-volume work Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great and the short publication A Message to Garcia. He and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915.

✵ 19. June 1856 – 7. May 1915   •   Other names Elbert Green Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard photo
Elbert Hubbard: 141   quotes 34   likes

Elbert Hubbard Quotes

“He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.”

Elbert Hubbard

Hubbard, Elbert (1922). Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard. V. Wm. H. Wise & Co./The Roycrofters. p. 237.
Often quoted as "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"
Also: A genius is a man who takes the lemons that Fate hands him and starts a lemonade stand with them. (As quoted in Reader's Digest (October 1927) http://archive.org/details/ReadersDigestno.66October1927, p. 343).

Fate

“Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.”

Elbert Hubbard

"J.B. Runs Things," Short Stories and Index: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, Part 14 (1923) [Kessinger Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0766103978], p. 278.

Personality

“Life is just one damn thing after another.”

Elbert Hubbard

Attributed in Items of Interest, Vol. 33 (1911), p. 8

Life

“Men who marry for gratification, propagation or the matter of buttons or socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealments, and double, deep-dyed prevarication.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 159.

Men

“Do not dump your woes upon people — keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 156.

Life , People , Sadness

“To remain on earth you must be useful, otherwise Nature regards you as old metal, and is only watching for a chance to melt you over.”

Elbert Hubbard

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

Nature , Chance

“If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?”

Elbert Hubbard book A Message to Garcia

A Message to Garcia (1899)

Men , Effort

“A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.”

Elbert Hubbard

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

“[chaff] Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.”

Elbert Hubbard

The Philistine http://books.google.com/books?id=MaVHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22editor+a+person+employed+on+a+newspaper%22+%22whose+business+it+is+to+separate+the+wheat+from+the+chaff+and+to+see+that+the+chaff+is+printed%22&pg=PA810#v=onepage (May 1913)
The Roycroft Dictionary Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy Days http://books.google.com/books?id=ZQLpQ2SAIeQC&q=%22Editor+1+a+person+employed+on+a+newspaper+whose+business+it+is+to+separate+the+wheat+from+the+chaff+and+to+see+that+the+chaff+is+printed%22&pg=PA46#v=onepage (1914).
Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations https://books.google.com/books?id=MtciwlIG3sMC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=adlai+chaff+elbert#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff%20elbert&f=false (1997), see Adlai Stevenson for a later variation

Business , Personality

“Every spirit makes his own house, but as afterwards the house confines its spirit, you had better build well.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 16.

Housing

“And the worst part about making a soldier of a man is not that a soldier kills brown men or white men, but that the soldier loses his own soul.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 15.

Men , Soul , Parting

“There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. The sternest comment that can be made against employers as a class lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement.”

Elbert Hubbard

The Philistine magazine, August 1901 http://books.google.com/books?id=xxI8AQAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA87#v=onepage
"The Crying Need", in A Message to Garcia, and Thirteen Other Things (1901), p. 163 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSo3AAAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA163#v=onepage

Men

“I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 146.

“It is only life and love that give love and life.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 40.

love , Love , Life

“It is the weak man who urges compromise—never the strong man.”

Elbert Hubbard

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 52

Strong

“It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.”

Elbert Hubbard
Friendship

“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”

Elbert Hubbard
Success , Failure , Effort , Hope

“If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them.”

Elbert Hubbard

in The Note Book, Kessinger Publishing (reprint 1998) ISBN 0766104168, 9780766104167
Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 12

“Freedom cannot be bestowed — it must be achieved.”

Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Hubbard, in his essay on Booker T. Washington in Little Journeys For 1908, p. 21; Franklin D. Roosevelt later used this line on the occasion of the 74th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation: "In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved".

Freedom