Edward Everett Hale

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.

To look forward and not back, to look out and not in, and to lend a hand.

Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.

‘Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?” No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.

If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nathan Hale (1784–1863), proprietor and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser.  He was a nephew of Edward Everett, the orator and statesman, and grand-nephew of Nathan Hale (1755-1776), the Revolutionary War hero executed by the British for espionage. Edward Everett Hale was also related to Helen Keller.

Hale was a child prodigy who exhibited extraordinary literary skills. He graduated from Boston Latin School at age 13 and enrolled at Harvard College immediately after. He graduated second in his class in 1839 and then studied at Harvard Divinity School.

Hale married Emily Baldwin Perkins in 1852.  She was the niece of Connecticut Governor and U.S. Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin and Emily Pitkin Perkins Baldwin on her father's side and Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher on her mother's side. They had nine children.