Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
Most popular Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.
Love is the wine of existence.
Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.
Work is not the curse, but drudgery is.
Love is the river of life in the world.
Love is the medicine of all moral evil.
Suffering is a part of the Divine idea.
Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
There is a benevolence in all wise selfishness.
Happiness is not the end of life: character is.
There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window.
Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.
Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.
Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong.
Books are the windows through which the soul looks out.
Alas! Where is human nature so weak as in a book-store!
Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
Well married, a man is winged—ill-married, he is shackled.
Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often, as intolerance.
Well-married, a man is winged; ill-matched, he is shackled.
Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance.
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by counter truth.
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of Truth set up and stuffed.
Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature.
A man's best success comes after his greatest disappointments.
A man without a vote in this land is like a man without a hand.
No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself.
Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger.
Tears often prove the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Riches without law are more dangerous than in poverty without law.
Flowers may beckon toward us, but they speak toward heaven and God!
There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure.
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic.
A man that does not know how to he angry does not know how to be good.
It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.
Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.
We never know the love of the parent until we become parents ourselves.
There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.
We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.
That is true culture which helps us to work the social betterment of all.
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell a friend his faults.
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it.
Cheerfulness in a man is that which when people meet him makes others happy.
Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.
Character is in oneself; the reputation others have of you is their opinions.
When a nation's young men are conservatives, its funeral bell is already rung.
Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.
He that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.
The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going in that way too.
Not what men do worthily, but what they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.
Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.
Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is a last year's nest from which the bird has flown.
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. One must take it. The only choice is how.
There is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; and of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother.
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.
The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.
A forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it can never be shown against the man.
The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but."
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.
Difficulties are God's errands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it as a proof of God's confidence—as a compliment from God.
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them.
The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household than on the most memorable battlefields of history.
Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.
God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night, as in a soil, and out of it he comes every day with fresh growth and bloom.
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunder-storm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
Nothing is so sensitive as love—and the greater, the more sensitive. It cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed from out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.
If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man by one which is lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other, ambition. Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest, and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes — openly bad and secretly bad.
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of a sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words—that is friendship.
Happiness is not the end of life, character is.
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.
We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves.
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
