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God's providence is on the side of clear heads. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,
it is exceedingly short. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree ... but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement ... that requires a heroism which is transcendent. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Experience is the mother of custom. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. -- Henry Ward Beecher
While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is God's loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." -- Henry Ward Beecher
The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Someone calls biography the home aspect of history. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Books are the true metempsychosis,
they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep. -- Henry Ward Beecher
He that would look with contempt on the pursuits of the farmer, is not worthy the name of a man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Music cleanses the understanding;
inspires it, and lifts it into a realm
which it would not reach if it were left to itself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road -- Henry Ward Beecher
A woman's pity often opens the door to love. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Books are the windows through
which the soul looks out. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either. -- Henry Ward Beecher
By religion I mean perfected manhood,
the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The word of God tends to make large-minded noble-minded men. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Good nature is often a mere matter of health. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God is the one great employer, thinker, planner, supervisor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Astronomers have built telescopes which can show myriads of stars unseen before; but when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches into the unknown, and reveals orbs which no telescope, however skilfully constructed, could do. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nature would be scarcely worth a puff of the empty wind if it were not that all Nature is but a temple, of which God is the brightness and the glory. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Yea, though the breath of disappointment should chill the sanguine heart, Speedily gloweth it again, warmed by the live embers of hope. -- Henry Ward Beecher
One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The man who perceives life only with his eye, his ear, his hand, and his tongue, is but little higher than the ox or an intelligent dog; but he who has imagination sees things around and above him, as the angels see them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The soul is often hungrier than the body and no shop can sell it food. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrow makes men sincere. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better; nobler; holier than it knows now. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nature is a vast repository of manly enjoyments. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man that does not love praise is not a full man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Religion is using everything for God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many a man has been dined out of his religion, and his politics, and his manhood, almost. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The tree is but a huge boquet. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man without mirth is like wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man without a vote is in this land like a man without a hand. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Remember God's bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude! -- Henry Ward Beecher
The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness ... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Conscience is the frame of character, and love is the covering for it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise
the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods ... There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Selfishness at the expense of others happiness is demonism. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A cup of coffee - real coffee - home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfect! -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead,
dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is an army of waiters in this world. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men must read for amusement as well as for knowledge. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is the rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution which destroys the machinery but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and still man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and guide would be gone; the same voyage to make, but his chart and compass would be overboard! -- Henry Ward Beecher
The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The elect, those who will; the non-elect, those who won't. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no friendship, no love, like that of the mother for the child. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our children that die young are like those spring bulbs which have their flowers prepared beforehand, and leave nothing to do but to break ground, and blossom, and pass away. Thank God for spring flowers among men, as well as among the grasses of the field. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. -- Henry Ward Beecher
O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
What a pity flowers can utter no sound!-A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle ... oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! -- Henry Ward Beecher
The tidal wave of God's providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man that is afraid is never a man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through, And all too narrow for the broadening soul, Give me the fine, firm texture of the new, Fair, beautiful and whole! -- Henry Ward Beecher
The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and they would end if we would stand upon our feet and go whither He would have us go. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a man says that he is perfect already, there is only one of two places for him, and that is heaven or the lunatic asylum. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I beseech you to correct one fault - severe speech of others; never speak evil of any man, no matter what the facts may be. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the eager pursuit of worldly aggrandizement are baffled; for they are very like a train going down an inclined plane - putting on the brake is not pleasant, but it keeps the car on the track and from ruin. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some men will not shave on Sunday, and yet they spend all the week in shaving their fellow-men; and many folks think it very wicked to black their boots on Sunday morning, yet they do not hesitate to black their neighbor's reputation on week-days. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness ... Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
That was a judicious mother who said, I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurlyburly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to, and riding out the gale. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We go to the grave of a friend saying,
"A man is dead,"
but angels throng about him saying,
"A man is born." -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love without faith is as bad as faith without love. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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 are plain, honest and upright, like the broad faced sunflower and the hollyhock. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It's not work that kills [people], it is worry. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands. -- Henry Ward Beecher
That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The strong are God's natural protectors of the weak. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are some men's souls that are so thin, so almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul, that were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted, they would altogether overlook them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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 whole leaf and root tribe. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Flowers ... have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Repentance is another name for aspiration. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The beginning is the promise of the end. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Truthfulness is godliness. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The first hour of the morning, is the rudder of the day. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the Devil feels, you do know, if you are such an one. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Home should be the center of joy, equatorial and tropical. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect's life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man should fear when he enjoys only the good he does publicly. Is it not, publicity rather than charity, which he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities? -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Today is a goblet day. The whole heavens have been mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a life long struggle, that makes us valiant. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every man should use his intellect, not as he uses his lamp in the study, only for his own seeing, but as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the seas may see the shining, and learn their way. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies. -- Henry Ward Beecher
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are joys which long to be ours -- Henry Ward Beecher
This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Ignorance is the womb of monsters. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no such thing as white lies; a lie is as black as a coalpit, and twice as foul. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness is not the end of life: character is. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The whole of the Saviour's ministerial life, at least the part of it that stands on record, was passed in what we may call substantially a revival work. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home. -- Henry Ward Beecher
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress. -- Henry Ward Beecher
You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As flowers carry dewdrops, trembling on the edges of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving; and at the first breath of heavenly flavor, let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone, for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope and courage. It is a kind of bell or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance on the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Everyone has influence, for good or bad, upon others. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God never made anything else so beautiful as man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because He loves. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Going out into life
that is dying. Christ is the door out of life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A dull ax never loves grindstones. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God's sovereignty is not in His right hand; God's sovereignty is not in His intellect; God's sovereignty is in His love. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons! -- Henry Ward Beecher
Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle! -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God sends experience to paint men's portraits. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A person can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it, than one could suddenly grow from a child's stature to an adult's without harm. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The pen is the tongue of the hand; a silent utterer of words for the eye. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Work is not a curse, but drudgery is. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Each book has a secret history of ways and means. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The things that hurt us teach us. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The dog is the god of frolic. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our government is built upon the vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands, and a government built on them stands upon corruption and revolution. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Do not be afraid because the, community teems with excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some have supposed that the mosquito is of a devout turn, and never will partake of a meal without first saying grace. The devotions of some men are but a preface to blood-sucking. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men's best successes come after their disappointments. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly. -- Henry Ward Beecher
True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We cannot have right virtue without right conditions. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer. -- Henry Ward Beecher
What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses. As long as war is possible, anything that makes better soldiers people want. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If a man has come to that point where he is no content that he says; I do not want to know any more, or do any more or be any more, he is in a state in which he ought to be changed into a mummy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious. -- Henry Ward Beecher
To be a Christian is to obey Christ no matter how you feel. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a man's pride is subdued it's like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Fear is the soul's signal for rallying. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is not a possession but a growth. The heart is a lamp with just oil enough to burn for an hour, and if there be no oil to put in again its light will go out. God's grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There was never a person who did anything worth doing that he did not receive more than he gave. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The reason that men are so slow to confess their vices is because they have not yet abandoned them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The world is to be cleaned by somebody, and you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scrub. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, to the rude, and to the multitudes who could have no flowers were nature to charge a price for her blossoms. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God's glory is His goodness. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything. -- Henry Ward Beecher
What could make me love my fellow Christian better than to see that God loves us all as we were all one soul? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our earthly loves are but so many silver steps leading us up to the great golden love of God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Once an ill can be patiently born it is robbed of its poison if not its pain. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you. -- Henry Ward Beecher
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her eggs ... and then cackles. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Though cares and sorrows e'er must come, Though heart be rent, I know that God will give me strength, When mine is spent. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No grief has a right to immortality. That ground belongs to joy, to hope, to faith. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering is part of the divine idea. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not a choice. You must take it. The only question is how. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The great men of earth are the shadow men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs than with his children, servants and neighbours. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A babe is a mother's anchor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In engineering, that only is great which achieves. It matters not what the intention is, he who in the day of battle is not victorious is not saved by his intention. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Wealth in activity
capital with all its friction
is far safer than invested wealth lying dead. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce. -- Henry Ward Beecher
An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is the color which love wears, and cheerfulness, and joy
these three. It is the light in the window of the face by which the heart signifies to father, husband, or friend that it is at home and waiting. -- Henry Ward Beecher
What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The truest self-respect is not to think of self. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All the wide world is but the husbandry of God for the development of the one fruit-man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full. -- Henry Ward Beecher
October is nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming - October than May. Every green thin loves to die in bright colors. -- Henry Ward Beecher
October is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture-month. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities. -- Henry Ward Beecher
But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Good men are not those who now and then do a good act, but men who join one good act to another. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If you want your neighbor to know what Christ will do for him, let the neighbor see what Christ has done for you. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne. -- Henry Ward Beecher
That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Take all the robes of all the good judges that have ever lived on the face of the earth, and they would not be large enough to cover the iniquity of one corrupt judge. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us -- Henry Ward Beecher
Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The first merit of pictures is the effect they produce on the mind; and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary impressions from them. Pleasure and inspiration first; analysis, afterward. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many men build as cathedrals are built-the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A boy is a piece of existence quite separate from all things else, and deserves separate chapters in the natural history of men. -- Henry Ward Beecher
And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Christ certainly did come to destroy the law and the prophets. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As plants take hold, not for the sake of staying, but only that they may climb higher, so it is with men. By every part of our nature we clasp things above us, one after another, not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but that we may go higher. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is more just than justice. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper. -- Henry Ward Beecher
For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say, I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog, and yet we call them only brutes. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Loving is like music. Some instruments can go up two octaves, some four, and some all the way from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some of them are susceptible only of melody, so some hearts can sing but one song of love, while others will fun in a full choral harmony. -- Henry Ward Beecher
To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not in the nature of true greatness to be exclusive and arrogant. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Well married, a man is winged - ill-matched, he is shackled. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is strain upon it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Coming to the Bible through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
He who hunts for flowers will finds flowers; and he who loves weeds will find weeds. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Now comes the mystery. -- Henry Ward Beecher
He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day. -- Henry Ward Beecher
True obedience is true freedom. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The mystery of history is an insoluble problem. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Scepticism is a barren coast, without a harbor or lighthouse. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man is a great bundle of tools. He is born into this life without the knowledge of how to use them. Education is the process of learning their use. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing. -- Henry Ward Beecher
John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
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. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence, -- Henry Ward Beecher
Affliction comes to the believer not to make him sad, but sober; not to make him sorry, but wise. Even as the plow enriches the field so that the seed is multiplied a thousandfold, so affliction should magnify our joy and increase our spiritual harvest. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If you have only two or three things that you can enjoy and they are things which time and decay may remove from you, what are you going to do in old age? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is the wine of existence. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history. -- Henry Ward Beecher
People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: "Lord, teach me compassion," but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Go on your knees before God. Bring all your idols; bring self-will, and pride, and every evil lust before Him, and give them up. Devote yourself, heart and soul, to His will; and see if you do not know of the doctrine. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Think of a man in a chronic state of anger! -- Henry Ward Beecher
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are. -- Henry Ward Beecher
They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness. -- Henry Ward Beecher
None love to speak so much, when the mood of speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn. -- Henry Ward Beecher
An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches? -- Henry Ward Beecher
Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Good-nature is one of the richest fruits of true Christianity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no part of government which cannot better suffer derangement than the ballot. If you strike the ballot with disease, it is heart disease. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Not another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Life is full of amusement to an amusing man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Christ is risen! There is life, therefore, after death! His resurrection is the symbol and pledge of universal resurrection! -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We may cover a multitude of sins with the white robe of charity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nothing marks the change from the city to the country so much as the absence of grinding noises. The country is never silent. But its sounds are separate, distinct, and as it were, articulate. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Where all of the man is what property he owns, it does not take long to annihilate him. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked). -- Henry Ward Beecher
Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Indeed, unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw more from them as wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and bones. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is part and parcel of every man's life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Many men want wealth,
not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor. -- Henry Ward Beecher
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung. -- Henry Ward Beecher
You may say, "I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man. -- Henry Ward Beecher
This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents. -- Henry Ward Beecher
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each
is serving the others, seeking one another's good,
and bearing one another's burdens. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Men have a thousand desires to a bushel of choices. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We are never ripe till we have been made so by suffering. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The religion that fosters intolerance needs another Christ to die for it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is trial that proves one thing weak and another strong. A house built on the sand is in fair weather just as good as if builded on a rock. A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is no strain upon it. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Now comes the mystery! (last words) -- Henry Ward Beecher
Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way; but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, he is in heaven, and not on earth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages. -- Henry Ward Beecher
That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Man is that name of power which rises above them all, and gives to every one the right to be that which God meant he should be. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man? -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The Divine mind does not think for us, or inspite of us, but works in us to think, and to will, and to do. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A book is a garden; A book is an orchard; A book is a storehouse; A book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The last person one wants to be is themselves. Sadly, that is the best person to be. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are apartments in the soul which have a glorious outlook; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows. -- Henry Ward Beecher
We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries in life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples. -- Henry Ward Beecher
And when no longer we can see Thee, may we reach out our hands, and find Thee leading us through death to immortality and glory. -- Henry Ward Beecher
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky. -- Henry Ward Beecher
To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It will not do to be saints at meeting and sinners everywhere else. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Mirth is God's medicine. -- Henry Ward Beecher
God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Trouble teaches men how much there is in manhood. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning. -- Henry Ward Beecher
There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearin g, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good; whose coming into a room is like bringing a lamp there. -- Henry Ward Beecher
All the sobriety which' religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Love is the world's river of life -- Henry Ward Beecher
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every fresh act of benevolence is the herald of deeper satisfaction; every charitable act a stepping-stone towards heaven. -- Henry Ward Beecher
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. -- Henry Ward Beecher
If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The world is God's workshop for making men in. -- Henry Ward Beecher
A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up in the air. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Find out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Education is only like good culture,
it changes the size, but not the sort. -- Henry Ward Beecher
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people ... is a fertile source of suffering. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Good-humor makes all things tolerable -- Henry Ward Beecher
A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth. -- Henry Ward Beecher
The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence. -- Henry Ward Beecher