Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.
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We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
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Some men think that the globe is a sponge that God puts into their hands to squeeze for their own garden or flower-pot.
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There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.
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Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those who are alike associate together, repeat the things which all believe, defend and stimulate their common faults of disposition, and each one receives from the others a reflection of his own egotism.
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If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.
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God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
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Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
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I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.
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A woman's pity often opens the door to love.
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The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.
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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.
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Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.
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Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.
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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.
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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.
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Trouble teaches men how much there is in manhood.
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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.
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Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.
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We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.
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The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.
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Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where He made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero or a saint.
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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.
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Ignorance is the womb of monsters.