Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.
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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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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.
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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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Affliction comes to us all ...not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.
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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.
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That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.
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The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.
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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.
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Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
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A woman's pity often opens the door to love.
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That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.
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A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah, what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.
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What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!
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The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
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Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked).
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The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
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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?
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The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
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The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
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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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If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.
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Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes.
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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.