Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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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In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.
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The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
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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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Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
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Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
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God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.
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Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood.
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Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes.
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Faith is spiritualized imagination.
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There are many persons who look on Sunday as a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week.
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Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication.
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Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly.
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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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Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
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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.
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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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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.
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Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that; find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away--a faith for living, a faith for dying.
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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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You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.