Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
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.
-
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.
-
I never know how to worship until I know how to love; and to love I must have something that I can put my arms around, — something that, touching my heart, shall leave not the chill of ice, but the warmth of summer.
-
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.
-
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.
-
All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.
-
It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
-
He who hunts for flowers will finds flowers; and he who loves weeds will find weeds.
-
They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.
-
A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.
-
God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.
-
I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.
-
Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.
-
Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.
-
The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.
-
Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near victory as when you are defeated in a good cause.
-
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
-
If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman.
-
The tree is but a huge boquet.
-
As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.
-
There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.
-
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.
-
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature.
-
Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.