Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
-
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.
-
Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.
-
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.
-
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
-
I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.
-
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!
-
Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly.
-
Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.
-
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.
-
A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.
-
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
-
Men can make an idol of the Bible.
-
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.
-
Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.
-
When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
-
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.
-
Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.
-
Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
-
A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.
-
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!