Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.
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At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.
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Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
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God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.
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Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
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Nature is a vast repository of manly enjoyments.
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One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.
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A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.
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Many a man has been dined out of his religion, and his politics, and his manhood, almost.
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There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
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The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health.
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October is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture-month.
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Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.
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No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form.
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A good digestion is as truly obligatory as a good conscience; pure blood is as truly a part of mankind as a pure faith; and a well ordered skin is the first condition of that cleanliness which is next to Godliness.
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Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.
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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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There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.
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The last person one wants to be is themselves. Sadly, that is the best person to be.
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The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
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Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.
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If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
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A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.
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It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.