Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.
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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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There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.
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God's men are better than the devil's men, and they ought to act as though they thought they were.
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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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Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body.
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Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
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In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands.
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Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.
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Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.
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Love is the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you nave gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths – not until then can you know what love is.
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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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The great men of earth are the shadow men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air.
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The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
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Christianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
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Men can make an idol of the Bible.
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Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern.
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Our yearnings are homesicknesses for heaven; our sighings are for God, just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, know not that they sob for their parents. The soul's inarticulate moanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one to tell them what it is that ails them.
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There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearin g, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good; whose coming into a room is like bringing a lamp there.
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You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
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Books are the true metempsychosis,--they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep.
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Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people . . . is a fertile source of suffering.
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We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.