Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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.
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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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God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.
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God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.
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The man who perceives life only with his eye, his ear, his hand, and his tongue, is but little higher than the ox or an intelligent dog; but he who has imagination sees things around and above him, as the angels see them.
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It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.
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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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Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.
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What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty?
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The most dangerous people are the ignorant.
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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 made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
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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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Life is a plant that grows out of death.
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Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped.
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The mystery of history is an insoluble problem.
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Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy.
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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.
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
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Do not be afraid because the, community teems with excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth.
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He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel.
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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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A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
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A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.