Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped.
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The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.
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I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.
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Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
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God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure.
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The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
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It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.
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A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
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He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
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When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
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Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack.
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You may say, "I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.
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If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.
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You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.
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Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
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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.
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The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.
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Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.
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All true religion must stand on true morality.
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Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.
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The mystery of history is an insoluble problem.
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There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them.
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He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
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The bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave.