Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
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.
-
We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.
-
Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord, but even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened.
-
The tree is but a huge boquet.
-
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.
-
There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.
-
It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.
-
Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
-
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.
-
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
-
A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.
-
It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test.
-
Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.
-
No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful.
-
If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
-
Experience is the mother of custom.
-
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.
-
A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.
-
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.
-
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.
-
Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty.
-
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.
-
Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.
-
Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.