Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.
-
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.
-
Coming to the Bible through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.
-
The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.
-
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
-
A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.
-
Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.
-
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
-
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.
-
All true religion must stand on true morality.
-
Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.
-
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.
-
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
-
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.
-
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
-
Go on your knees before God. Bring all your idols; bring self-will, and pride, and every evil lust before Him, and give them up. Devote yourself, heart and soul, to His will; and see if you do not "know of the doctrine.
-
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.
-
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.
-
Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.
-
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
-
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.