Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
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The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.
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God made the human body, and it is the most exquisite and wonderful organization which has come to us from the divine hand.
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If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.
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Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has set in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good, in its place, as conscience or veneration. Praying can no more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying.
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God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
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The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.
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Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.
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Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
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Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.
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A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.
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Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
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While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.
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When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
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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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The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
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Life is a plant that grows out of death.
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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.
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Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us
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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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The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things. That is our part.
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The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.
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Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her eggs ...and then cackles.