Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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 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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Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.
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The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
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The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.
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Fear is the soul's signal for rallying.
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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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The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
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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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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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Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer.
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If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.
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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.
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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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A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.
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The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
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Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.
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Life is a plant that grows out of death.
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There is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; and of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother.
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
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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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The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
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Love is the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you nave gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths – not until then can you know what love is.
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If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.