Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.
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Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul! Thou hast indeed entered into the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou are sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, oh, weary heart!
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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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Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.
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As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies.
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All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
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Our government is built upon the vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands, and a government built on them stands upon corruption and revolution.
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In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another's good, and bearing one another's burdens.
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To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.
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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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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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There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.
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Suffering is part of the divine idea.
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Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.
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That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.
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Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough.
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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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Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
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God sends experience to paint men's portraits.
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Theology is but a science of applied to God. As schools change theology must necessarily change. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.
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A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
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Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
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Death is not an end. It is a new impulse.