Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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There can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice a leaf; while from the fertile soil will be reared a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose.
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The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
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Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
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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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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.
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The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
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We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts.
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A man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious.
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
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Death is not an end. It is a new impulse.
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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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Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
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When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.
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One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.
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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.
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Our children that die young are like those spring bulbs which have their flowers prepared beforehand, and leave nothing to do but to break ground, and blossom, and pass away. Thank God for spring flowers among men, as well as among the grasses of the field.
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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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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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To be a Christian is to obey Christ no matter how you feel.
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It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
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Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
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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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Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.