Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
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.
-
Fear is the soul's signal for rallying.
-
Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.
-
God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.
-
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.
-
Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
-
A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.
-
Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God.
-
A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, to the rude, and to the multitudes who could have no flowers were nature to charge a price for her blossoms.
-
It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses. As long as war is possible, anything that makes better soldiers people want.
-
Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.
-
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.
-
The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.
-
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
-
There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.
-
Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
-
Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
-
If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time!
-
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.
-
Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.
-
The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.
-
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
-
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
-
Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.