Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you.
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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.
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The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches.
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The natural term of an apple-pie is but twelve hours. It reaches its highest state about one hour after it comes from the oven, and just before its natural heat has quite departed. But every hour afterward is a declension. And after it is one day old, it is thence-forward but the ghastly corpse of apple-pie.
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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.
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To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
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Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, "I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you.
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There is always work, and tools to work withal, for those, who will.
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There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.
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Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.
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It is not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a life long struggle, that makes us valiant.
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Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything.
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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!
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The hunger of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye.
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The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences.
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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.
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Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor. Wise men are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant. Strong men are to bear with the feeble. Cultured people are to bear with the rude and vulgar. If a rough and coarse man meets an ecstatically fine man, the man that is highest up is to be the servant of the man that is lowest down.
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Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
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Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
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Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God.
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Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and his guide would be gone; he would have the same voyage to make, but his chart and compass would be overboard!
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Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors.
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A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.
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God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope or courage. Pear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.