Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
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If you want your neighbor to know what Christ will do for him, let the neighbor see what Christ has done for you.
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The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.
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Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
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Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.
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Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.
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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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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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Where all of the man is what property he owns, it does not take long to annihilate him.
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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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You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
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Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God.
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Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.
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For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say, I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog, and yet we call them only brutes.
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Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.
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Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
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It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
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Good nature is often a mere matter of health.
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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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A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
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If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
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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.