Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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It takes a man to make a devil.
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It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
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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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We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.
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Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.
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Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.
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No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.
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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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The best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay.
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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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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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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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As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.
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Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.
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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 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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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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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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Let the GRATEFUL HEART sweep through the day that it may recognize in every hour some sweet blessing.
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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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The beginning is the promise of the end.
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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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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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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.