Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.
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The meanest thing in the world is the devil.
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There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.
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The beginning is the promise of the end.
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Thinking cannot be clear until it has had expression-we must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flowers. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development-thought is the blossom; language is the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.
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Love is more just than justice.
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Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
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No man can tell if he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
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Think of a man in a chronic state of anger!
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It takes a man to make a devil.
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We never know how much one loves till we know how much he is willing to endure and suffer for us; and it is the suffering element that measures love. The characters that are great must, of necessity, be characters that shall be willing, patient and strong to endure for others. To hold our nature in the willing service of another is the divine idea of manhood, of the human character.
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Many men want wealth,--not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath.
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The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
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A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.
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A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.
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Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.
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Some men will not shave on Sunday, and yet they spend all the week in shaving their fellow-men; and many folks think it very wicked to black their boots on Sunday morning, yet they do not hesitate to black their neighbor's reputation on week-days.
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When men enter into the state of marriage, they stand nearest to God.
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God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
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Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
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See to it that each hour's feelings, and thoughts, and actions are pure and true; then will your life be such.
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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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We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
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There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak?