Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may.
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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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A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.
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When men enter into the state of marriage, they stand nearest to God.
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Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
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In a great affliction there is no light either in the stars or in the sun; for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil; there can be no darkness though the sun should go out. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.
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Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors.
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Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life.
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Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
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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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There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.
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Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.
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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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Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.
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It is not in the nature of true greatness to be exclusive and arrogant.
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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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There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
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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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Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?
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Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
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A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly.
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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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A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
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A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.