Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
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A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.
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We go to the grave of a friend saying, "A man is dead," but angels throng about him saying, "A man is born."
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Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life.
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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?
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“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”
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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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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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The things that hurt us teach us.
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There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
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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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A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up in the air.
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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 God's loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."
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His nature is such that our often coming does not tire him. The whole burden of the whole life of every man may be rolled on to God and not weary him, though it has wearied man.
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Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
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A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly.
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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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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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To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may.
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Man is that name of power which rises above them all, and gives to every one the right to be that which God meant he should be.
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Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.
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A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.