Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
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There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.
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A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest.
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In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
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Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying.
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A man's ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth-whether rich or poor.
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Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.
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You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.
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I received a letter from a lad asking me for an easy berth. To this I replied: You cannot be an editor; do not try the law; do not think of the ministry; let alone all ships and merchandise; abhor politics; don't practice medicine; be not a farmer or a soldier or a sailor; don't study, don't think. None of these are easy. O, my son, you have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave!
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Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.
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Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.
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O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round.
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There are apartments in the soul which have a glorious outlook; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows.
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If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them.
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A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
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A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.
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The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun.
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One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
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Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.
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There are sorrows that are not painful, but are of the nature of some acids, and give piquancy and flavor to life.
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Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
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In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
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No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
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Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.