Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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The soul is often hungrier than the body and no shop can sell it food.
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Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence.
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A bird in a cage is not half a bird.
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The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion.
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I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.
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Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend and winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.
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True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training.
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Businessmen are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.
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There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.
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Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.
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October is nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming - October than May. Every green thin loves to die in bright colors.
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The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
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In regard to the great mass of men, anything that breaks the realm of fear is not salutary, but dangerous; because it takes off one of the hoops that hold the barrel together in which the evil spirits are confined.
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Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.
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It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.
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By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.
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To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
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The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing.
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Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.
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Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
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We only see in a lifetime a dozen faces marked with the peace of a contented spirit.
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Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient.
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I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
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When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.