Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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Though cares and sorrows e'er must come, Though heart be rent, I know that God will give me strength, When mine is spent.
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A bird in a cage is not half a bird.
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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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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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The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
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There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.
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The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
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Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.
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Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.
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The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
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Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.
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The soul is often hungrier than the body and no shop can sell it food.
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No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
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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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A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.
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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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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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Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.
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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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Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.
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Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.
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A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.
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Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.