Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; — and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward.
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The commerce of the world is conducted by the strong, and usually it operates against the weak.
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Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.
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The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.
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He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
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The truest self-respect is not to think of self.
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The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash.
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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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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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Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.
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People of too much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.
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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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No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
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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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Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.
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Leaves die, but trees do not. They only undress.
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Truthfulness is godliness.
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Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
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Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.
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No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.
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A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.
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Today is a goblet day. The whole heavens have been mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist.