Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient.
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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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Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.
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He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.
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It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
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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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Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.
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The truest self-respect is not to think of self.
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Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.
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Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
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Truthfulness is godliness.
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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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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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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 sun does not shine for a few trees, and flowers, but for the wide world's joy. The lonely pine on the mountain-top waves its sombre boughs and cries, 'Thou art my sun.' And the little meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath, 'Thou art my sun.' And the grain in a thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, 'Thou art my sun.' So God sits effulgent in heaven, not for a favored few, but for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with childish confidence and say, 'My Father, Thou art mine.
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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 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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He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
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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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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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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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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
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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.
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What I spent, I had; What I kept, I lost; What I gave, I have.