Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
-
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.
-
The slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.
-
The great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God.
-
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.
-
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
-
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.
-
Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.
-
And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.
-
Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.
-
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." I found the following quote by Goethe that can serve as a commentary on these words. "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
-
He who only does not appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The truest self-respect is not to think of self.
-
When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep.
-
Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.
-
It will not do to be saints at meeting and sinners everywhere else.
-
Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,--it is exceedingly short.
-
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.
-
As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.
-
There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
-
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.
-
Take all the robes of all the good judges that have ever lived on the face of the earth, and they would not be large enough to cover the iniquity of one corrupt judge.