Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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A dull axe never loves grindstones, but a keen workman does; and he puts his tool on them in order that it may be sharp. And men do not like grinding; but they are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out with them, and therefore He is grinding them.
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What I spent, I had; What I kept, I lost; What I gave, I have.
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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
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If there's a job to be done, I always ask the busiest man in my parish to take it on and it gets done.
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No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
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There is a great deal more correctness of thought respecting manhood in bodily things than in moral things. For men's ideas of manhood shape themselves as the tower and spire of cathedrals do, that stand broad at the bottom, but grow tapering as they rise, and end, far up, in the finest lines, and in an evanishing point. Where they touch the ground they are most, and where they reach to the heaven they are least.
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We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
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The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
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People of too much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.
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No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.
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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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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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The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.
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A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.
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Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.
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This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.
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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.
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Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.
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Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.
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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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No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.
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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.
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Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.
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The great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God.