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Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.
Henry Ward Beecher -
No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.
Henry Ward Beecher -
A practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt.
Henry Ward Beecher -
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.
Henry Ward Beecher -
A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man?
Henry Ward Beecher -
No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.
Henry Ward Beecher -
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.
Henry Ward Beecher -
Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine.
Henry Ward Beecher -
People of too much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.
Henry Ward Beecher -
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher -
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.
Henry Ward Beecher -
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.
Henry Ward Beecher
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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.
Henry Ward Beecher -
God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
Henry Ward Beecher -
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Henry Ward Beecher -
An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.
Henry Ward Beecher -
Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
Henry Ward Beecher -
It will not do to be saints at meeting and sinners everywhere else.
Henry Ward Beecher
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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.
Henry Ward Beecher -
A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.
Henry Ward Beecher -
As flowers carry dewdrops, trembling on the edges of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving; and at the first breath of heavenly flavor, let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude.
Henry Ward Beecher -
Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.
Henry Ward Beecher