Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche.
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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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Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.
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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.
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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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We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
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Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.
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What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
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Laugh at your friends, And if your friends are sore; So much the better, You may laugh the more.
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The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
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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?
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Men will imitate and admire his unmoved firmness, his inflexible conscience for the right; and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this country shake out of its place: I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.
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Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.
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John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man.
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Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.
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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.
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When a man says that he is perfect already, there is only one of two places for him, and that is heaven or the lunatic asylum.
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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.
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Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.
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Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
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We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.