Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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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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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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Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart.
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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 great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God.
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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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Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
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We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.
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People of too much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.
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Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.
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It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?
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A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it.
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This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.
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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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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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Christ is risen! There is life, therefore, after death! His resurrection is the symbol and pledge of universal resurrection!
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We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
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It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.
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Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.
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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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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 let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
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The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health.
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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.