Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.
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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 grace can save any man unless he helps himself.
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Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.
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We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
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Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.
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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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Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
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Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,--it is exceedingly short.
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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 cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
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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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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.
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There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearin g, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good; whose coming into a room is like bringing a lamp there.
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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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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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The great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God.
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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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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.
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What a pity flowers can utter no sound!-A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle ... oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!
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Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
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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.