Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
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Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.
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Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is.
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We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
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Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. . . . There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.
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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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There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.
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Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.
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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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It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hard put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.
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It is a very good world for the purposes for which it was built; and that is all anything is good for.
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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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As plants take hold, not for the sake of staying, but only that they may climb higher, so it is with men. By every part of our nature we clasp things above us, one after another, not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but that we may go higher.
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The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.
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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
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Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
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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.
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Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
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Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.
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The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
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A person can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it, than one could suddenly grow from a child's stature to an adult's without harm.
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There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
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We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
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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.