Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
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Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.
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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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There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them.
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We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
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Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.
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Victories that come cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
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Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.
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We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
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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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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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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
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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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There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
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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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Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people . . . is a fertile source of suffering.
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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.
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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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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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We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
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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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That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.
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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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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.