Henry Ward Beecher quotes
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887): American clergyman and activist. The library holds 176 quotes by Henry Ward Beecher. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: humour, faith, nature, happiness, character, love
The best-known Henry Ward Beecher quotes
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Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God’s refinement.
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Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
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There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.
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Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
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Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine.
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Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
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God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.
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The mother-grace of all the graces is Christian good-will.
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If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
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Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.
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There are many men who do not believe in evaporation. They get all they can, and keep all they get, and so are not fertilisers, but only stagnant, miasmatic pools.
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The world’s battle-fields have been in the heart chiefly. More heroism has there been displayed in the household and in the closet, I think, than on the most memorable military battle-fields of history.
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A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.
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Nowhere can a man get real root-room, and spread out his branches till they touch the morning and the evening, but in his own house.
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We must not arrogate to ourselves a spirit of forgiveness, until we have been touched to the quick where we are sensitive and borne it meekly.
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No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself.
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We ought not to seek too high joys. We may be bright without transfiguration.
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If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.
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He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
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The traveller who goes round the world prepares himself to pass through all latitudes and to meet all changes.
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Meekness is not mere white-facedness, a mere contemplative virtue; it is maintaining peace and patience in the midst of pelting provocations.
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It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex, instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.
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The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart.
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Poetry is the robe, the royal apparel, in which truth asserts its divine origin.
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Man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.
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Naboth was right to hold on to his home. There were garnered memories that all the wealth of Ahab could not buy.
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Well-married, a man is winged; ill-matched, he is shackled.
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We ought not to judge men by their absolute excellence, but by the distance which they have travelled from the point at which they started.
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Nothing dies so hard, and rallies so often, as intolerance.
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Our whole life is but a chamber which we are frescoing with colours, that do not appear while being laid on wet, but which will shine forth afterwards when finished and dry.
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God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
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Love cannot clasp all it yearns for in its bosom, without first suffering for it.
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The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
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There is an anger that is majestic as the frown of Jehovah’s brow; it is the anger of truth and love.
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We can take up no scheme, however wild and impracticable, but it will strike off some flower or fruit from the tree of knowledge.
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Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming… Every green thing loves to die in bright colours.
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Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.
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The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigour to our moral nature.
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Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it.
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Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.
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Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man’s head.
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In this world, full often our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
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He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
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Some people have no perspective in their conscience. Their moral convictions are the same on all subjects. They are like a reader who speaks every word with equal emphasis.
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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 to-morrow.
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Of all man’s work of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
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What is the disposition which makes men rejoice in good bargains? There are few people who will not be benefited by pondering over the morals of shopping.
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We expect old men to be conservative, but when a nation’s young men are so, its funeral-bell is already rung.
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Civilisation means the recession of passional and material life, and the development of social and moral life.
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Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.
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Liberty comes with Christianity, because Christianity develops and strengthens the mass of men.
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The stars do not come to tell us it is night, but to lay beams of light through it, and give the eye a path to walk in.
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No mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.
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Everything that happens in this world is part of a great plan of God running through all time.
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The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.
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We go to the grave of a friend saying, “A man is dead;” but angels throng about him, saying, “A man is born.”
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Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
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The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own conscience.
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A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track,—but one inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.