Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.

It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.

It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.

In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

The dog is the god of frolic.

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe.

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

No man can tell another his faults so as to benefit him, unless he loves him.

It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.

Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face.

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature.

The bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.

We go to the grave of a friend saying, "A man is dead," but angels throng about him saying, "A man is born."

By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.

There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing.

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

A man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious.

All the sobriety which' religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces.

Never excuse yourself.

Every fresh act of benevolence is the herald of deeper satisfaction; every charitable act a stepping-stone towards heaven.

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked).

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.

Many men build as cathedrals are built-the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the Devil feels, you do know, if you are such an one.

A book is a garden; A book is an orchard; A book is a storehouse; A book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.

It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

Of all joyful, smiling, ever-laughing experiences, there are none like those which spring from true religion.

Ignorance is the womb of monsters.

The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.

Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,--it is exceedingly short.

Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.

Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.