Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.

Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.

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

It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.

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

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

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

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

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

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

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

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

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

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

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

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

Life is a plant that grows out of death.

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

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

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

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.

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

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.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.

A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.

That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.

Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.

There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.

Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it.

No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.

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.

Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer.

Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.

There are sorrows that are not painful, but are of the nature of some acids, and give piquancy and flavor to life.

Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.

At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.

The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.

The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing.

A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.

The truest self-respect is not to think of self.

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.

Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it.

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.