Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.
Flowers . . . have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.
What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty?
When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead,--dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.
There are some men's souls that are so thin, so almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul, that were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted, they would altogether overlook them.
The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul.
The most efficacious secular book that ever was published in America is the newspaper.
Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.
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 in the air.
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man.
A man should fear when he only enjoys what good he does publicly. Is it not the publicity rather than the charity he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?
When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.
Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God's medicine.
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway a citizen, and at the top divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.
A man is a great bundle of tools. He is born into this life without the knowledge of how to use them. Education is the process of learning their use.
Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.
Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
Victories that come cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.
Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern.
The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences.
Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
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.
Many a man has been dined out of his religion, and his politics, and his manhood, almost.
