Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

Now comes the mystery! (last words)

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.

The most dangerous people are the ignorant.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

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

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

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.

A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.

A church debt is the devil's salary.

Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.

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

In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

Repentance is another name for aspiration.

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

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.

Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.

Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.

The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.

Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong.

Faith is spiritualized imagination.

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

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.

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

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

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.

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.

Victories that come cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.