Famous Quotes By Henry Ward Beecher

 

1. A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
2. A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
3. A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
4. A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
5. 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.
6. Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
7. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
8. Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
9. Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
10. Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
11. Faith is spiritualized imagination.
12. Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
13. Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.
14. God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
15. God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
16. 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.
17. God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
18. Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
19. Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
20. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
21. Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
22. 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.
23. I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
24. In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
25. In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
26. It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
27. 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.
28. It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.
29. Laughter is day, and sobriety is night a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
30. Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.
31. Law represents the effort of man to organize society governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
32. 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.
33. Love is the river of life in the world.
34. Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
35. 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.
36. Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
37. Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.
38. Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
39. 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.
40. Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
41. Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
42. The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
43. The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
44. The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
45. The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
46. The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
47. The dog is the god of frolic.
48. The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.
49. The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
50. The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
51. The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.
52. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
53. The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
54. The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
55. The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
56. Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
57. There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
58. There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
59. To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
60. To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
61. We are always on the anvil by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
62. We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
63. We should not judge people by their peak of excellence but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
64. 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 in the morning.
65. We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
66. Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
67. 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.
68. When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
69. Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
70. 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.