Henry Ward Beecher's Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Faith is spiritualized imagination.

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

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

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

A church debt is the devil's salary.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

Love is the river of life in the world.

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

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

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

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

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

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

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

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

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

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

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

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.

Now comes the mystery.

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

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

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

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

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore; So much the better, you may laugh the more.

Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

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

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.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

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

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

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

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!