Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.
Henry Ward BeecherBooks are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward BeecherThe 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.
Henry Ward BeecherYou never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
Henry Ward BeecherThe Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
Henry Ward BeecherFind out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself.
Henry Ward BeecherA man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character.
Henry Ward BeecherIf one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, 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.
Henry Ward BeecherAnxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.
Henry Ward BeecherThe worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Henry Ward BeecherRepentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
Henry Ward BeecherGod puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.
Henry Ward BeecherThis world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.
Henry Ward BeecherTo become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
Henry Ward BeecherHe is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Henry Ward BeecherWe under no circumstances know the appreciate of your parent till we develop into dad and mom ourselves.
Henry Ward BeecherA 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?
Henry Ward BeecherNo matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.
Henry Ward BeecherIt is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.
Henry Ward BeecherGo on your knees before God. Bring all your idols; bring self-will, and pride, and every evil lust before Him, and give them up. Devote yourself, heart and soul, to His will; and see if you do not "know of the doctrine.
Henry Ward BeecherThe continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence.
Henry Ward BeecherIn regard to the great mass of men, anything that breaks the realm of fear is not salutary, but dangerous; because it takes off one of the hoops that hold the barrel together in which the evil spirits are confined.
Henry Ward BeecherThey who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.
Henry Ward BeecherThe methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash.
Henry Ward BeecherReligion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.
Henry Ward BeecherThe little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
Henry Ward BeecherRefinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.
Henry Ward BeecherMan 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.
Henry Ward BeecherMorality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.
Henry Ward BeecherI never know how to worship until I know how to love; and to love I must have something that I can put my arms around, — something that, touching my heart, shall leave not the chill of ice, but the warmth of summer.
Henry Ward BeecherThat was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.
Henry Ward BeecherWhen young men or women are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideals of the young are formed and adopted is more important still. For the ideal with which you go forward to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet.
Henry Ward BeecherAn oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.
Henry Ward Beecher