Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

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

I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.

In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.

Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies.

The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way God loves to do pleasant things.

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

One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.

Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.

The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty.

The Divine mind does not think for us, or inspite of us, but works in us to think, and to will, and to do.

Death is not an end. It is a new impulse.

A man that is afraid is never a man.

Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

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

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

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are - in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky - we love them.

The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences.

Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.

Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.

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

Our government is built upon the vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands, and a government built on them stands upon corruption and revolution.

The beginning is the promise of the end.

Education is only like good culture,--it changes the size, but not the sort.

Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.

To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.

Many men want wealth,--not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath.

We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us

There can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice a leaf; while from the fertile soil will be reared a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose.

Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.

True obedience is true freedom.

Someone calls biography the home aspect of history.

At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.

But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age.

A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.

It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.

Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness.... Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty.

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.

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

Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.

Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

The last person one wants to be is themselves. Sadly, that is the best person to be.

The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.

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

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