Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

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

Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.

Flowers . . . have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.

It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.

You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.

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

Going out into life--that is dying. Christ is the door out of life.

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race.

Today is a goblet day. The whole heavens have been mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist.

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

There was never a person who did anything worth doing that he did not receive more than he gave.

Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.

He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel.

Man is that name of power which rises above them all, and gives to every one the right to be that which God meant he should be.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.

If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.

Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.

When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder.

The elect, those who will; the non-elect, those who won't.

Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.

Religion is using everything for God.

God's men are better than the devil's men, and they ought to act as though they thought they were.

Do not be afraid because the, community teems with excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth.

Good nature is often a mere matter of health.

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

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

Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul! Thou hast indeed entered into the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou are sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, oh, weary heart!

Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands.

There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.

Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes.

When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted.

A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.

I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

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

Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree ... but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement... that requires a heroism which is transcendent.

Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

Affliction comes to the believer not to make him sad, but sober; not to make him sorry, but wise. Even as the plow enriches the field so that the seed is multiplied a thousandfold, so affliction should magnify our joy and increase our spiritual harvest.

In the morning, we carry the world like Atlas; at noon, we stoop and bend beneath it; and at night, it crushes us flat to the ground.

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

Sharp men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce quick.

His nature is such that our often coming does not tire him. The whole burden of the whole life of every man may be rolled on to God and not weary him, though it has wearied man.

There is no part of government which cannot better suffer derangement than the ballot. If you strike the ballot with disease, it is heart disease.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.

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.

A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.