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Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher


The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
– Henry Ward Beecher

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A church debt is the devil's salary.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
– Henry Ward Beecher
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.
– Henry Ward Beecher
God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.
– Henry Ward Beecher
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
– Henry Ward Beecher
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
– Henry Ward Beecher
In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
– Henry Ward Beecher
It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
– Henry Ward Beecher
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
– Henry Ward Beecher
It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
– Henry Ward Beecher
It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore; So much the better, you may laugh the more.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
– Henry Ward Beecher
No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Now comes the mystery.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The 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 Beecher
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The most dangerous people are the ignorant.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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!
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
– Henry Ward Beecher
There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
– Henry Ward Beecher
There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
– Henry Ward Beecher
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
– Henry Ward Beecher
To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
– Henry Ward Beecher
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
– Henry Ward Beecher
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
– Henry Ward Beecher
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
– Henry Ward Beecher
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
– Henry Ward Beecher
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
– Henry Ward Beecher
You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
– Henry Ward Beecher