Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (306 Quotes)

The most dangerous people are the ignorant.

There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure.

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.

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.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.

All true ambition and aspiration are without comparisons.

A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns.

A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is strain upon it

On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens on this side, orphans on that, children on this side, captives on that, free men.

Living is death dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens on this side orphans, on that children.

Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.

Conscience is the frame of character, and love is the covering for it.

Good humor makes all things tolerable.

Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

It is defeat that turns bone to flint it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle it is defeat that makes men invincible.

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.

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature.

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.

A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.

The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going in that way too.

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

No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter.

A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm maintain simplicity of taste and ... unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety.

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

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this childs want by grown people ... is a fertile source of suffering.

In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands.

Happiness is not the end in life character is.

If you have only two or three things that you can enjoy and they are things which time and decay may remove from you, what are you going to do in old age.

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness.... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.

A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

A good digestion is as truly obligatory as a good conscience pure blood is as truly a part of mankind as a pure faith and a well ordered skin is the first condition of that cleanliness which is next to Godliness.

Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.

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.

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them.

The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought not by the rising and setting of the sun.

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

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

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

There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.