Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

You cannot forget, if you would, those golden kisses all over the cheeks of the meadow, queerly called dandelions.

Henry Ward Beecher
The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race, with variations multitudinous.

Henry Ward Beecher
God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.

Henry Ward Beecher
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. By these tendrils we clasp it and climb thitherward. And why do we think that we are separated from them? We never half knew them, nor in this world could.

Henry Ward Beecher
If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest.

Henry Ward Beecher
The most efficacious secular book that ever was published in America is the newspaper.

Henry Ward Beecher
Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity.

Henry Ward Beecher
I know it is more agreeable to walk upon carpets than to lie upon dungeon floors, I know it is pleasant to have all the comforts and luxuries of civilization; but he who cares only for these things is worth no more than a butterfly, contented and thoughtless, upon a morning flower; and who ever thought of rearing a tombstone to a last summer's butterfly?

Henry Ward Beecher
May we be satisfied with nothing that shall not have in it something of immortality.

Henry Ward Beecher
Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

Henry Ward Beecher
Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.

Henry Ward Beecher
All things in the natural world symboliZe God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.

Henry Ward Beecher
Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked), plain, good, useful, but not adorable.

Henry Ward Beecher
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." I found the following quote by Goethe that can serve as a commentary on these words. "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Henry Ward Beecher
Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

Henry Ward Beecher
You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.

Henry Ward Beecher
I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.

Henry Ward Beecher
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!

Henry Ward Beecher
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.

Henry Ward Beecher
Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us.

Henry Ward Beecher
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because He loves.

Henry Ward Beecher
Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.

Henry Ward Beecher
Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.

Henry Ward Beecher
The 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 Beecher
All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.

Henry Ward Beecher
Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations.

Henry Ward Beecher
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. It is a blessed baptism which gives the first waking thoughts into the bosom of God.

Henry Ward Beecher
A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.

Henry Ward Beecher
We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way; but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, he is in heaven, and not on earth.

Henry Ward Beecher