Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

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They [birds] eat what they like, wipe their mouths on a limb, return thanks in a song, and wing away to a quiet nook to doze or meditate...

Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying.

Henry Ward Beecher
Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon; and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide-twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care for the top by and by.

Henry Ward Beecher
He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.

Henry Ward Beecher
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.

Henry Ward Beecher
The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Henry Ward Beecher
Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

Henry Ward Beecher
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.

Henry Ward Beecher
A dull axe never loves grindstones, but a keen workman does; and he puts his tool on them in order that it may be sharp. And men do not like grinding; but they are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out with them, and therefore He is grinding them.

Henry Ward Beecher
I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the Devil feels, you do know, if you are such an one.

Henry Ward Beecher
Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.

Henry Ward Beecher
A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

Henry Ward Beecher
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.

Henry Ward Beecher
Never ask a question if you can help it; and never let a thing go unknown for the lack of asking a question if you can't help it.

Henry Ward Beecher
The world is to be cleaned by somebody, and you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scrub.

Henry Ward Beecher
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.

Henry Ward Beecher
Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

Henry Ward Beecher
Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is to be cured of sin.

Henry Ward Beecher
I would much rather fight pride than vanity, because pride has a stand-up way of fighting. You know where it is. It throws its black shadow on you, and you are not at a loss where to strike. But vanity is that delusive, that insectiferous, that multiplied feeling, and men that fight vanities are like men that fight midges and butterflies. It is easier to chase them than to hit them.

Henry Ward Beecher
Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is.

Henry Ward Beecher
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.

Henry Ward Beecher
Death? Translated into the heavenly tongue, that word means life!

Henry Ward Beecher
No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.

Henry Ward Beecher
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. Just as long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it; but when they begin to look around, and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand, at the end, like the pyramids in the desert sands, holding only the dust of kings.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

Henry Ward Beecher
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.

Henry Ward Beecher
Every green thing loves to die in bright colors. The vegetable cohorts march glowing out of the year in flaming dresses, as if to leave this earth were a triumph and not a sadness. It is never nature that is sad, but only we, that dare not look back on the past, and that have not its prophecy of the future in our bosoms.

Henry Ward Beecher
When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
Nature would be scarcely worth a puff of the empty wind if it were not that all Nature is but a temple, of which God is the brightness and the glory.

Henry Ward Beecher