Henry Ward Beecher - Man Quotes

97 Sourced Quotes

View all Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

Henry Ward Beecher
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training.

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
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.

Henry Ward Beecher
Indeed, unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw more from them as wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and bones.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
Religion would save a man; Christ would make him worth saving.

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
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.

Henry Ward Beecher
It is not painter or sculptor who is making himself most nobly immortal. It is he who is making true impressions upon the mind of man; frescoes for eternity, that will not shine out till the light of heaven reveals them; sculptures, not wrought in outward things, but in the inward nature and character of the soul.

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
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
To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may.

Henry Ward Beecher
It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.

Henry Ward Beecher
No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day.

Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.

Henry Ward Beecher
Astronomers have built telescopes which can show myriads of stars unseen before; but when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs which no telescope, however skilfully constructed, could do; nay, which brings to view even the throne of God, and pierces the nebulous distance where are those eternal verities in which true life consists.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If, on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means, I find the reason why he has cheap carpets and very plain furniture to be that he may purchase books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books are not made for furniture but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher
Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.

Henry Ward Beecher
If a man has come to that point where he is no content that he says; I do not want to know any more, or do any more or be any more, he is in a state in which he ought to be changed into a mummy.

Henry Ward Beecher
A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.

Henry Ward Beecher
Happy is the man that loves flowers! Happy, even if it be a love adulterated with vanity and strife. For human passions nestle in flower-lovers too.

Henry Ward Beecher
We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.

Henry Ward Beecher
There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.

Henry Ward Beecher
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway a citizen, and at the top divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.

Henry Ward Beecher
I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.

Henry Ward Beecher
While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.

Henry Ward Beecher