Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.

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

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

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others are plain, honest and upright, like the broad faced sunflower and the hollyhock.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?

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.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

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.

We never know the love of the parent for the child till we become parents.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

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.

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.

Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.

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.

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.

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.

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.

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.

Home should be the center of joy, equatorial and tropical.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

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.

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.

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

The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

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.

Blessed are they who know how to shine on one's gloom with their cheer.

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.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.

A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

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

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.

If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman.

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.

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.