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Henry Ward Beecher

b: Litchfield, Connecticut, Jun 24, 1813

d: New York, New York, Mar 8, 1887

American. Clergy, Social Reformer. Forceful orator who spoke out on social, political issues, including slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction.

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A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

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

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

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

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

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

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

Every charitable act is a stepping stone towards heaven.

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.

Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into. {from 'Life Thoughts'}

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

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.

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor.

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

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

Hold yourself for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you.

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

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

If a man has come to that point where he is so 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 of which he ought to be changed into a mummy.

If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.

In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

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

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.

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.

It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

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

Keep a fair-sized cemetery in your back yard, in which to bury the faults of your friends.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.

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.

Love, like a lamp, needs to be fed out of another's heart, or its flame burns low.

Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.

Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

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

One's best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but an 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.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.

Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.

The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no man can tell what becomes of his influence.

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

The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is a human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but".

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

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.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

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

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

There is not a heart but has it's moments of longing, yearning for something better, nobler, holier than it knows now.

There was never a person who did anything worth doing that did not receive more than he gave.

To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

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

We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.

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 steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

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.