Henry Ward Beecher
American preacher, reformer and writer, 1813-1887
101 quotes.
Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher
- If there is ever a time to be ambitious, it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is hard. Fight in darkness; fight when you are down; die hard, and you won't die at all.
- In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
- Industry can do anything which Genius can do; and very many things which it cannot.
- It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible. One is never so near victory as when defeated in a good cause.
- It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
- It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.
- It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthful, worry is rust upon the blade. Fear secretes acids, but love and trust are sweet juices.
- It is not work that kills men; it is worry... Worry is rust upon the blade.
- Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
- Life would be a perpetual flea-hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, insinuations, and suspicions which are uttered against him.
- Love is more just than justice; compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
- Man is the iron, and God is the smith; and we are always either in the forge or on the anvil.
- Men are afraid of breaking down where they are strongest, but are seldom afraid of their weaknesses.
- Men's best successes come after their disappointments.
- Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.
- No man can tell another his faults so as to benefit him, unless he loves him.
- No matter what a man’s aims, or resolutions, or professions may be, it is by one’s deeds that he is to be judged, both by God and man.
- Our gifts and attainments are not only to be light and warmth in our own dwellings, but are to shine through the window, into the dark night, to guide and cheer bewildered travellers on the road.
- Poverty is very good in poems, but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons, but very bad in practical life.
- Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.
- Prosperity is good; but, to those who can stand it, adversity is better. God has revealed the wisdom of the heavenly world oftener to men in dungeons than to men in palaces.
- Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
- Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
- Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is a last year's nest, from which the bird has flown.
- Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed. No flower can bloom in paradise which is not transplanted from Gethsemane.
- Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
- That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God’s refinement.
- The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no man can tell what becomes of his influence and example, that roll away from him, and go beyond his ken on their perilous mission.
- The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself.
- The church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones, a nursery for the care of weak ones, a hospital for the healing of those who need assiduous care.
- The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
- The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
- The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
- The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
- The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
- The truest self-respect is not to think of self.
- There is no such sculpture as that of character.
- There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
- There never was a person who did anything worth doing that did not receive more than he gave.
- There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church, that a man going and sitting there should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.