Clergyman · American · 1813 – 1887 · 117 quotes
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Henry Ward Beecher
Clergyman · American · 1813 – 1887
The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.
Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
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.
Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
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.
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.
Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
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.
You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
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.
Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
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.
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.
The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
The most dangerous people are the ignorant.
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
A church debt is the devil's salary.
