Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.

A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation.

There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.

Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.

Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.

God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure.

God is the one great employer, thinker, planner, supervisor.

God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: "Lord, teach me compassion," but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion.

There is nothing that a New-Englander so nearly worships as an argument.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

Love is the wine of existence.

Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.

Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.

Customs represent the experience of mankind.

Men have a thousand desires to a bushel of choices.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a mentor, a teacher, a guidepost, a counsellor.

Men can make an idol of the Bible.

That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.

The hunger of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye.

The world is to be cleaned by somebody, and you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scrub.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.

The Divine mind does not think for us, or inspite of us, but works in us to think, and to will, and to do.

A boy is a piece of existence quite separate from all things else, and deserves separate chapters in the natural history of men.

No matter who reigns, the merchant reigns.

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.

Not another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings.

Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor.

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.

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

It's not work that kills [people], it is worry.

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law

There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.

Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.

Many people are afraid to embrace religion, for fear they shall not succeed in maintaining it.

Love is more just than justice.

Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is.

Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.

Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.

What could make me love my fellow Christian better than to see that God loves us all as we were all one soul?

Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.

It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.

When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through, And all too narrow for the broadening soul, Give me the fine, firm texture of the new, Fair, beautiful and whole!

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.