Top 915 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Ward Beecher - Page 15

Love is more just than justice.

Of all joyful, smiling, ever-laughing experiences, there are none like those which spring from true religion.

All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.

Religion is using everything for God.

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

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

God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ... The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at night!

The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way God loves to do pleasant things.

What is the Bible in your house? It is not the Old Testament, it is not the New Testament, it is not the Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John; it is the Gospel according to William; it is the Gospel according to Mary; it is the Gospel according to Henry and James; it is the Gospel according to your name. You write your own Bible.

John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man.

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

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

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

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. By these tendrils we clasp it and climb thitherward. And why do we think that we are separated from them? We never half knew them, nor in this world could.

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

Men must read for amusement as well as for knowledge.

By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.

One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.

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

We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.

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.

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

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.

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

Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant to be suggestions of that realm which is the home of the heart.

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

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

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

Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law

Titles are too "thin" for the nineteenth century.

Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.

The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are.

It is a view of God that compensates every thing else, and enables the soul to rest in His bosom. How, when the child in the night screams with terror, hearing sounds that it knows not of, is that child comforted and put to rest? Is it by a philosophical explanation that the sounds were made by the rats in the partition? Is it by imparting entomological knowledge? No; it is by the mother taking the child in her lap, and singing sweetly to it, and rocking it. And the child thinks nothing of the explanation, but only of the mother.

Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought.

I never know how to worship until I know how to love; and to love I must have something that I can put my arms around, — something that, touching my heart, shall leave not the chill of ice, but the warmth of summer.

True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training.

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.

I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it.

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!

In engineering, that only is great which achieves. It matters not what the intention is, he who in the day of battle is not victorious is not saved by his intention.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.

No matter who reigns, the merchant reigns.

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.

Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.

All true religion must stand on true morality.

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

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

I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.

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

Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life.

It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. We can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds.

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

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.

Truthfulness is godliness.

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

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.

It is part and parcel of every man's life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty.

There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.

The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned; but there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, wholesale violation of natural law. There are ten men that can succeed in the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.