Top 915 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Ward Beecher - Page 16

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills.

God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.

God does not refuse to make himself known to man. He only will not do it by the symbolism of matter. He comes to us at once by the most natural course. We are in a transient state; our bodies are accidental, and God comes to us by that which is higher and truer--the intuitions of the soul.

The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; — and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward.

The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things. That is our part.

There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.

Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings.

Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer.

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest.

No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.

If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.

The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.

I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness!