Henry Ward Beecher
They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.Collection: Memorial Day
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.Collection: Anger
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Prayer
Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.Collection: Sweet
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!Collection: Summer
The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.Collection: Faith
The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences.Collection: Men
Though cares and sorrows e'er must come, Though heart be rent, I know that God will give me strength, When mine is spent.Collection: God
What a pity flowers can utter no sound!-A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle ... oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!Collection: Music
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.Collection: Life
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.Collection: War
The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.Collection: War
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.Collection: Truth
The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul.Collection: Light
Someone calls biography the home aspect of history.Collection: Home
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.Collection: Nature
If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.Collection: Clever
An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.Collection: Courage
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.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Temptation
When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.Collection: Selfish
No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.Collection: Men
A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labor, and the struggle, represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake, all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books?Collection: Dream
The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.Collection: People
Life is full of amusement to an amusing man.Collection: Life
Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.Collection: Water
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.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Beautiful
We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.Collection: God
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.Collection: Government
Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.Collection: Heart
Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody.Collection: Blessed
Yea, though the breath of disappointment should chill the sanguine heart, Speedily gloweth it again, warmed by the live embers of hope.Collection: Hope
All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul.Collection: Self
That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.Collection: Eye
Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.Collection: Jesus
If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.Collection: Christian
If we are like Christ, we shall seek, not to absorb, but to reflect the light which falls upon others, and thus we shall become pure and spotless.Collection: Fall
Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.Collection: Love
Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.Collection: Lying
Each book has a secret history of ways and means.Collection: Book
Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow.Collection: Money
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.Collection: Example
Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.Collection: Death
Find out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself.Collection: Temptation
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.Collection: Time