Henry Ward Beecher
The world is God's workshop for making men in.Collection: God
I know it is more agreeable to walk upon carpets than to lie upon dungeon floors, I know it is pleasant to have all the comforts and luxuries of civilization; but he who cares only for these things is worth no more than a butterfly, contented and thoughtless, upon a morning flower; and who ever thought of rearing a tombstone to a last summer's butterfly?Collection: Summer
The most efficacious secular book that ever was published in America is the newspaper.Collection: Book
God's glory is His goodness.Collection: God
Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.Collection: People
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.Collection: Men
Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.Collection: Plants Growing
Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood.Collection: Ambition
Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.Collection: War
Oh, ye infidel philosophers, teach me how to find joy in sorrow, strength in weakness, and light in darkest days; how to bear buffeting and scorn; how to welcome death, and to pass through it into the sphere of life, and this not for me only, but for the whole world that groans and travails in pain; and till you can do this, speak not to me of a better revelation than the Bible.Collection: Pain
A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.Collection: War
Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.Collection: War
Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.Collection: Death
Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Greatness
Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Christian
The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?Collection: Flower
Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God.Collection: Flower
A babe is a mother's anchor.Collection: Mother
There is an army of waiters in this world.Collection: Army
His nature is such that our often coming does not tire him. The whole burden of the whole life of every man may be rolled on to God and not weary him, though it has wearied man.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Christian
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!Collection: Errors
Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Children
Education is only like good culture,--it changes the size, but not the sort.Collection: Education
If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.Collection: Men
Love is the river of life in this world.Collection: Love
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.Collection: Summer
Nature is a vast repository of manly enjoyments.Collection: Nature
Love is not a possession but a growth. The heart is a lamp with just oil enough to burn for an hour, and if there be no oil to put in again its light will go out. God's grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love.Collection: Heart
Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant to be suggestions of that realm which is the home of the heart.Collection: Home
When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Love
Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.Collection: Funny
Truthfulness is godliness.Collection: Truthfulness
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!Collection: Happiness
The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are.Collection: Belief
Love is the wine of existence.Collection: Love
Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.Collection: Jesus
We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.Collection: Motivational
We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.Collection: Virtue
To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe.Collection: Roots
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.Collection: Years
No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form.Collection: Emotional
Remember God's bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!Collection: Thanksgiving