HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XV

American clergyman (1813-1887)

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It is only God who can satisfy the soul.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Many men carry their conscience like a drawn sword, cutting this way and that, in the world, but sheathe it, and keep it very soft and quiet, when it is turned within, thinking that a sword should not be allowed to cut its own scabbard.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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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.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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The great men of earth are the shadowy men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Man's faults lie like reptiles--like toads, like lizards, like serpents; and what if there is over them the evening sky, lit with glory, and all aglow? Are they less reptiles and toads because all is roseate around about them?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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The fugitive, brief, though intense satisfactions that come to the nerves through the appetite and passions are not the foundations of joy in this world: they come with a moment's flash, and are disastrous in their flight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Righteousness is as hereditary as vice, and godly men transmit moral qualities to their children, and to their children's children.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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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.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Men think religion bears the same relation to life that flowers do to trees. The tree must grow through a long period before the blossoming time; so they think religion is to be a blossom just before death, to secure heaven. But the Bible represents religion, not as the latest fruit of life, but as the whole of it--beginning, middle, and end. It is simply right living.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Poverty is very good in poems ... in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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The Divine Being brings comfort and consolation to men. He is a God for men that are weak, and want to be strong; for men that are impure, and want to be pure; for men that are unjust, and want to be just; for men that are unloving, and want to be loving; for men that aspire to all the greatness and glory of which the soul is capable.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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It is the sum of the million little unconscious dispositions that go to make life joyful or painful.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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