Quotes By Henry Ward Beecher

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

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

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.