HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XV

American clergyman (1813-1887)

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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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Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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The two poorest men in the world are buckled together at the opposite sides of the circle. The man who has so much money that he does not know what to do with it and the man who has no money at all touch each other, as you will find; and one is about as poor as the other.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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There is but one resource for innocence among men or women, and that is an embargo upon all commerce of bad men.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.

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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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.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Many people keep their old sins warm while they go to try on virtue and see if they like it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.

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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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?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.

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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It is only God who can satisfy the soul.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.

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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