Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher

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

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

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Henry Ward Beecher

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Henry Ward Beecher

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Henry Ward Beecher

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher

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.
Henry Ward Beecher

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.
Henry Ward Beecher

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
Henry Ward Beecher

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
Henry Ward Beecher

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Henry Ward Beecher

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
Henry Ward Beecher

The unthankful heart - discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.
Henry Ward Beecher

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
Henry Ward Beecher

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
Henry Ward Beecher

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but".
Henry Ward Beecher

A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track, - but one inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward Beecher

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

Adversity, if for no, other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. Men see clearer at such time. Storms purify the atmosphere.
Henry Ward Beecher

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
Henry Ward Beecher

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
Henry Ward Beecher

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

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
Henry Ward Beecher

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Henry Ward Beecher

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

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
Henry Ward Beecher

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
Henry Ward Beecher

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
Henry Ward Beecher

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
Henry Ward Beecher

Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long, - it is exceedingly short.
Henry Ward Beecher