Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Compassion
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Fathers | Mothers | Parents
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness | Contentment
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character | Strength
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Service
We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Perseverance | Patience | Trials
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Success | Disappointment
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering
It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Perseverance
The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Anxiety
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
Forgiveness
God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
– Henry Ward Beecher
God | Mothers | Forgiveness
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Temptation | Men
There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Family | Parents
The mother’s heart is the child’s classroom.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Mothers | Children
The dog was created especially for children. He is a god of frolic.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Children | Animals
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Hypocrisy | Friendship
A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track an inch between wreck and smooth, rolling prosperity.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Encouragement | Helping | Prosperity
To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Success
When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Philosophy | Youth
The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Apathy
There is no such thing as white lies; a lie is as black as a coal pit, and twice as foul.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Lying
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
Success | Excellence
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Family | Parents
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Anger | Good and Evil
Failure is a school in which the truth always grows strong.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Truth | Failure
A church debt is the devil’s salary.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Church | Finances
God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Cheerfulness | Blessings
Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is the more likely to lead astray.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Lying
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
RomanceYouthDiscipline
The world’s battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Family | War | History
No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so much care and exactness as God weighs out to us every trial. Not one grain too much does He ever permit to be put in the scale.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Trials
Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Encouragement
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Humility | Good and Evil
The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Patience | PainIllness
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
Praise
Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.
– Henry Ward Beecher
PrideHumility | Thankfulness
A sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is a hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Preaching
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
Worry
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Finances | Community
The strength of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way too.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Holiness | Strength
The strength and happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going that way too.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Worship | Love
What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Mothers
The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Mothers
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Children
It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Perseverance | Victory
God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Life
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
– Henry Ward Beecher
God
The elect are whosoever will, and the non-elect, whosoever won’t.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Surrender
A man’s true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Finances | Power
Love is the river of life in the world.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Love
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character | Gratitude
Flowers may beckon towards us, but they speak toward heaven and God.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven | God
There’s not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs, than with his children, servants and neighbors.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Christianity
Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Death
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Faith | Anxiety
None love to speak so much, when the mood of speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character
Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Life | Change
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Faith
Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness | Laughter
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character
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
Pride
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God’s.
– Henry Ward Beecher
God
Victories that are cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Philosophy
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Examples
Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
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.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Prayer
It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The Heart | Wealth
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
The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Friendship
Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if men were obliged to run down all the innuendos, inveracities, insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Life
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Truth | Apathy | Joy
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Ignorance
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Life | Choices
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Life | Joy
Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Anger
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
Blessings | The Heart | Thankfulness
Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Theology
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Selfishness
A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Pride
Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Finances
The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books | Community
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Reasoning
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Virtue
Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
– Henry Ward Beecher
God
Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and still man’s obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and guide would be gone; the same voyage to make, but his chart and compass would be overboard!
– Henry Ward Beecher
The Bible
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Books
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Church
The babe at first feeds upon the mother’s bosom, but it is always on her heart.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Mothers
There never was a person who did anything worth doing, who did not receive more than he gave.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Giving
Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Apathy | Reasoning | The Heart
It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it’s done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Politics
No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Contentment
Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile, some have a sad expression, some are pensive and diffident, others again are plain, honest and upright.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Character | Honesty