Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Let the GRATEFUL HEART sweep through the day that it may recognize in every hour some sweet blessing.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

52. “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

53. “The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

54. “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. By these tendrils we clasp it and climb thitherward. And why do we think that we are separated from them? We never half knew them, nor in this world could.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

55. “When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly – so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

56. “A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

57. “A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

58. “It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

59. “Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

60. “The Bible is God’s chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

62. “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

63. “Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

64. “Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

65. “True obedience is true freedom.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

66. “The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

67. “Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

68. “It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

69. “I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

70. “Faith is spiritualized imagination.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

71. “The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

73. “Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

74. “He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

75. “Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

76. “In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

77. “Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

78. “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

79. “A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

80. “Now comes the mystery.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

81. “Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

82. “I don’t like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

83. “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

84. “A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

85. “Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

86. “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

87. “The things that hurt us teach us.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

88. “That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

89. “God is the one great employer, thinker, planner, supervisor.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

90. “Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

91. “We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

92. “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.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

93. “Blessed are the happiness makers. Blessed are they who know how to shine on one’s gloom with their cheer.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

94. “Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

95. “The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but, if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

96. “Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God’s worship.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

97. “Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

98. “The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?”

— Henry Ward Beecher

99. “Ignorance is the womb of monsters.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

100. “The dog is the god of frolic.”

— Henry Ward Beecher