Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

102. “No man is more cheated than the selfish man.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

103. “Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

104. “We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

105. “To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

106. “A man’s ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth-whether rich or poor.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

107. “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

108. “Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

109. “There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better; nobler; holier than it knows now.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

110. “Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

111. “So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

112. “What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

113. “God’s grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

114. “He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

115. “Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

116. “God’s glory is His goodness.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

117. “We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

118. “Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

119. “Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

120. “Conscience is the frame of character, and love is the covering for it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

122. “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.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

123. “Every man should use his intellect, not as he uses his lamp in the study, only for his own seeing, but as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the seas may see the shining, and learn their way.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

124. “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

125. “Christ is risen! There is life, therefore, after death! His resurrection is the symbol and pledge of universal resurrection!”

— Henry Ward Beecher

126. “The mystery of history is an insoluble problem.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

127. “All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of Him but in broken and imperfect words.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

128. “A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation’s young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

129. “No matter who reigns, the merchant reigns.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

130. “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

131. “A bird in a cage is not half a bird.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

132. “Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

133. “Joy is more divine than sorrow, for joy is bread and sorrow is medicine.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

134. “A man should fear when he enjoys only the good he does publicly. Is it not, publicity rather than charity, which he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?”

— Henry Ward Beecher

135. “Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

136. “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

137. “Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God’s medicine.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

138. “Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man’s head.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

139. “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.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

140. “The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. It is a blessed baptism which gives the first waking thoughts into the bosom of God.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

142. “The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

143. “Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

144. “Pain is God’s midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

145. “He who hunts for flowers will finds flowers; and he who loves weeds will find weeds.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

146. “No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

147. “Storms purify the atmosphere.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

148. “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man, by one lower than himself.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

149. “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

150. “A dull ax never loves grindstones.”

— Henry Ward Beecher