Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Nature is a vast repository of manly enjoyments.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

152. “Love is God’s loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.””

— Henry Ward Beecher

153. “Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

154. “Sometimes fear is wholesome and rational; it is well to swing fear as a mighty battle-axe over men’s heads when no other motive will move them.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

155. “A man’s true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

156. “Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

157. “God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men’s weaknesses.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

158. “Theology is a science of mind applied to God.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

159. “A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

160. “The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

161. “Do not be afraid because the, community teems with excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

162. “When a man’s pride is subdued it’s like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

163. “What could make me love my fellow Christian better than to see that God loves us all as we were all one soul?”

— Henry Ward Beecher

164. “The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

165. “Beauty may be said to be God’s trademark in creation.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

166. “As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

167. “Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

168. “It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. But those who have a psssion for nature in the natural way, need no pictures nor gallereies. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

169. “The best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

170. “There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

171. “An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

172. “Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

173. “I read for three things; first, to know what the world has done the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do today; second, for the knowledge that I specially want in my work; and third, for what will bring my mind into a proper mood.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

174. “The elect, those who will; the non-elect, those who won’t.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

175. “Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

176. “Yea, though the breath of disappointment should chill the sanguine heart, Speedily gloweth it again, warmed by the live embers of hope.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

177. “A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a man’s possessions. A library is not a luxury. It is one of the necessities of a full life.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

178. “The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

179. “A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

180. “A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation’s flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

181. “A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

182. “Of all man’s works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

183. “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

184. “Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

185. “There is no such thing as white lies; a lie is as black as a coalpit, and twice as foul.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

186. “The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

187. “Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

189. “Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

190. “The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

191. “A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

192. “Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!”

— Henry Ward Beecher

193. “It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

194. “No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

195. “Learning, to be of much use, must have a tendency to spread itself among the common people.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

196. “As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

197. “Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

198. “What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

199. “Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

200. “That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.”

— Henry Ward Beecher