Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

252. “The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

253. “It is part and parcel of every man’s life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

254. “The truest self-respect is not to think of self.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

255. “The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

256. “Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

257. “Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God’s because He loves.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

258. “Leaves die, but trees do not. They only undress.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

259. “Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

260. “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

261. “Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

262. “Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

263. “A door that seems to stand open must be of a man’s size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

264. “Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

265. “Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

266. “No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

267. “The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

268. “Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

269. “Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long, – it is exceedingly short.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

270. “Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

271. “Flowers may beckon todwards us, but they speak todward heaven and God.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

272. “When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead, – dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

273. “Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

274. “O never harm the dreaming world, the world of green, the world of leaves, but let its million palms unfold the adoration of the trees Of all man’s works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

275. “Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?”

— Henry Ward Beecher

276. “Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

277. “We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God’s.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

278. “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

279. “There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

280. “Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

281. “Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

282. “Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

283. “That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

284. “Remember God’s bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!”

— Henry Ward Beecher

285. “Let every man come to God in his own way.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

286. “Prayer covers the whole of man’s life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

287. “The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

288. “There are apartments in the soul which have a glorious outlook; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

289. “God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

290. “Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

291. “The world is God’s workshop for making men in.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

292. “Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

293. “Coming to the Bible through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

294. “It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

295. “God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope and courage. It is a kind of bell or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance on the approach of danger. It is the soul’s signal for rallying.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

296. “Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

297. “Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

298. “Some men will not shave on Sunday, and yet they spend all the week in shaving their fellow-men; and many folks think it very wicked to black their boots on Sunday morning, yet they do not hesitate to black their neighbor’s reputation on week-days.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

299. “True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

300. “Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication.”

— Henry Ward Beecher