Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

352. “A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

353. “We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

354. “A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

355. “As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man’s path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

356. “When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

357. “The most dangerous people are the ignorant.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

358. “If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

359. “Fear is the soul’s signal for rallying.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

360. “Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

361. “Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

362. “A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

363. “To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

364. “Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

365. “Flowers are sent to do God’s work in unrevealed paths, and to diffuse influence by channels that we hardly suspect.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

366. “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

367. “There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

368. “Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

369. “No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

370. “The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

371. “Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

372. “Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

373. “The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

374. “At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

375. “Good nature is often a mere matter of health.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

376. “Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

377. “Repentance is another name for aspiration.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

378. “Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

379. “The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

380. “God’s providence is on the side of clear heads.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

381. “Man is that name of power which rises above them all, and gives to every one the right to be that which God meant he should be.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

382. “There is always work, and tools to work withal, for those, who will.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

383. “You may say, “I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball.” Providence won’t. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

384. “Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

385. “Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

386. “Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

387. “Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

388. “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

389. “Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

390. “People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: “Lord, teach me compassion,” but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

391. “The God of the Bible is a moral monstrosity.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

392. “This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

393. “Suffering is part of the divine idea.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

394. “It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

395. “There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

396. “A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

397. “Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

398. “Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

399. “You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

400. “He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.”

— Henry Ward Beecher