Top 500 Henry Ward Beecher Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

403. “Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

405. “If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

406. “There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

407. “Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

408. “You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

409. “There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

410. “No cradle for an emperor’s child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

411. “The tidal wave of God’s providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

412. “Going out into life – that is dying. Christ is the door out of life.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

413. “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

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

416. “The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way God loves to do pleasant things.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

417. “Sorrow makes men sincere.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

418. “The hunger of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

419. “Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

420. “Sharp men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce quick.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

421. “In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

422. “There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

423. “A man without a vote is in this land like a man without a hand.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

424. “Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

425. “Well-married, a man is winged: ill-matched, he is shackled.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

426. “Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

427. “He that lives by the sight of the eye may grow blind.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

428. “There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

429. “The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

430. “Christianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’”

— Henry Ward Beecher

431. “The meanest thing in the world is the devil.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

432. “Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

433. “Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

434. “Think of a man in a chronic state of anger!”

— Henry Ward Beecher

435. “God’s men are better than the devil’s men, and they ought to act as though they thought they were.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

436. “Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

437. “The Divine mind does not think for us, or inspite of us, but works in us to think, and to will, and to do.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

438. “Refinement is the lifting of one’s self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

439. “The cynic puts all human actions into two classes – openly bad and secretly bad.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

440. “It is the color which love wears, and cheerfulness, and joy – these three. It is the light in the window of the face by which the heart signifies to father, husband, or friend that it is at home and waiting.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

441. “Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

442. “All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons!”

— Henry Ward Beecher

443. “Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

444. “Everyone has conscience enough to hate; few have religion enough to love.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

445. “A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

446. “Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor, and wise are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

447. “Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

448. “A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, to the rude, and to the multitudes who could have no flowers were nature to charge a price for her blossoms.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

449. “If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

450. “Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities.”

— Henry Ward Beecher