Henry Ward Beecher

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
Henry Ward Beecher - last words
Now comes the mystery.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

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.

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.

Troubles are often the tools God fashions us for better things.

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

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but".

Besides anarchy, the worst thing in this world is government.

Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
Henry Ward Beecher - Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

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

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is a human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
Henry Ward Beecher - last words, 8 March 1887.
Now comes the mystery.
Henry Ward Beecher - "Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit", 1887
The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

- Henry Ward Beecher