HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XV

American clergyman (1813-1887)

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Christians! It is your duty not only to be good, but to shine; and, of all the lights which you kindle on the face, Joy will reach farthest out to sea, where troubled mariners are seeking the shore.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Love ... like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Man's faults lie like reptiles--like toads, like lizards, like serpents; and what if there is over them the evening sky, lit with glory, and all aglow? Are they less reptiles and toads because all is roseate around about them?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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God's whole nature moves toward the man who wants to be free from sin, as broadly and irresistibly as the summer moves from the south toward the north.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon; and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide-twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care for the top by and by.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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Wealth in activity--capital with all its friction--is far safer than invested wealth lying dead.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

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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

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