So it is that men sigh on, not knowing what the soul wants, but only that it needs something.—Our yearnings are homesicknesses for heaven.—Our sighings are sighings for God, just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, not knowing that they sob for their parents.—The soul’s inarticulate moanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one to tell them what it is that ails them.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Nation
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Class
Living is death; dying is life.—On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans; on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, freemen; on this side disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed as the sons of God.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Death
A door that seems to stand open must be a man’s size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Fate, Opportunity
Every charitable act is a stepping stone towards heaven.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Charity, Service, Kindness, Generosity, Giving
It is the passions that wear—the appetites that grind out the force of life.—Excitement in the higher realm of thought and feeling does not wear out or waste men.—The moral sentiments nourish and feed us.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Excitement
Conceited men are a harmless kind of creatures, who, by their overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Conceit, Self-Esteem
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people unless the sermon is so long that their have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurly-burly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to and riding out the gale.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Patience
That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellowmen is not God’s refinement.
—Henry Ward Beecher
There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Morality
True obedience is true freedom.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Freedom
I read for three things: first, to know what the world has done during the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do today; second, for the knowledge that I specially want in my work; and third, for what will bring my mind into a proper mood.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Reading
There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Heart
To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study, and practice.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Discipline
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
Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God’s worship.
—Henry Ward Beecher
That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Culture
There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better, nobler, holier than it knows now.
—Henry Ward Beecher
We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is the only method of the first.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Work is not a curse, but drudgery is!
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Work
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 to-morrow.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Time Management, Sleep, Time, Rest, Adversity
Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Tolerance
A man without mirth is like wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Happiness
We go to the grave of a friend, saying, “A man is dead,” but angels throng about him, saying, “A man is bom.”
—Henry Ward Beecher
It is impossible to indulge in habitual severity of opinion upon our fellow-men without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Feeling does not become stronger in the religious life by waiting, but by using it.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Feelings
A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand and a machine is but a complex tool; and he that invents a machine augments the power of man and the well-being of mankind.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Science, Invention
Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Health
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Norman Vincent Peale American Clergyman, Self-Help Author
- Reinhold Niebuhr American Theologian
- Charles Henry Parkhurst American Clergyman
- Albert Benjamin Simpson Canadian Theologian
- James Freeman Clarke American Clergyman
- Harriet Beecher Stowe American Abolitionist
- William Sloane Coffin American Clergyman
- Frederick Buechner American Writer, Theologian
- Hosea Ballou American Theologian
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
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