Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

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

The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.

‎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.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

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.

Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions." Henry Ward Beecher

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.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.

Now comes the mystery! (last words)

Hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dying. Alaska's favorite was playwright Eugene O'Neill: "Born in a hotel room, and--God damn it--died in a hotel room." Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, "Oh God. What's happened?" Movie star James Dean said, "They've got to see us," just before slamming his Porsche into another car. I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.

There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.

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.

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out.

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

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is in the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has

A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the mother for the child.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

Alas! Where is human nature so weak as in the book-store?

If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

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

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

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

A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything," said Henry Ward Beecher.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

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

the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

the first hour of the morning, is the rudder of the day.

The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! — Henry Ward Beecher

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road. Henry Ward Beecher

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself and be lenient to everyone else.” —HENRY WARD BEECHER, NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLERGYMAN

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a man's possessions. A library is not a luxury. It is one of the necessities of a full life.

Each book has a secret history of ways and means.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not a choice. You must take it. The only question is how.

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.

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

A mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell.

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.

Bohong yang baik itu tidak ada. Bohong adalah bohong.

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.

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

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is the rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution which destroys the machinery but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

Well married, a man is winged—ill-matched, he is shackled.

Tuhan tidak pernah bertanya kepada seseorang apakah dia akan menerima hidupnya. Ini bukan pilihan. Anda harus menerimanya. Satu-satunya yang bisa dipilih adalah bagaimana menjalaninya

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.

Every artist dips his brush into his own soul.

Buku adalah jendela Sukma kita melihat dunia luar lewat jendela ini Rumah tanpa buku bagaikan ruangan tak berjendela.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

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

Orang yang periang bisa diibaratkan sinar matahari, Yang membuat orang-orang di sekelilingnya ikut riang pula. Keriangan hati memberi sayap pada kaki, otot pada tungkai dan lengan, serta keluwesan pada setiap gerakan.

Orang sinis adalah orang yang tidak pernah melihat hal-hal yang baik pada orang lain, tetapi tidak pernah luput melihat yang buruk.

Once an ill can be patiently born it is robbed of its poison if not its pain.

Every writer dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party ...

Love is the river of life in the world.

The strength of one’s courage,” he repeated quietly, nodding and smiling. He held up his right hand like he was counting off. “Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness. And this is what the Henry Ward Beecher medal is about: recognizing greatness. “But how do we do that? How do we measure something like greatness? Again, there’s no yardstick for that kind of thing. How do we even define it? Well, Beecher actually had an answer for that.” He put his reading glasses on again, leafed through a book, and started to read. “ ‘Greatness,’ wrote Beecher, ‘lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.… He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts …’ ” And again, out of the blue, he got all choked up. He put his two index fingers over his mouth for a second before continuing.

Sebuah perpustakaan kecil yang tumbuh lebih besar dari tahun ke tahun adalah bagian yang patut dihargai dari sejarah hidup seseorang. Manusia mempunyai tugas untuk memiliki buku-buku. Perpustakaan bukanlah suatu kemewahan, melainkan merupakan sesuatu yang diperlukan di dalam hidup.

No matter how good the walls and the materials are; if the foundations are not strong, the building will not stand. By and by, in some upper room, a crack will appear; and men will say: "There is the crack; but the cause is the foundation." So if, in youth, you lay the foundation of your character wrongly, the penalty will be sure to follow. The crack may be far down in old age, but somewhere it will certainly appear.

The bibliophile is the master of his books, the bibliomaniac their slave.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

I heard Mr. Ingersoll many years ago in Chicago. The hall seated 5,000 people; every inch of standing-room was also occupied; aisles and platform crowded to overflowing. He held that vast audience for three hours so completely entranced that when he left the platform no one moved, until suddenly, with loud cheers and applause, they recalled him. He returned smiling and said: 'I'm glad you called me back, as I have something more to say. Can you stand another half-hour?' 'Yes: an hour, two hours, all night,' was shouted from various parts of the house; and he talked on until midnight, with unabated vigor, to the delight of his audience. This was the greatest triumph of oratory I had ever witnessed. It was the first time he delivered his matchless speech, 'The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child'. I have heard the greatest orators of this century in England and America; O'Connell in his palmiest days, on the Home Rule question; Gladstone and John Bright in the House of Commons; Spurgeon, James and Stopford Brooke, in their respective pulpits; our own Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Webster and Clay, on great occasions; the stirring eloquence of our anti-slavery orators, both in Congress and on the platform, but none of them ever equalled Robert Ingersoll in his highest flights. {Stanton's comments at the great Robert Ingersoll's funeral}

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. 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.

No institution of learning of Ingersoll's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his own intellectual accomplishments, but also for his influence upon the minds of the learned men and women of his time and generation. Robert G. Ingersoll never received a prize for literature. The same prejudice and bigotry which prevented his getting an honorary college degree, militated against his being recognized as 'the greatest writer of the English language on the face of the earth,' as Henry Ward Beecher characterized him. Aye, in all the history of literature, Robert G. Ingersoll has never been excelled -- except by only one man, and that man was -- William Shakespeare. And yet there are times when Ingersoll even surpassed the immortal Bard. Yes, there are times when Ingersoll excelled even Shakespeare, in expressing human emotions, and in the use of language to express a thought, or to paint a picture. I say this fully conscious of my own admiration for that 'intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought.' Ingersoll was perfection himself. Every word was properly used. Every sentence was perfectly formed. Every noun, every verb and every object was in its proper place. Every punctuation mark, every comma, every semicolon, and every period was expertly placed to separate and balance each sentence. To read Ingersoll, it seems that every idea came properly clothed from his brain. Something rare indeed in the history of man's use of language in the expression of his thoughts. Every thought came from his brain with all the beauty and perfection of the full blown rose, with the velvety petals delicately touching each other. Thoughts of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires rolled off his tongue as if from an inexhaustible mine of precious stones. Just as the cut of the diamond reveals the splendor of its brilliance, so the words and construction of the sentences gave a charm and beauty and eloquence to Ingersoll's thoughts. Ingersoll had everything: The song of the skylark; the tenderness of the dove; the hiss of the snake; the bite of the tiger; the strength of the lion; and perhaps more significant was the fact that he used each of these qualities and attributes, in their proper place, and at their proper time. He knew when to embrace with the tenderness of affection, and to resist and denounce wickedness and tyranny with that power of denunciation which he, and he alone, knew how to express.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. And while some books, like steps, are left behind us by the very help which they yield us, and serve only our childhood, or early life, some others go with us in mute fidelity to the end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our sober hours, and a solace for our sickness or sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that has no life of its own gives so much life to you.

Any Justification that does not lead to Biblical sanctification and mortification of sinful desires is a false justification no matter how many Solas you attach to it”. “See that your chief study be about the heart, that there God’s image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.” ~ Richard Baxter Never forget that truth is more important to the church than peace ~ JC Ryle "Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.” ~ Francis Schaeffer I am not permitted to let my love be so merciful as to tolerate and endure false doctrine. When faith and doctrine are concerned and endangered, neither love nor patience are in order...when these are concerned, (neither toleration nor mercy are in order, but only anger, dispute, and destruction - to be sure, only with the Word of God as our weapon. ~ Martin Luther “Truth must be spoken, however it be taken.” ~ John Trapp “Hard words, if they be true, are better than soft words if they be false.” – C.H. Spurgeon “Oh my brethren, Bold hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards” – CH Spurgeon “The Bible says Iron sharpens Iron, But if your words don't have any iron in them, you ain't sharpening anyone”. “Peace often comes as a result of conflict!” ~ Don P Mt 18:15-17 Rom 12:18 “Peace if possible, truth at all costs.” ~ Martin Luther “The Scriptures argue and debate and dispute; they are full of polemics… We should always regret the necessity; but though we regret it and bemoan it, when we feel that a vital matter is at stake we must engage in argument. We must earnestly contend for the truth, and we are all called upon to do that by the New Testament.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Romans – Atonement and Justification) “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.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher “Truth bites and it stings and it has a blade on it.” ~ Paul Washer Soft words produce hard hearts. Show me a church where soft words are preached and I will show you a church of hard hearts. Jeremiah said that the word of God is a hammer that shatters. Hard Preaching produces soft hearts. ~ J. MacArthur Glory follows afflictions, not as the day follows the night but as the spring follows the winter; for the winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified, prepare the soul for glory. ~ Richard Sibbes “Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim that you are begotten of God and have His royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils.” ~ William Gurnall