Quotes from beecher henry ward ii

Man is at the bottom an animal, midway a citizen, and at the top divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. It is a blessed baptism which gives the first waking thoughts into the bosom of God.

There is so much that is deaf and dumb in man, and so much that is paralyzed, so much that is shrunken, that nothing short of a miraculous touch of re-creation can make them at death perfect beings.

Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

There is an equator that runs just under the nose: all that live below the equator are animals; all that live above it are men.

Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night as in a soil.

Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.

We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.

A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm--it can creep, but it cannot fly.

People of too much sentiment are like fountains, whose overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them.

A practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt.

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.

Many men want wealth--not a competence alone, but a five-story competence. Every thing subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning rod to their houses, to ward off, by and by, the bolts of divine wrath.