Quotes from Henry Ward Beecher

No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead,--dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.

When men enter into the state of marriage, they stand nearest to God.

Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.

John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man.

No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.

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

But in things that respect the feelings, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions!

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

If you ask, "What is the use of praying?" I answer, "Woe is me if I do not pray!" I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent somewhere. I pray because it is easier to pray than not to pray. It is the soul that prays first: the tongue wags afterwards. It is no small privilege that we have of talking with God, and of laying our troubles upon him so as to feel relieved of them.

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.

Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

There are many who measure what they are doing by what they can report. They go out with garrulity in the morning, and come back with statistics at night.

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 or a saint.

God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp with.

There is no such thing as time to a man in a summer vacation.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.

To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.

All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons!

Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.