Quotes from Henry Ward Beecher

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.

A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.

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.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.

God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.

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.

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

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.

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

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.

We are always on the anvil by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

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.

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.

I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.

Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.

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!