Quotes from Henry Ward Beecher

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile some have a sad expression some are pensive and diffident others again are plain honest and upright.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.

There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.

There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.

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

We only see in a lifetime a dozen faces marked with the peace of a contented spirit.

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

Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.

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

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

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

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.

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 a man and the well-being of mankind.

There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be.

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

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

Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence.

The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.

All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of Him but in broken and imperfect words.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.

You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.

Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face.