Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Quotes

• The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is a human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

• The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.

• Now comes the mystery.

• Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

• I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

• 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.

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

• The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

• The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but".

• Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.

• 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!

• 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.

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

• It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

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

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