Beecher Quotes & Sayings

Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that; find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away
a faith for living, a faith for dying. — Henry Ward Beecher

Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying. — Henry Ward Beecher

The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence. — Henry Ward Beecher

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.
I hate reasoning, John, - especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Eating highly seasoned food is unhealthful, because it stimulates too much, provokes the appetite too much, and often is indigestible. — Catharine Beecher

The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness. — Henry Ward Beecher

The tea-kettle is as much an English institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book ... — Catharine Beecher

Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung. — Henry Ward Beecher

A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung. — Henry Ward Beecher

All words are pegs to hang ideas on. — Henry Ward Beecher

What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty. — Henry Ward Beecher

The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty. — Henry Ward Beecher

God never made anything else so beautiful as man. — Henry Ward Beecher

The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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. — Henry Ward Beecher

Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when, defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ... The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at night! — Henry Ward Beecher

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else. — Henry Ward Beecher

Education is only like good culture,
it changes the size, but not the sort. — Henry Ward Beecher

It is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages which are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other. — Catharine Beecher

That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith. — Henry Ward Beecher

Good men are not those who now and then do a good act, but men who join one good act to another. — Henry Ward Beecher

To open avenues to political place and power for all classes of women would cause [the] humble labors of the family and schoo1 to be still more undervalued and shunned. — Catharine Beecher

Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster. — Henry Ward Beecher

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. — Henry Ward Beecher

The commerce of the world is conducted by the strong, and usually it operates against the weak. — Henry Ward Beecher

A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. — Henry Ward Beecher

A man without a vote is in this land like a man without a hand. — Henry Ward Beecher

Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture. — Henry Ward Beecher

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave. — Henry Ward Beecher

If it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free soil. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this. — Henry Ward Beecher

[Disestablishment was] the best thing that ever happened to the state of Connecticut. It cut the churches loose from dependence on state support. It threw them wholly on their own resources and on God. — Lyman Beecher

Thee mustn't speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon," said his father, gravely. "The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must deliver it up. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Mirth is God's medicine. — Henry Ward Beecher

Women are the real architects of society. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round. — Henry Ward Beecher

A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil. — Henry Ward Beecher

We are never ripe till we have been made so by suffering. — Henry Ward Beecher

Greasy or not greasy, they will govern you, when their time comes," said Augustine; "and they will be just such rulers as you make them. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the morning, we carry the world like Atlas; at noon, we stoop and bend beneath it; and at night, it crushes us flat to the ground. — Henry Ward Beecher

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual. — Henry Ward Beecher

The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun. — Henry Ward Beecher

The sphere that is deepest, most unexplored, and most unfathomable, the wonder and glory of God's thought and hand, is our own soul! — Henry Ward Beecher

The most dangerous people are the ignorant. — Henry Ward Beecher

No man is more cheated than the selfish man. — Henry Ward Beecher

But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than glorious. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Flowers are sent to do God's work in unrevealed paths, and to diffuse influence by channels that we hardly suspect. — Henry Ward Beecher

We cannot have right virtue without right conditions. — Henry Ward Beecher

Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him. — Henry Ward Beecher

Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation. — Henry Ward Beecher

Just so sure as one puts on any old rag, and thinks nobody will come, company is sure to call. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Do you know the real secret of how Presidents become Presidents?" Before I can answer, he explains, "It's because they're good at getting people to do things for them. In fact, they're not just good at it. They're maestros. Virtuosos. To get that title of President, you need thousands of people doing thousands of different things, all for your benefit. It's a massive churning machine. And y'know what feeds that machine?" he asks. "People like you, Beecher. It's fed with your life, and your family, and your reputation. Because when things go wrong ... and they always go wrong ... the President isn't allowed to have that skunk smell around him. So when that happens, he doesn't just replace you. He crumples you up, tosses you out back, and ... chomp goes the woodchipper. — Brad Meltzer

Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything. — Henry Ward Beecher

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. — Henry Ward Beecher

There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth. — Henry Ward Beecher

God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure. — Henry Ward Beecher

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness ... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. — Henry Ward Beecher

He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel. — Henry Ward Beecher

Southam's research was only one of hundreds of similarly unethical studies. Beecher published a detailed list of the twenty-two worst offenders, including researchers who'd injected children with hepatitis and others who'd poisoned patients under anesthesia using carbon dioxide. Southam's study was included as example number 17. Despite scientists' fears, the ethical crackdown didn't slow scientific progress. In fact, research flourished. And much of it involved HeLa. — Rebecca Skloot

Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else. — Henry Ward Beecher

It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it. — Henry Ward Beecher

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. — Henry Ward Beecher

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made. — Henry Ward Beecher

There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure. — Henry Ward Beecher

I'm a thinkin' my old man won't know de boys and de baby. Lor'! she's de biggest gal, now, - good she is, too, and peart, Polly is. She's out to the house, now, watchin' de hoe-cake. I 's got jist de very pattern my old man liked so much, a bakin'. Jist sich as I gin him the mornin' he was took off. Lord bless us! how I felt, dat ar morning!" Mrs. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

We ought to be free to meet and mingle,
to rise by our individual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they who deny us this right are false to their own professed principals of human equality. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude. — Henry Ward Beecher

No matter how kind her mistress is, - no matter how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back, - for slavery always ends in misery. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Well married, a man is winged - ill-matched, he is shackled. — Henry Ward Beecher

If you destroy delicacy and a sense of shame in a young girl, you deprave her very fast. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man. — Henry Ward Beecher

The great men of earth are the shadow men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air. — Henry Ward Beecher

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not a ... turkey ... in the barn-yard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Love is more just than justice. — Henry Ward Beecher

O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood. — Henry Ward Beecher

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I an't a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart's full of bitterness; I can't trust in God. Why does he let things be so?" "O, — Harriet Beecher Stowe

He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenceless child, - like — Harriet Beecher Stowe

We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses. — Henry Ward Beecher

Even the knives and forks had a social clatter as they went on to the table; and the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous fizzle in the pan, as if they rather enjoyed being cooked than otherwise — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Friendships are discovered rather than made. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young. — Henry Ward Beecher

The water of the river is the calmest, where the deepest. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people ... is a fertile source of suffering. — Henry Ward Beecher

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause. — Henry Ward Beecher

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. — Henry Ward Beecher

Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors. — Henry Ward Beecher

The natural term of an apple-pie is but twelve hours. It reaches its highest state about one hour after it comes from the oven, and just before its natural heat has quite departed. But every hour afterward is a declension. And after it is one day old, it is thence-forward but the ghastly corpse of apple-pie. — Henry Ward Beecher

Once an ill can be patiently born it is robbed of its poison if not its pain. — Henry Ward Beecher

In the midst of life we are in death,' said Miss Ophelia. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife. — Henry Ward Beecher

If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time! — Henry Ward Beecher