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Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher

“It is not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned. It is not what we intend but what we do that makes us useful. And, it is not a few faint wishes but a lifelong struggle that makes us valiant.”

““By Labor the North has subdued Nature, changed a parsimonious soil to fertility, built dwellings for almost her whole population, raised the school-house, established the Church, encircled the globe with her ships, and made her books and her papers to be as blades of grass and as leave of the Summer for number. But in the South, labor, a badge of shame, is the father of misery. The slave labors, but with no cheer—it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens’ trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.””

“I dont like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything”

“The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.”

“What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.”

“Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.”

“The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.”

“We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.”

“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.”

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

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

“No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions.”

“All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that cant be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.”

“The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others”

“No one can be reasonable and angry at the same time”

“God has editing rights over our prayers. He will... edit them, correct them, bring them in line with His will and then hand them back to us to be resubmitted.”

“The true call of a Christian is not to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.”

“Faith makes a Christian. Life proves a Christian. Trial confirms a Christian. Death crowns a Christian.”

“I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.”

“One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer.”